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Organizing Networks

Strategy for Success – Social Networks

The Community Living Campaign builds social networks that engage older adults and persons with disabilities to live in communities where everyone is valued and everyone is called to contribute.

  • People who choose to join the Community Living Campaign do so, not as volunteers, but rather as friends.
  • Unlike social agencies that start with a long list of needs, social networks celebrate, draw inspiration from and organize around the galvanizing person’s dreams, interests and gifts.
  • Each person in the network benefits from being involved; the ties that bind are reciprocal. Social networks support us all to age in community.
  • Creating events and gatherings based on shared interests improves the quality of social life and health.

How a Community Living Campaign Social Network Works

  1. A trained and paid network organizer – or Community Connector – spends time with the people at the heart of the networks to learn about his/her hopes, interests, talents and concerns.
  2. The Community Connector organizes network facilitators and they talk with supportive family members, friends, neighbors, and former colleagues about becoming part of the networks.
  3. The Network grows slowly and deliberately from there, based on mutual interests, the transforming power of kindness, and the belief that a good life, regardless of age of ability, is only possible with caring relationships that foster respect, mutual assistance and the ever-present possibilities for celebration.
  4. Network members gain a new understanding of the barriers and challenges faced by seniors, persons with disabilities, and their hands-on caregivers and often this new conscientiousness leads to network activities to address these barriers at the grassroots and system level.
  5. The Community Living Campaign depends upon grants and generous contributions from members of the greater community to sustain its growing number of social networks.