Community belonging a vital sign

By Karen Takacs

In all the media coverage of the Community Foundations of Canada’s Vital Signs 2010 report, one indicator caught my attention. More Canadians feel a strong sense of community belonging.

While probably the least talked about, for me community belonging is the most telling of all the Vital Signs indicators, revealing our well being as citizens and as a society.

And I think our notion of what constitutes our community is changing, too. Witness the outpouring of support for victims of the Haitian earthquake and Pakistan floods. Canadians see themselves, their families and their neighbours in the faces of people struggling, and they give.

On the face of it, things aren’t looking good at home. Many Canadians, and new immigrants in particular, are struggling to find work. One in 10 Canadians lives in poverty and the gap between rich and poor continues to widen. That is why it is all the more remarkable that the region with the highest unemployment in Canada, Lunenburg County, also reports the second highest sense of community belonging. In spite of the challenges, Canadians continue to reach out to their neighbours, to give time and money.

Increasingly this sense of belonging extends beyond our borders. In many developing countries the situation is dire. The experience of poverty is almost beyond the comprehension of those of us who have never lost a child to starvation; had a wife or daughter brutally raped or beaten without protection or redress under the law; or lost land and livelihood because, as a women, you do not have the right to own property.

Yet each year, thousands of Canadians drop what they are doing to serve overseas in a modest attempt to redress these inequities and work for change. It is the kind of experience that stays with you, that changes you. One 2007 study revealed that former overseas volunteers were one and half times more likely to volunteer in their own communities than the average Canadian. And when they did, they gave more volunteer hours. As most Canadian Crossroads International volunteers will tell you, we are in the community-building business. Across cultural differences, great distances and vast disparity in access to and control of resources, we are working with our neighbours to build one world.

Patsy George, a Crossroads volunteer who came to Canada 50 years ago from India, describes community building this way: Each of us has a duty to care. Not only for ourselves, but for everyone we are in contact with or might hope to be, our environment and the institutions around which we build community. We are inextricably bound up with one another, she says.

At 70 years of age, she told me, she has limited time. After a lifetime of volunteer work that has garnered her the Order of Canada, among other honours, she has to focus her efforts and her focus is building the global community. It is an effort that reaps its own reward.

As the Vital Signs report indicates, community engagement correlates strongly with an individual’s health and mental health even when socioeconomic and other factors are taken into account.  Working together toward a common cause, whether with folks in Lunenburg County, Canada or in Harare, Zimbabwe, enriches the lives of those who choose to work for collective good and all society.  The relationship and skills developed increase our resilience to cope in tough times and fuel the social change vital for all to enjoy a real quality of life.


Karen Takacs is Executive Director with Canadian Crossroads International (CCI), an international development organization that is advancing the rights of women and girls and the right to sustainable livelihoods for all. She is also Chair of the Board of the Canadian Council for International Co-operation (CCIC)