Community and Diversity of Social Transformation.

Wednesday afternoon and its Tom here doing my best to get back into the swing of things and what I call a normal working week after an absolutely inspirational and fantastic week at YMCA Europe’s Seminar on Social Transformation. As always it takes a few days and even weeks for everything to sink in which I find common in those who have attended these types of international seminars.

Community - a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common.
Diversity – the variation of social and cultural identities among people existing together in a defined employment or market setting.

Above are 2 definitions that meant so much to not just me but all participants during our 6 days in Gdynia.

In general diversity means variety. So a diverse community is different people living in one community. They may be different because of their gender, social class, upbringing, culture and religion.

On Tuesday we had a session led by Juan the Secretary General of YMCA Europe. We looked at the Theory of Change and Social Transformation.
The area I want to speak about today look at the social responsibility and effective participation of the young people who attended the Seminar.
Juan as a very knowledgeable and talented man with a wealth of experience asked the question just after breakfast on Tuesday. “What do we all have in common?”
We all have a vision as a potential ‘agent of change’ and as key young YMCA Leaders. We all together have a similar understanding of our roles as individuals yet we also do as members of the community and as young YMCA leaders. Regardless of our Diversity we are all looking at that same vision as young leaders. We all strongly believe in youth participation as one way to achieve social transformation.

Juan highlighted to the group the ‘amazing’ process of participation. It is for people who are ready to take steps forward but for people who are also ready to face the challenges. As we as YMCA leaders look at the process we must combine internal participation and external social commitment which then combines personal growth and social responsibility as we aim for the overall vision of Social Transformation together.

Together we looked at the key aspects of social responsibility. What does it take for Social Responsibility to be effective? There has to be a genuine appreciation of diversity, co-operation between an individual and their community and a healthy expression of feelings as a source of communication is the key to the success of social transformation being delivered in a diverse community.

It is a personal learning journey by ones enthusiasm that we encourage the learning process ‘to be’. We as young YMCA young people and leaders are always learning and its great knowing personally that you will never stop learning but that you are also always learning to live with others. You are accepting as social citizens the differences of people and human beings but having an acceptance of the differences between people. But as we move forward we also deliver a sense of empathy as we accept those differences.
In our roles as social and global citizens we will serve the people we work with regardless of their culture, religion or looks. It is key for us as citizens to know  as part of our social responsibility in which we learn to be part of society we respect social habits and have emphasis in being activists to improve public life.
As leaders we are always searching for that next chance to find an opportunity for the people in our community and making sure that they are opportunities for all.
Juan really did strike a chord with me during this session and made me want it to be the inspiration behind this post.

It is then we are able to see and celebrate those two words of Community and Diversity as we learn from them constantly through our lives but for me to see that through Social Transformation in the YMCA all the young people who joined me in Poland last week came from 17 different countries, 17 different communities of 17 different diversities. Yet we all have that one thing in common, all of us regardless of what we look like, what we do and where we have come from, we all have our own Vision.