Community gives us roots. Being invested in a local community—both in terms of relationships and location—helps to ground our lives and our social action in a sense of place. Our heritage and our communities help make us who we are, and they provide much of the context through which we view and engage the world, and through which the world sees and engages us in return. As such, social action is not just about how we address problems far away—especially for those like me who work on global issues for national organizations—it also needs to be how we help better the places God has planted us in. A wise social entrepreneur once advised me that social action is not merely about getting others to do things elsewhere. It also has to have tangible manifestations in our own neighborhoods and among our own people.
Ben Lowe
Doing Good Without Giving Up
