How to Build a Sense of Community

Our society is speeding up, people are constantly busy. Even when people aren’t working they are on the phone, texting, surfing the Internet, working a second job, taking care of children and elderly family members – just trying to survive.

They don’t have automatic opportunities built in to form community. Today, creating a sense of community is something that many people suffer from – they are feeling the lack of community, like they don’t really belong anywhere. In each neighborhood, fewer people know their neighbors and everyone is busy and figures someone else will step in and help. It is so rare that it is considered “positive news worthy” and talked over when community steps up or individuals  help strangers vs. people in their own family or group.

Whole events like “National Night Out” have been created just to give structure and focus to encourage people to step out of their house and make time to get to know their direct neighbors and the people in their community better.

A whole generation, and especially the new generation just growing up now, don’t have the basic skills to create “community.” They haven’t lived in close knit communities and were not taught the subtle and unspoken skills that are the cornerstone that makes up the “building community” basic skills. Creating a sense of community for ourselves and others is something that happens from many small actions over time and requires you to step outside of your immediate concerns, participate and be available to spend time with and get to know others with no expectation of benefit to you.

In 2012, I discovered a blog post with a picture that spoke to me about the basics of how to actually create this feeling if “community” I’d been searching for in my life. Some kind person who actually knew how to create the feeling of “community” wrote down some basics for those of us who were clueless where to begin. They suggested:

How to Build a Community

Turn off your TV

Leave your house

Know your neighbors

Look up when you are walking

Greet people

Sit on your stoop

Plant flowers

Use your library

Play together

Buy from local merchants

Share what you have

Help a lost dog

Take children to the park

Garden together

Support neighborhood schools

Fix it even if you didn’t break it

Have potlucks

Honor elders

Pick up litter

Read stories aloud

Dance in the street

Talk to the mail carrier

Listen to the birds

Put up a swing

Help carry something heavy

Barter for your goods

Start a tradition

Ask a question

Hire neighborhood young people for odd jobs

Organize a block party

Bake extra and share

Ask for help when you need it

Open your shades

Sing together

Share your skills

Take back the night

Turn up the music

Turn down the music

Listen before you react to anger

Mediate a conflict

Seek to understand

Learn from new and uncomfortable angles

Know that no one is silent though many are not heard

Work to change this

Let this list be the beginning of your own efforts to improve the world, right in your own little community. The small daily acts that you do can create a wave of positive change and inspire others to create this sense of “community” along with you.

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