Thursday, February 11, 2016

Celebrations and Awards Help Build Community

The front page of THE HARTSVILLE MESSENGER this past Wednesday included a prominent photo of Jamie Morphis accepting the Hartsville Citizen of the Year Award. This Award is presented by the Hartsville Rotary Club, and has been decades. Celebrating community heroes is one of the tools for building stronger communities.  In Hartsville, we are fortunate to have the opportunity for a lot of these hero celebrations and they continue to play a vital role in the community-building culture so important to the vitality of this community.

Jamie Morphis, whose community building accomplishments are long, was not the only person honored at the Hartsville Chamber of Commerce Annual Dinner this past Monday night. The Chamber's program included several other hero-recognitions by other community organizations. And as I write about this topic you should notice that having an umbrella organization like a Chamber, which Rich Harwood might call a boundary-spanning organization as the host for such a recognition event is another crucial tool in the community-building kit.

Celebrations of people and celebrations of accomplishments are important in our process because it shows what we, as a community, believe are important to our culture and key areas to spend some of our precious resources.

The link above to the Chamber website will show photos of the Volunteer of the Year, the Caregiver of the Year, the Businessperson of the Year, the Innovator of the Year and the Young Professional of the Year. Celebrations show momentum and if you are involved in community building -- let those celebrations continue!

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