Alternatives "Community"

Énergie Partagée lets savers in France invest in wind farms, solar roofs, small hydro plants, wood-fired heating and biogas units owned and run by local residents and councils. It is both a movement…

iFixit is a free online repair manual with tens of thousands of illustrated, step-by-step guides for phones, laptops, consoles, household appliances and more, written by the company and its community…

parkrun is a free, timed 5 km run held every Saturday morning in parks and run by volunteers. Runners register once online and get a personal barcode that works at every parkrun in the world; they…

foodsharing.de is a free, ad-free platform run by volunteers in Germany who collect surplus food from shops, bakeries and restaurants and share it, without money, with anyone who wants it, after…

NaturFreunde Deutschlands is a non-profit association for outdoor leisure with more than 65,000 members in over 500 local groups, which runs more than 350 Naturfreundehäuser (simple guesthouses in…

Le Pari Solidaire is a Paris association that places young people under 30 in the homes of people aged 60 or more, in Paris and Île-de-France. The young person gets a room for a small contribution…

ACORN is a community and tenants’ union in England and Wales whose members act together against bad landlords, to get repairs done, deposits returned and evictions stopped, for a membership fee based…

The Community Land Trust Network is the charity for community land trusts in England and Wales: local, member-controlled non-profits that own land so that the homes on it stay affordable for local…

Compagnons Bâtisseurs is a French network of associations that helps low-income tenants and owners repair and renovate their own homes themselves, with a building professional and volunteers at their…

The FSGT is a French multisport federation founded in 1934, with about 4,200 self-managed clubs, 200,000 people taking part and around a hundred sports, built on the idea that everyone should have…

Habitat Participatif France is the national association of co-housing in France: groups of households who design, build or renovate their homes together and share some spaces, and it helps them find…

Incredible Edible is a movement of local groups that grow vegetables, fruit and herbs in public places, for anyone to pick for free. It started in Todmorden, in northern England, in 2008.

Les Petits Frères des Pauvres is a French association, founded in 1946, whose volunteers visit isolated older people at home, organise group activities and holidays, and answer a free, anonymous…

Quartiermeister is a Berlin beer brand owned by a non-profit foundation: its profits go to neighbourhood projects, chosen by public vote in the cities where the beer is drunk.

The Ramblers is a British walking charity whose roughly 485 local groups lead tens of thousands of walks a year across England, Scotland and Wales, and which campaigns to protect public footpaths and…

The Wohnprojekte-Portal is a free German directory of about 890 co-housing projects and groups, run by the non-profit Stiftung trias, where people can find a shared housing project with room for them…

Rezo Pouce is a free, organised hitchhiking network in rural and suburban France: members wait at signposted “arrêts sur le pouce” stops, show where they are going, and a driver from the network…

The Association Végétarienne de France (AVF) is a French non-profit that helps people eat less meat or none at all, with free leaflets on nutrition, recipes, cooking workshops, the Défi Veggie…

The calendrier de l’Avent inversé, or reverse Advent calendar, turns the December countdown around: instead of opening a window each day, the family puts one useful item a day into a box, then gives…

The Deutscher Alpenverein (DAV) is the German mountaineering association, with more than 1.6 million members in over 350 sections, which runs 325 mountain huts and 220 climbing facilities, maintains…

HappyCow is a guide to vegan, vegetarian and veg-friendly restaurants, shops and cafés around the world, with a map, filters and reviews written by its community, on the web and in an app.

Olio is a free British app for giving away food and household items to neighbours, and for collecting surplus food from shops such as Tesco and Sainsbury’s through volunteer “Food Waste Heroes”, who…

nebenan.de is a German neighbourhood network where only verified residents of the same area see each other’s posts: they lend tools, give things away, ask for help, recommend tradespeople and…

Visorando is a French hiking website and app listing tens of thousands of walking routes in France, its overseas territories and abroad, each with a map, duration, elevation and step-by-step…

Couchsurfing is a website and app that connects travellers with locals who put them up for free, on a sofa, in a spare room or on a mattress. Hosts may not charge for the stay, and they decide whom…

Geev is an app and website for giving things away between neighbours: furniture, clothes, toys, appliances and food that would otherwise be thrown away. Givers post an ad with a photo, and the…

Vinted is a website and app for selling second-hand items between private people: mostly clothes, but also shoes, children’s things, books, homeware and electronics, usually at prices far below new…

BlaBlaCar is a French carpooling platform: drivers publish a trip and sell the empty seats in their car to passengers going the same way. Booking and payment go through the website or the app.

Donnons.org is a website and app for giving objects away between private people in France: you post an ad for something you no longer want, or pick up for free what someone nearby is giving. Its…

Workaway is a website that connects travellers with hosts in more than 170 countries: the traveller helps a few hours a day and gets board and lodging in exchange. Hosts are families, farms, hostels…