Become Your Community Expert

guest blog post by D.J. Coffman

I was talking to Stephen Brackett the other day about the idea of people activating and become "experts" in their communities and what that entails. Many of us live in small towns and there are things around us that have been there our entire lives and we haven't discovered them. It could be an organization, a community pool, a historic marker, people in need, people already helping people, etc. Wake up and look what's around you.

WAKE UP: In my case, I live in a small town south of Pittsburgh. I've only lived here for 2 and a half years and I haven't really gotten involved in the small town politics besides actively campaigning this past election season. I quite enjoy working in the shadows to make things happen or using my skills from afar to aid other organizations or people with their boots on the ground. But I've opened my ears a bit to "local politics" as of late. I've heard about the town "community pool" which has been there since I've been alive, but the fellow who ran it all those years has passed away, and now there are murmurs that the pool is being sued for some reason and may close, or is in need of help and support.

Activate: This lead to another story I heard that this organization proposed a plan to get some of the "stimulus" money that's been awarded to the town, but the catch is that it has to be something that benefits low to middle income families, so the indoor community pool is an ideal candidate. They actually proposed a great idea for a lot next to their building, a "community garden" that would grow vegetables during the season and pretty much become sort of a free food bank for low income families offering them FREE natural and locally grown veggies and things. I thought this was a fantastic idea! In our small town, it appears as though red tape is stopping that from actually happening though.

Transform: That lead me to the thinking of, EVERY small town should have a community garden, run by volunteers and donations from townsfolk or using the excess city money to help feed the people healthy food? And many small towns own vacant lots that are pretty barren and eyesores to the community which could be transformed into mini gardens for the people.

Step Up: In my case, I don't have the passion or skills to run such an endeavor, but it seems as though somebody did but was cut down by red tape or lack of this news getting out. What can I do? Perhaps I could track down who proposed this plan, investigate why it's not working and help in putting a real plan together on paper in a nice designed format to have local residents sign off on. Using my skillset and tools i might even be able to step up and run a small website and web address with all the information online, making it super easy for residents to login and inform themselves in private in their homes, and making it even easier to advertise this idea with a simple URL.

This is just an exercise in thinking about sustainability in our communities and become a community expert. I had no idea these things were going on in my small town until I opened my ears a bit. What kind of things are going on in your community that you don't know about?

I propose each of you write about your own communities, and use your blogs here on FightWithTools to detail and become your community's "expert" - if there you find problems, offer solutions. You may find things that were there all along that you want to support or get behind. Use the tools provided here to detail your journey, either in blog, video or photos to inspire others to do the same. This can be a really fun exercise for us to learn about other communities around the country, whether it's a big city or small village.

If we had enough people doing this sort of exercise, I could also envision a published booklet with everyone's community expert stories which could be used as a great field guide for others, and unique "road map" around the world.

Visit D.J. Coffman's profile here on Fight With Tools.