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Sometimes making a difference is about the little things; perhaps ensuring your kids have a healthy lifestyle, or providing a helping hand as and when it’s necessary. But if you want to really make a difference, they say the best thing you should do is to extend the olive branch towards what’s immediately around you. Rather than having grand ambitions to change the world, if we can all focus on what’s around us and strive to change that, we will have all done our bit, and as a result, the entire world will change for the better. Contributing to our communities is, in many ways, simple, but it can be very effective. What are the best ways we can do this?

Organising A Charity Event

Look around you; see what really upsets you about your community. Is there a lack of help for a certain age group, or do you feel the direct implications of a certain lack of resources? When we pinpoint the main issue, we can encourage others around us to see what’s going on and to dig into their pockets. Sometimes it’s not a majorly endemic condition, sometimes it’s simple. Maybe there’s a distinct lack of church chairs in your local place of worship, or the local park needs refurbishing. Organising an event is a lovely way to raise money for these causes, but don’t underestimate the fact that it can be a lot of work. This is why you have to pick something you’re passionate about as this means you won’t lose heart during the process.

What Skills Do You Have?

This is the big question you need to ask yourself. It is all well and good wanting to contribute to your community, but if there’s someone who has already got those areas covered, it’s about looking at your skills to see where you can fill in the missing gaps. If you are unique in terms of skills in your local area, and you feel you have something to give, you could become a mentor. There are organisations like Brightside and ReachOut that can help you connect with people in your immediate area that are disadvantaged in some way. Giving you the opportunity to help this disadvantage to person out by arming them with skills they can use in the future, they can do better in life, and at the same time, you are helping your local community. It’s always important to look at the skills that you have in comparison to what others don’t; this means you’ve got something unique to contribute.

Volunteering

It’s not just a way to give back to the community. As there are local organisations that can always do with your help, whether it’s a charity shop or there’s an aspect of the community that is underrepresented, and you can essentially find the gap in the market and promote this so that people are more aware of this aspect of the community. Sometimes we aren’t able to dedicate a lot of time to this, but every little helps. Volunteering, whether it’s at a homeless shelter or any outreach program, gives others the opportunity to make the most of your skills and knowledge. Be careful when it comes to volunteering, as you may think that you are doing them a favour by giving up your time, as they will expect a certain level of commitment from you, you will have to be able to meet this. It’s not about picking it up and putting it down as it suits you.

Invest In Your Community

These days there’s a lot of talk about carbon footprint. And if you want to minimise your own, shopping local is the easiest way to invest in your local community. By purchasing produce that was grown or reared not too far away from you, you are helping the local economy. It’s an easy way to invest in the interests around you. Your community needs all the support it can, and when it comes to something as simple as the food you buy, if you can afford to shop local, why don’t you? These days we go for the bargains, even though they’ve been flown halfway across the world. As such, by turning our focus onto local produce, we are helping our neighbours that work as butchers or farmers make an honest living.

To contribute to the community around you means that you are looking after what’s near and dear to you. If we all took the idea of making the immediate areas around us as good as possible, this becomes the easy way for everyone to support their nearest and dearest. Contributing to your community isn’t difficult; after all, you don’t have to go far!