Even though I’ve finished my Live Local 7 day challenge the amazing support from people both online and offline continues.

An example of this is the very kind @jrobens who dropped off a new plant for my garden at lunch yesterday.

Now I’ve got a curry plant to add to my burgeoning garden, and below is a picture of the latest addition.  Will plant it over the weekend.

The community aspect to this whole thing has been great. And a really big part of that has been the Twitter community.

The more I get involved in things like this the more it clarifies that Twitter provides access to a remarkable breadth of people, who collectively know more than we can count.

The really amazing thing is how willing people are to share information, share goods, and offer support both online and offline.

Thus the support offered was not merely 140 character messages, rather it encompassed real life activity that people went out of their way to undertake.

One person posted a hard copy book to provide information about seasonal food, others sent links to useful websites, others sent emails with detailed helpful information, others shared food and plants, and many shared their own stories and offered moral support.

There is some research I came across recently that backs this up, check out “If you need help, just ask: Underestimating compliance with direct requests for help.” by Flynn, Francis J.; Lake, Vanessa K. B. in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Vol 95(1), Jul 2008, 128-143.  The authors estimated:

“people underestimated how likely others were to help them by as much as 100%”

More info about the Live Local Challenge or via the Twitter stream, & don’t forget to check out Rebecca’s challenge blog too.