Won’t you meet your neighbors?

When a person or family moves into a new neighborhood, it can sometimes be difficult to get to know the people who live in the area. For the last eight months, Zainab Danish has been working to get to know her community, and now she’s launching a project to increase communication between neighbors.

Project Neighbor’d is the second phase in Danish’s community-centric program and is scheduled to launch this month. The first part, which began last August, was geared toward learning about Valley Stream and getting to know its residents. Project Neighbor’d is a new way for neighbors to get to know one another, even those with busy schedules and limited free time.

Danish has designed a program where residents can request a Project Neighbor’d box, fill out up to three index cards based on certain prompts, then pass it along to someone else who lives in the area. All the while, residents can send pictures or email their responses to Danish that will then be posted online as the responses are shared.

As a graduate student at Pratt Institute, Danish has been working on a thesis about her community that is due in May. She said the goal of the project is to “connect individuals in a diverse community to know and understand each other.”

Danish, who was born and raised in Pakistan and moved to Valley Stream six years ago, lives with her husband and two sons. She came to the United States to study, and eventually moved to Valley Stream. The community welcomed her, she said, which is why she is now looking to give back.

Last year, she began interviewing Valley Stream residents to better understand their cultures and had a booth set up at the Community Fest last September. Her display included interesting facts about Valley Stream that were dangling from a canopy, a map for people to show where their ancestors are from, and a place for participants to write what they believed in. She said that more than 70 countries were represented by the end of the day.