Social Change Model: Citizenship

Citizenship isn’t necessarily what most people think of citizenship “a member of a country, state, territory, province, etc.” Citizenship is acting in an active way to contribute and benefit a society or group of people that you are associated with. This is a great point of leadership and the social change values.

What?

Growing up in a wholesome family taught me citizenship at an early age. I remember one summer, not long ago that citizenship really rang true. Two summers ago, my hometown had a weird rainstorm that flooded my neighbor’s house in a matter of hours. Their house laid right below a retention pond that overflowed and this caused their house’s basement to be destroyed. I called my friends and family and we partook in citizenship. Helping and benefitting our neighbors. After the calamity, my neighbors were very appreciative and gave us all gift cards to eat at Chik-fil-a. Of course, that wasn’t expected or necessary of them. That event made me realize more what of what citizenship meant.

So What

The importance of citizenship should be evident in every level of society. Citizenship doesn’t just mean being a member of a community based on geographic location. It is more personal and active than that. This relates to the example I gave earlier. Those people were my neighbors geographically, but I was partaking in citizenship proactively for them. I felt partly responsible to help and care for them as they were my neighbors and had probably helped us in the past. Also, what I learned from that experience was the change that me and my family felt after helping the neighbors. It gave us more of a common purpose and we were appreciated more by the community as a result.

Now What?

In my opinion, citizenship as a social value followed properly is the best way to get your neighbors and immediate people living near you to adore and respect you. In a leadership setting, it shows that you are actively caring and nurturing the followers of your team as well as other groups that you deal with. Citizenship truly shows that you appreciate and treat people right. It is very powerful to see that in a group. Secondly, I am going to implement a strong sense of citizenship in my neighborhood as well as a leader out of college. In my opinion, these things go hand in hand.