Understanding the Complexity of Community

Even though our pod hasn’t chosen a name yet (though some contenders right now are “team consensus”, “pod-alicious, oh my pod! , team shinee, and more), we’re already talking about concepts and issues that are important to us.

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Today’s pod asked what a social action project meant, and to try to explain it, we created a diagram that displayed our multiple relationships with the communities around us- from close relationships like our friends and families to bigger systems: our neighbourhoods, the city of Toronto, Canada, and then issues that affected our entire planet. We wrote down both positive and negative elements in these communities, things that supported us, challenged us, frustrated us, or fell somewhere hazily in between (Miley Cyrus).

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At first, we were writing about a lot of negative things. “This is depressing”, one group member remarked. After that, we tried to focus more on positive sides of our relationships, from the nurturing feelings we get from families and friends, to self-care activities that make us feel better when we’re down (tv!)-

If we came away from the activity with one thing in mind, it’s probably that  communities are huge, complex webs, and the better we begin to understand all the different ways that they function, the sooner we can dive into our social action project.

-brendan, as-of-yet-untitled pod