Rewarding Accomplishments: Honoring Community Champions
Learn how to think about who community champions really are, how to recognize them for their work, and why it's important to acknowledge their contributions.
-
WHAT IS A COMMUNITY CHAMPION?
-
WHY HONOR COMMUNITY CHAMPIONS?
-
WHO SHOULD HONOR COMMUNITY CHAMPIONS?
-
WHEN SHOULD YOU HONOR COMMUNITY CHAMPIONS?
-
HOW DO YOU HONOR COMMUNITY CHAMPIONS?
The annual meeting of the Human Resource Center (HRC) always accompanied a catered luncheon, presided over by the organization's director and the chair of its board. HRC was actually the community multi-service center, offering mental health and substance abuse counseling, parenting classes, programs for children at risk and teen offenders, and community and family mediation. Its director and staff had their fingers on the pulse of the town and knew all the players among health and human service providers.
As the short, post-luncheon meeting drew to a close, the board chair announced that the last item of business would be the presentation of the Community Hero Award. The award, in its third year, was designated for "the person who, in the past year, has gone far beyond what was or could have been expected in contributing to the quality of life in our community." The previous winners had both been seen as excellent choices, directors of human service agencies who worked many more hours than they were paid for, attended and contributed to numberless committees and task forces, and made their influence felt throughout the region.
This year, the award was to be different, the board chair said because it was going to a resident who had redefined community service. He was someone with a vision of a better place, a place where people helped one another and anyone else who needed help, where people cared about all their neighbors, not just those who looked or acted like them. More important, this person had acted on his vision, and pulled many others along with him, changing the way they thought and acted.
People started looking around the room, eventually settling their gazes on the minister of the Congregational Church, who was, himself, still clearly trying to figure out who this great leader was. When, in fact, the minister was named as the year's Community Hero, he simply refused to believe it. Although he had worked tirelessly, convincing his congregation to start a food bank, to open its heart and its building to the homeless, and to reach out to low-income families, he didn't see what he had done as either visionary or unusual. True community heroes seldom do.
When people - either in the course of their jobs or in the course of their lives - enhance the well-being of the community, it's important to acknowledge their contributions in some way. This section will help you think about who community champions really are, and how you can recognize them for their work.
WHAT IS A COMMUNITY CHAMPION?
A community champion is anyone - a public official, a community leader, a concerned citizen, a health or human service worker, a volunteer - who works hard and well to start and/or support an initiative or intervention, to bring a program or idea to reality, or to otherwise improve the quality of life of a particular group or of the community as a whole. She might be a true community hero - an inspired visionary like the minister described above - or she might be the volunteer who's always there and willing to do whatever has to be done to keep things going.
Some community champions work directly with or for an organization or initiative. Others start movements or organize people or fight city hall on their own. Whatever they do, they think of the community before themselves: they're committed to making things better for everyone. As the minister in the opening story, they rarely think of what they do as being unusual or praiseworthy. It's just part of their definition of being a good citizen.
Some real-life examples:
- A group of college students began going into the worst neighborhoods of the nearby large city every evening, getting to know the homeless. They brought blankets and food, offered rides to shelters, and checked on those most at risk to make sure they were all right. They put themselves in difficult and sometimes dangerous situations night after night, making sure that people had something to eat and didn't freeze to death, simply because they thought it was the right thing to do.
- After a teenager was beaten up by a gang of youths on his way home from school, his mother decided it was time to do something about the violence in the community. With phone calls and posters, she gathered 40 parents and teens at a meeting and started a parent-teen discussion group about the issue. The original members reached out to others, and the founder - a working-class woman who had only recently received her high school equivalency certificate - eventually got a grant that made it possible to continue and expand the organization. She had a lasting effect on the way people in the town viewed and approached violence of all kinds.
- When a tree farm was in danger of development, a forester gathered together a small group and persuaded them to start a land trust to protect a thousand acres that had served the town for recreation and wildlife habitat for generations. The group was able to buy the land and then to convince the state to buy it back from them and designate it a conservation area. From this small beginning, the organization - with the founder as chair of the board and guiding spirit for over ten years - went on to buy, put into conservation easements, or otherwise protect over 100,000 acres in the region.
- A woman hired to provide information about and referrals to health and human services in the community took the job to another level entirely. She became a tireless advocate for those who hadn't yet learned to advocate for themselves, never quitting till she could find an agency or program that would meet their needs. Cutting through red tape became her specialty, and she regularly worked until late in the evening, both in her office and at home, to find housing for the homeless, food for the hungry, or a safe and nurturing place for a pregnant teen who'd been thrown out of her parents' house.
WHY HONOR COMMUNITY CHAMPIONS?
BESIDES THE OBVIOUS - BECAUSE THEY DESERVE IT - AND THE SELF-SERVING - IF WE GIVE THEM SOMETHING, THEY'LL KEEP DOING WHAT THEY'RE DOING - THERE ARE MANY REASONS TO HONOR COMMUNITY CHAMPIONS.
- Honoring a community champion creates an example for the rest of the community to follow. It emphasizes that community service is important, and, through the choice of whom to honor, makes it clear what community service means. It may inspire others to take on community service, and even become community champions themselves.
- Honoring a community champion provides an occasion to highlight and explain community issues.
- Honoring a community champion demonstrates that even one person can be an effective agent for change, and encourages democratic action.
- Honoring a community champion makes not only that person but others engaged in community service feel that they and their work are valued and appreciated. It helps, in that way, to stave off burnout, and to keep people going.
- Honoring a community champion shows the community who the real heroes are. If a hero is someone who strives mightily and selflessly toward a goal that benefits many, rather than himself, the community champion certainly fits the description better than the sports figures, entertainers, and tycoons who so often are seen as heroes.
- Honoring a community champion can help to prepare the community for future initiatives. It accentuates the need for ongoing work, and for more community champions.
If you make honoring a community champion a practice on a regular basis - annually, or even monthly - it keeps people thinking about community service all the time. It leads them to consider what is going on in the community, and who is doing work that deserves the award. It may plant the notion that they themselves should be more involved in the community as well.
The Orange Revitalization Association in the town of Orange, Massachusetts, instituted a Citizen of the Month award. Those chosen received only a certificate and a picture in the local paper, but the award served to draw attention to the work of the honorees. They ranged from active community volunteers to people who seemed to spend their every waking minute working for the betterment of residents' lives.
More to the point, because of the size of the town - 6,000 people - award recipients were known to everyone else. Each month, area citizens were presented with an example of what one of their neighbors was doing to benefit the community.
WHO SHOULD HONOR COMMUNITY CHAMPIONS?
Access Checklist, PowerPoint