The beauty of empowering others is that your own power is not diminished in the process.
Barbara Colorose
I have often thought about how taking advantage of opportunities for community development creates more such opportunities. It creates a platform, on which others can build.
Why is this? Economics explains that some goods are “rival”, while others are “non-rival”. A hamburger is a typical example of a rival good – if you eat it, I can’t. Your consumption of the hamburger prevents me from consuming it.
So-called “public goods” are non-rival. I benefit from clean air, and my enjoyment of that air doesn’t prevent you from enjoying it, as well.
But beyond rival and non-rival goods, I would like to add the category of what I call “additive” goods. (Economics may have a term for this type of good – let me know in the comments if you know what it’s called.) When I consume these goods, I add to the supply available to other people.
Howard Rheingold, in his excellent book Smart Mobs (smartmobs.com), discusses this at length in the context of online networks. (To my memory he doesn’t give the concept a name, although he does describe it colorfully as “sheep that shit grass.”) On music recommendation systems, for example, every time you rate music, the system improves its ability to recommend music you’ll like, and other users benefit. Your use of the system adds to the value of the resource available to others.
Community development, I argue, has the same additive properties. If I get together some neighbors to plant trees, not only do we all benefit, but other, non-participating neighbors also benefit. In fact, even passers-through benefit from our effort.
I argue further, though, that some community development creates a platform. Not only does it improve the standard of living of the community, but it also creates new opportunities for others to develop the community.
An obvious example of this is how the creation of a neighborhood association enables other neighborhood efforts. If you want to start a food drive in your neighborhood, it will be much easier if there’s already an existing neighborhood association. You can reach a lot of people at once, and they’ll already have a community service mindset.
So what are the properties of a community platform? Planting trees is nice, but doesn’t enable others very much. Here are the properties I’ve identified – let me know if you can think of more.
- A communication network,
- Trust between community members,
- A cause to give the platform direction and purpose,
- Resources available to community members
The last two may require some explanation. A cause needn’t be a particular issue – it can be something as simple as “to strengthen the community in the neighborhood.” It is important, though – many groups eventually fade away into irrelevance because its members don’t have a clear idea of why the group exists, and eventually lose interest.
Resources can come in many forms, for example:
- Members’ willingness to volunteer,
- Fruit and vegetables from gardens,
- Tools available to borrow,
- Help moving,
- The communication network itself
Resources are important because without resources of some sort, a community platform cannot enable other community efforts. Some of these resources exist already (e.g. the tools), but are only made available by the platform. Others, such as people’s willingness to volunteer, is created or increased by the platform.
So what are your thoughts? Can you think of other properties you think are important for a community platform? What are some platforms in your community?
