Building stronger communities

A social group of any size whose members reside in a specific location, share government and often have a common cultural and historical heritage. This is the definition of the word Community as described on http://www.dictionary.com/.

This definitive doesn't seem complete because communities are much more then that. Community on a macro level is the world as a whole. The world as a whole has a shared responsibility to ensure that countries is doing it's part to address economic, environmental and health concerns that could have a definite impact on the world as a whole (i.e. economy, global warming, HIV etc.). As we know, addressing concerns that effect the world as a whole is an ever evolving process because every country has it's own ideology on how to address these concerns. As you see in the news, the world is realizing how interdependent our communities really are to one another due to the meltdown of the world economy.

Interdependence... This concept is not often spoken of, but will be vital to the success of the world community and our grassroots community on a micro level.

Let's explore what interdependence is. Interdependence is a reciprocal relation between interdependent entities (objects, individuals or groups) or simply being mutually dependent; depending on each other. To achieve interdependence within our communities. Communities must possess a variety of characteristic such as: maturity, selflessness, responsibility and a strong sense of purpose. Think about that for a moment... Then apply the concept of interdependence to your community.

We must began to realize how interdependent we are to each other. Businesses are interdependent to consumers, the economy is interdependent to investors but individuals in communities are independent of one another. There is a selfish ideology behind this thinking. Don't get me wrong it is important to be independent, self reliant and self sufficient. But, when we began to walk around our communities with blinders on and pretend not to see what is obvious. Eventually the cancer will began to fester and the problem gets out of control we tend to get frustrated and angered but when we had the opportunity to address the issue we chose not too.

To build stronger communities we must began to take off the blinders and stop pretending that problems that are obvious done exist. We must begin to inject the understanding of interdependence into our communities.