Communication and Connecting Within the Community

As I start blogging about community this week, there are several words that come into my mind. Communication, connecting and bond are a few. To me a community is, a group of people working for the well being of others within the community. However aspects of a community are treated as separate entities and are not treated as one. In order for a community to become truly affective the separate entities need to unite and work together. 

John McKnight believes that community should be built on optimism. He believes that we should focus on our "gifts" and not our "deficiencies". Every person in a community has a gift and a skill to bring. Every community needs a garbage man, a teacher and a doctor. In order to develop a stellar community we need to focus on the good in each individual person, and use what they can offer to benefit the entire community. People waste too much time, worrying about what they can't do. We need to start worrying about what we can do, and what we can do with that. McKnight also believes in treating everyone with equality. He believes that we should take people with "visible disabilities out of institutions and systems and bring them back into neighborhoods" (pg. 13) What we need to really focus on is the good in everyone and what they have to offer. 

What can we do to make a better community? People need to listen to each other more and be open to new ideas. We need to stop living in such a pessimistic world, and start focusing on the good that everyone has to offer. We need to start asking each other how can we work together to help better our community. A word that I think of is connection. How can we all learn to connect with each other in our communities? We need to learn how to some how form a bridge between all of these separate entities in the community. How can everyone become equal? 

Communities should strive to have better communication. Good communication should be key to all communities. How can we form connections between different members of communities? How can separate entities of a community connect and become together one powerful community? The only solution that I can come up with is communication. Communication is a powerful way of connecting a community. Communities need to start spending more time engaging in conversations with each other. Werner Edhard, "believes that a shift in speaking and listening is the essence of transformation" (pg. 15) Dialoguing is a way for people to learn more about each other. The act of listening and speaking is intimate and will form bonds between people. These bonds between people will form relationships between people. 

We need to figure out how use the relationships that we make between people to benefit the community. Separate entities of community should be joined, and they should work together for the good of all the community.