Whether you are from a large city, a small suburb, or even a small town everyone has something in common, a sense of community. The text defines a sense of community as being comprised of four elements, membership, influence, integration and fulfillment of needs, and shared emotional connection, that are utilized to determine a person’s experience of a community in either a positive or negative way (Gruman et al., 2017). Now I chose to write about these topics this week because no matter where you go, every place has its own identity, and one can see each of these four elements at work. For my post, I am going to use my hometown as an example.
My hometown is Union Mills, Indiana, a small farming community in Northwest Indiana. My home is so small that we do not have our own police force/station, a mayor, or even any stoplights. The population currently of my hometown is 1705 people, which compared to a lot of places in Pennsylvania, where I reside now, is not a lot of people (Point2Homes, 2020). Compared to the surrounding area around my hometown, our graduation classes each year are significantly smaller. My graduation class in 2010 was only 56 people, and we all knew each other and each other’s families. Our sense of community was strong because we were such a small town and we relied on each other.
The membership element was definitely prevalent in my hometown. We were so small that, like I stated above, we knew everyone very well and could easily tell if you were either from a different area or were new to our community. Now that doesn’t mean that we wouldn’t accept you or treat you differently, we just had our own set of social boundaries as our sense of familiarity was primarily focused on those who we had known for our entire lives. We all had the same general outlook on things, and always wanted to help one another to succeed. When our town hardware store burned down, we all came together to either raise money to help rebuild a new one or donated time and resources to help rebuild. Our sense of community was, and still is, very strong. Crime is virtually non-existent where I am from because it wouldn’t take long to figure out who did it because we all know each other.
Influence is a factor that is strong throughout our community as well. We don’t have our own form of government within the community such as a mayor or a town council, but we do have a few prominent members that do tend to stand out more than others. Growing up, my family was very good and close friends with one of the deputy sheriff’s that worked for the county. Everyone knew and greatly respected this man, and they still do to this day. He also happened to be one of the coaches for most of the sports teams throughout my life from little league to high school football. Now he had a great deal of influence in our community because of his leadership and no one wanted to disappoint him. If our community needed a representative to speak to the county leadership on our behalf, he was primarily our selection because when he spoke people listened. If we ever were to have a mayor, I am almost positive he would be selected almost automatically because he is very well respected. His influence on the community really had affected our community and really helped to shape a lot of us who have crossed paths with him. A lot of what I did after I left my hometown was because of his influence, and my own sense of striving to become a similar person to who he is.
The third element within the sense of community is integration and fulfillment of needs. This means sharing values, and potentially sharing goods and resources as well to help with the overall well-being of each other (Gruman et al., 2017). Like I stated in the membership section, because we’re all very close with one another we all help each other when we need to. When someone needs help, we all come together and help them in any way that we can. Again, when the hardware store burned down some donated money to help pay for goods or services needed to rebuild. Others donated resources and time to help rebuild the store. When we needed our own fire station after this fire, the community came together to help no only to build the fire station, but to help staff it as well. Like many fire stations across the country, ours was a volunteer fire station and relied on the community to run and staff the station. We came together to fulfill the needs of the community and integrated to achieve common goals. In my hometown if you need help, people aren’t ashamed to speak up because not only will they get help, but they won’t be judged or ridiculed for it. We will help, because one day we ourselves may need help and have the peace of mind knowing that we can rely on each other to get it.
The last element is shared emotional connection, and if you haven’t caught on by know, you will know that my hometown definitely has this as well. Within the community, we all share a very strong bond. This bond is built off of shared experiences, shared beliefs, and shared goals. We all want to succeed, and we all want to see others succeed. We all want to know that we can rely on one another because in times of stress, that is all we have is one another. If a farmer has a bad year and loses on his crop, he knows that he won’t fail because the community won’t let him suffer. If another family loses their home due to any circumstances, they know they won’t be homeless because someone will take them in. We all help and rely on one another, and honestly, it’s because we all genuinely care for one another. We all are a large extended family that interacts with one another throughout our lives through school, events in the community, and everyday life. I would say that this factor is made possible by all the other factors, because they all help to really solidify this one and to form the bond that we all share.
Sense of community is a strong and important factor in any community. No matter where you go, the four elements that I referenced are what make up the community to give show its identity and the relationship of its members. I am still very close with many of the people that I grew up with, even though I no longer live there. I could move back there tomorrow, and not only fit back in immediately, but I know that I would succeed and could rely on my neighbors if needed. They would have my back, and I would have theirs. We are all, in a way, an extended family and all share the same beliefs, experiences, and goals. I couldn’t have asked for a better place to grow up, and honestly no matter where I go throughout life it will always be HOME.
References:
Point2Homes. (2020). Union Mills Demographics. Retrieved from https://www.point2homes.com/US/Neighborhood/IN/Union-Mills-Demographics.html
Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (2017). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE.