Meeting great neighbours, one free coffee at a time
Alex Symington
When did you last actually talk to your neighbours?
Not a nod over the bin lorry or a wave from the car – actually talk to them. If you’re struggling to remember, you’re in good company. And it turns out that gap matters far more than we tend to give it credit for.
According to research from Ring, three quarters of people in the UK say they feel safer on streets where neighbours know and regularly talk to one another. Three quarters. That’s not a soft, nice-to-have finding – it’s a pretty direct line between a chat over the fence and how safe someone feels closing their front door at night.
At Neighbourgood, that idea is pretty much why we do what we do.
We believe businesses have a genuine responsibility to act as good neighbours, and that strong communities are built one conversation at a time. So, when a campaign came along that was quite literally designed to get neighbours talking, we were always going to say yes. Also – Neighbourgood working on the NeighbourGood Café Tour? It was meant to be!
This is a brilliant opportunity for someone at the beginning of their career who is passionate about communications, social impact, and creative ideas. The role will support a wide range of work across Neighbourgood – from developing social media content and supporting client projects to helping organise events, coordinating partnerships, and contributing ideas that help businesses and charities work better together.
Enter the NeighbourGood Café Tour
The NeighbourGood Café Tour is a partnership between Ring and the independent charity Crimestoppers, and it does something refreshingly simple. It turns a local café into a community hub for the day, puts the kettle on, and invites the whole neighbourhood in for a free coffee, sweet treat and a proper conversation.
Pull up a chair and you can meet people from Ring and Crimestoppers, hear from local Community Champions, swap stories about your own community, and learn how the everyday stuff like anonymous tip-offs, a well-placed camera, and simply knowing the people who live around you adds up to a safer place to live.
No hard sell. Just neighbours, talking.
So far the tour has pulled up in Leeds, Birmingham, Bolton, Milton Keynes and Reading, with more stops still to come throughout 2026.
The story that started it all
Every great campaign has a real person at the heart of it, and this one has David Collins.
After retiring and moving to a new home in Huddersfield, David picked up a few Ring cameras on a deal he’d spotted online. One night, they caught three intruders coming through the hedge from a neighbouring garden, and the footage was clear enough that police had everything they needed. All three were caught and prosecuted within six weeks.
But here’s the part we love. David didn’t stop there. He set up a Neighbourhood Watch group, his neighbours started looking out for one another, and membership grew to more than 250 people. One late-night incident turned into a genuinely more connected community.
Ring named David as its first Community Champion, and he came along to the Leeds launch of the NeighbourGood Café Tour to share his story with locals. That’s the good-neighbour effect in a nutshell.
Where we come in
The coffee and the cameras tend to get the headlines, but a community campaign only really works if the actual community turns up. That’s our job.
Before each event, the Neighbourgood team goes and finds the local Community Champions – the people who already care about their patch and have a story worth hearing – so that every stop is rooted in the place it’s happening, rather than parachuted in.
We invite the community groups who ought to be in the room: the Neighbourhood Watches, the residents’ associations, the people already doing the quiet, unglamorous work of looking out for their streets.
And we identify, vet and recommend a local charity to receive a donation after each event so the tour leaves behind £1,000 of Ring devices in every town it visits. Not just a good morning and some nice photos, but a lot of lasting good.
This is only the beginning
The best bit? We’re only getting started. There are more cafés to open, more champions to find and more neighbours to introduce right the way through 2026.
As we say, you can’t choose your neighbours, BUT give them a free coffee and half an hour, and you might just be glad you’ve got them.
