Joining Community

By Maria Clara Oliveira

Right now I am working with Coalition for the Homeless of Central Florida, and there I help out to provide basic essential needs to those who are homeless in the Central Florida area, I provide food and water while talking to people who have been homeless for years or had the experience of working with the homeless for years. By working alongside these people I get to know what exact measures are taken place to ensure a beneficial change to a unhoused person’s life and I get to see how hard the community works to make sure that these changes are constant and always improving. I feel like I have somewhat joined the community but not completely. I obviously cannot relate to the circumstances that my community of interest goes through, however I try my best to sympathize with them. To me being part of community is not only to directly get feel or go through the circumstances that a certain or similar group of people go through, part of being in a “community” is to want to connect and feel sympathy for the people that experience different situations than you might have. Contributing or trying to be involved in a community by itself is already an effort that a person takes to feel a part of something. The moment one realizes that they have officially joined the “community” is when others in that specific community can recognize the efforts that you have taken to appreciate or support them throughout your time being while working with them. So while I do not feel that I can necessarily go through the same feelings and experiences my desired community goes through, I feel that I am part of it because I try my best to help them and to make sure that their voices get heard. Before I used to think that being part of a community meant having the same experiences as another person and as more people have that same experience, a community is essentially formed, however now I know that it is not about having people with the same experiences rather it is about making people come together to have sympathy for one another and working together.

This is a picture of me and another volunteer from Coalition.