Why community is important

Dear Colleagues

Community is important because it is the place we live ... it is where people know each other and look out for each other.

The phrase "It takes a village" has been used by high profile personalities ... and there is reason for using this phrase.

Living together is complex in the best of times ... and in a small community it is easier to understand the complexity and take it into consideration ... and in large part to come to appropriate compromises. But in a larger world, it becomes impossible to understand and address these issues except in the most superficial of ways. In the larger world the real issues that have an impact on local life are most often ignored ... and the larger world moves on.

Putting community at the center of socio-economic performance metrics results in the community now being center stage. The phrase "What gets measured, gets done" is applicable here. If the metrics are about community progress ... then it is the community that will progress.

The challenge is to do this in a practical way ... and this is one of the things that the Tr-Ac-Net database is designed to do. There is no technical reason at all why data about communities cannot be put into a database framework that facilitates a significant improvement in the knowledge there is of socio-economic progress at the community level. Metrics at the community level highlight the importance of productivity in the local society and the very limited role that external initiatives usually have unless there is a special effort to get resources into activities that benefit the community in tangible, practical ways.

Community is important ... because it is where "the rubber hits the road".

Peter Burgess