Written by Wilson, Community Worker
As is our practice at Beyond, we start every new year by sharing the goals we hope to achieve as a community. We gather young and old, have discussions and plot the journey ahead together.
We call these sessions Community Conversations.
Typically, everyone present introduces themselves and shares their experience volunteering in the community, and what “community” means to them. We then wrap up with a Beyond staff talking about the value of community development.
That, however, was not how a session held in the Bukit Ho Swee neighbourhood went. The Beyond team just sat back and listened as enthusiastic community members took centre stage.
The adults and youth present spoke about their experiences as volunteers in the community – outreach to the elderly and mentoring younger children.
They spoke about how everyone had something to offer in their community. Their own experiences showed them how even the smallest of good deeds could create ripples of kindness, encouraging even more people to extend a helping hand to their neighbours. This was clearly a healthy community in the making, what in the days of idyllic “kampungs” we called Gotong Royong – working together.
Perhaps this is the spirit of community the world needs.
“Collective wisdom is about our capacity to recognize interdependence and to make decisions demonstrating that we have a stake in each other, that we can indeed care for each other and the physical planet we share”
— Alan Briskin