Commuity - What does it take?

[Spuzzana]

Community

What this means differs from person to person.

Community can extend from being part of a family or extended family, by developing relationships with other people who you have come to respect and love, to developing a sense of belonging with the people in your street, club, institution, business activity, village, town or any other of hundreds or thousands of situations.

So what makes a community or cause people to feel that they are part of a community?

Answers please on a postcard

Google definition: Using - Define: community, as the search term.

Noun
A group of people living together in one place, esp. one practising common ownership: "a community of nuns".
All the people living in a particular area or place: "local communities".
Synonyms
society - commune - public


The Chambers Dictionary:
A body of people in the same locality; the public in general; people having common rights, etc; a body of persons leading a common life or under socialistic or similar organisation; a group of people who have common interests, characteristics or culture; a monastic body; any group of plants growing together under natural conditions and forming a recognisable sort of vegetation; a common possession of enjoyment; agreement; communion; commonness; (archaic) adj of, for or by a local community.

From the definitions above we can see that community is a little on the abstract side. So we as individuals have to make up our own minds what community means to us and what part in community we want to play, or indeed be part of a community.

So what makes a community and what does a community need to function as a community. Probably more importantly, what does a community need to have in place in order to be resilient when hard times strike?

These are only sketchy thoughts at the moment.

Thoughts are that a community needs certain skills as a starting point.

They can be categorised in basic terms as:

Builders
Carers
Workers
Defenders

Where each person fits in would be dependant on their skills and abilities.

Once this has been defined, the next step is understanding what would a community require so that it is able to hold its own in the face of uncertainty.

Lets see where we go from this starting point.

Kind regards

Spuzz

[CharlesHarris]

We have organized our community emergency structure in accordance with the Incident Command System used by FEMA, the Department of Homeland Security and fire services. A simplified overview can be found here:


http://herbertcole.wordpress.com/2011/06...implified/

[Scythe13]

The word community is derived from 2 words. Common, Unity. Very communist in my view.

For me, it's a group of people whom add value to each other's lives. For example, value can be financial wealth, increased spare time, higher quality of X, safety, etc. Usually one person will make an exchange of one thing for another, e.g. wealth exchanged for spare time. In this instance a person buys a table so that they don't have to spend hours making it themselves.

List of 'required' skills for community to function.
Farming
Shelter Building
General Labour
Medical
Military/Militia
Clothing
Engineer (to come up with solutions to problems)
Education
Peace Keeping (think police, judge, etc)
Mechanic (if going higher tech)


Skills for each member:
Fire making
Food Prep
Basic education (reading, writing, mathematics)
Creative thinking (creativity is what produces technological advancements)
Physical combat
Living off what nature provides

For me, those are very important skills to have, and should pretty much cover all bases for 'survival'. Also, it's the basic requirements for the Spartan Empire, and the Babylonians, and the Mayans, but somehow they all died off too, so maybe there is no such thing as a solid community.

[Skean Dhude]

A commuity now may not be a community that would survive an event. I think any community over a certain size, say 50, does not have enough community spirit to hold it together. Smaller communities know each other and build relationships, help each other. Larger communities don't know each other and only help, if they do at all, their next door neighbours.

Small towns and villages have a good community spirit. London does not.

[bigpaul]

first of all you need people WILLING to be part of your community, if all you have are TAKERS but not givers then you'll get nowhere. the UK is now full of people who are only in it for what they can get and to hell with the rest of us, modern generations seem to have this "me,me,me" attitude, so if community is the way you want to go, you have to pick your community members with care and not just take ALL COMERS. you may have to turn people away, maybe they don't have the skills you want, or you have enough people for the resources you have already, how are you going to deal with rejecting people? and can you afford to turn people away who then know where your community is located? how do you deal with theft from the community? or maybe even worse crimes?

[Sunna]

about 40% of my village are over 50,many of them older than that if they have skills lots of them couldnot use them through ill health the village is disjointed through new comers over the last 5/8 years who have bought up the excouncil places .
these folk are middle class and almost live a seperat life from the rest of us .
the original villagers would of been great as most of them worked on local farms,big houses and had plenty of skills, most of these are dead to old or moved out .
many of the newbies keep chickens because it trendy [jamie oliver ect ] drive 4x4s own a wax jacket but have no clue about country living .
just because its a village dont think we all get on and support each other .

[Scythe13]

I think BP really noted something important. They have to be willing to be a part of a community.

[Skean Dhude]

I think the real point is they need to be willing to contribute to the community. Everyone wants to take something out but few want to put in.

[bigpaul]

(16 October 2013, 13:04)Scythe13 Wrote: I think BP really noted something important. They have to be willing to be a part of a community.

yep thats the point, also they need a skill that you can use, you can only take in so many unskilled labourers, although I am sure there is plenty of manual labour they can do, even oldies would have their uses, even if they cant do manual labour, you need someone to peel the veg, make clothes, sew curtains, cooking.

[Scythe13]

(16 October 2013, 13:37)bigpaul Wrote: even oldies would have their uses, even if they cant do manual labour, you need someone to peel the veg, make clothes, sew curtains, cooking.

HAHA, I have this image of BP knitting up a pair of curtains! hahahaha.