Community building strategies

Building community is a process of cultivating trusting relationships locally, and it is an effective method for preventing social disintegration.  There are so many different ways to build relationships within your community.  By balancing your consciousness of existing community assets with a realistic understanding of local needs, you may find new and exciting ways to connect with your neighbors.

Examples of both formal and informal community building include:

• Advocating for international human rights legislation to end violence against women and develop services for survivors

• Leaving your car at home and biking to work every day

• Working at the front desk of a homeless shelter giving out toiletries and answering guests’ questions

• Giving $50.00 to the United Way or Community Fund to distribute to local nonprofits

• Writing a letter to a County Commissioner to prevent construction of a parking lot on the site of a local park or playground

• Walking an elderly person across a busy street

• Tutoring a migrant workers

• Adopting an eight year old child

• Taking a leave of absence from your job to join the Peace Corps

• Reading your local newspaper and listening to National Public Radio daily

• Protesting outside of a large corporate company office for their uses of sweatshops

• Lobbying for changes in existing welfare policy as a part of a grassroots organization

• Joining an emergency relief team effort after a natural disaster

• Organizing an event honoring Martin Luther King, Jr.

• Staffing an HIV/AIDS information table at a Gay Pride festival

• Involving your neighbors in the development of a cooperative grocery

• Serving as an elected or appointed representative on a Land Use Planning committee for the City

Adapted by the Center for Global Education at Augsburg College from a publication by the Career & Community Learning Center at the University of Minnesota, “Redefining Service: A Commitment to Social Change,” Koth & Hamilton, 1993 ©.