How Your Writing Can
Build Community to Change the World

To truly change our cultural practices and values, we need to bring people together to share and live a new vision. We need to create community. This Flight Log will look at the need for community on three levels – societal, individual, and organizational – and how you can structure your messaging to address all three.

Repairing the World: Society’s Need for Community

The word community denotes a cultural group in which members identify with one another, thinking of the group as us, while members of the same society share much in common, but may feel quite estranged from one another. Our society’s lack of community feeling is in part responsible for most of the problems that we who are doing mission-based work are trying to solve. People pollute the atmosphere partially because they don’t take responsibility for the Earth as our shared house. Politicians set laws depriving people of healthcare in part because they do not think of these people as their extended family.

When people do feel like part of a community, we take better care of the community’s members and possessions. We bond together in groups that not only foster stewardship, but also feed members synergistically, so that we can accomplish more together, creating a ripple effect with the momentum to spread across nations and continents. Community is the greatest tool for changing society.

Examples of messaging that builds community to repair society:

Earth is our only home, so let’s take care of it.

For a world without breast cancer, come walk with us.

Support your neighbors – shop local.

God bless the entire world, no exceptions.
(This one I can’t take credit for; I saw it on a bumper sticker and loved it.)

 

Belonging: The Individual’s Need for Community

Humans evolved to live in small tribal groups, but today many of us live in vast cities and suburbs where we are surrounded by many times more people than we can keep track of, but don’t even know our neighbors. Most of us don’t feel like part of a tribe, and would be more emotionally fulfilled if we did.

To truly feel like part of a community, an individual needs to share in common with other members something that is important enough on a personal level to be an aspect of identity. It’s not enough to be a member of a group that shares volleyball in common if you don’t love volleyball, unless you and the group also share life experiences, interests, values, etc. The more personally important the shared aspects of the community are to members, and the greater their compatibility with one another, the more committed to and fulfilled by the community they will be.

Examples of messaging that addresses individuals’ needs for community:

Come meet other dieters to share inspiration and delicious recipes.

Prepare your body for birth with prenatal yoga in a warm community of expecting moms.

In the Rainbow Group, gay teens and adults find an extended family that truly understands.

Join Pro-Choice Pros to collaborate with other activists in support of a woman’s right to choose.

 

Making an Impact: Your Organization’s Need for Community

Our need for community on both societal and individual levels presents both a responsibility and an opportunity for people doing mission-based work. If you create a community around your work, you not only change our culture for the better and fulfill people’s emotional needs, but also engage people in loyally supporting your efforts. Creating a sense of community will help you attract the right people, keep people involved, and inspire them to deepen their engagement.

Creating community also helps correct a historical issue. In western society, mission-based work was popularized by people who conceived of themselves as doing altruistic deeds like bringing their “advanced” and “superior” culture to “the poor, illiterate natives”, donating their old clothes to people they would not deign to eat a meal with, and expecting their “inferiors” to shower them with gratitude and admiration for their largesse. The legacy of this still lives, and people who need help will often refuse it if they feel patronized.

Even if treated respectfully, many people have trouble asking for help, and think less of themselves for needing it. Going beyond mere respect, you can establish an atmosphere in which everyone feels connected to everyone else as part of a group working toward a larger vision. This blurs the lines between giver and receiver, nurturing the feelings of warm connection and self-respect that make people feel comfortable.

Tips to build community around your organization:

You might want to survey a wide cross-section of people associated with your organization or business to ask them how much they feel like members of a community, what contributes or detracts from this feeling, and what they feel they share in common with other members. You might find commonalities that surprise you. You can then make changes to your practices and messaging to highlight what community members share in common and to increase their sense of community. This will not only strengthen community feeling among current members, but also attract the most compatible new people to join in.

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