Community center

“ These social institutions will increase in relative importance and they must be located at the community center if they are to have a sufficient constituency to be efficient in their work and command the loyalty of rural people. Inasmuch as both farmer and villager are necessary for the adequate support of church, lodge, school, and other [Pg 57] community organizations, they cannot be expected to work together in these activities if one is antagonistic to the other, or if the one is helping to put the other out of business. ”

“ However, in the older parts of the country or in hilly or mountainous regions, the trade or business center is not always the same as the center of the chief social activities of the people, and may not be the chief factor in determining the community center. Not infrequently a church, school and grange hall located close together may form the nucleus of a community which does its business at a railroad station village some distance away, possibly over a range of hills. ”

“ Life, after all, is the only thing worth while, and in progressive communities its enrichment will be chosen at any cost. Here again it is the duty of the teacher to bring about the right spirit and attitude and the right decision in regard to all these important questions.
Organization.—A community which is socially and educationally organized will need a central post office and town hall, a community store, a grain elevator, a church, and possibly other community agencies. All of these things tend to solidify and bring together the people at a common center. ”

“ This need of the young men for a social center and a social life is a common need of all America. Every village needs a social center to further its growth into a finer culture and a more united citizenship. Every Jewish community large enough to have a little social life of its own needs a community center where that life can flourish and be guided in desirable and constructive channels. ”

“ The Social Center, then, is the place in any community where the people of that community meet, discuss, enjoy, co-operate upon a common ground as citizens in a democracy, as members of a neighborhood, as human beings, without regard to party, creed, class, or difference of possession. ”

“ Some of us have not yet awakened to the fact that we are destined to play a{314} great part in community development and community education. Others are reluctantly yielding to pressure. Others have gone so fast that they are in advance of their communities. Take, if you please, the one item of the provision of space for community meetings, regarded by some as the be-all and the end-all of the community center idea. ”

“ On account of the lack of such facilities many cities have bought playgrounds upon which have been erected special buildings containing gymnasiums, game and club rooms, and often a branch library, which have become known as "social centers." The "social center idea" has spread to the country, for which various forms of social centers have been advocated. Any building which is available for such purposes to the whole community—the school, church, or grange hall—may become a social center if suitable arrangements are made for its operation as such. ”

“ Our Committee is now occupied in formulating plans for a large social center movement throughout Boston, and is enlisting the help and coöperation of each neighborhood for its own center, because no social center can be established on a permanent basis unless the neighborhood community realizes its own responsibility in helping to make the plan a success.
There are not enough settlements and other social agencies to provide for more than a small number of our young people. There are thousands of young men who have no place to go nights. ”

“ Offering a wide range of cultural, social, and recreational activities and services, these local institutions have been gathering places for people of all ages and all walks of life. By the turn of this century, community centers had become a haven for thousands of immigrants, who sought help learning English and adjusting to life in the United States. Now in their second century of service, community centers continue to offer the American people valuable assistance programs as well as rewarding opportunities for personal enrichment. ”

“ For the city has a dozen social centres entirely outside the school: its public parks, theatres, clubs, churches, and streets, even, serve to stimulate, entertain, and educate. But the rural community is wanting in all these social forces; it is lacking in both intellectual and social stimulus and variety.
One of the most pressing needs of country districts is a common neighborhood center for both young and old, which shall stand as an organizing, welding, vitalizing force, uniting the community on a basis of common interests and activities. ”

“ A social center thus maintained will stimulate neighborly intercourse and satisfy the demands of both young and old for religious culture, for recreation and pastime. Where schools are consolidated the school house and grounds will answer for all gatherings whether for worship, for the discussion of civic or neighborhood problems or for recreation and amusement. For without such neighborhood intercourse, life deteriorates into a dull routine, and the moral and religious tone of a community, degenerates. ”

“ A Community Plan for Socialization
Rural social life is simple and should be kept so. Elaborate organization is never necessary. What we need is that “touch of human nature which makes the whole world kin.” We do not need another institution, but possibly a social center and a working plan which can express and develop the common humanhood. ”

“ In the larger centers, in addition to the facilities mentioned above, other rooms may be added as a careful study of village equipment and needs, present and probable future, indicate. Rooms for library, committees, clubs, offices, shower baths, lockers, art center, and similar interests should be provided for if other agencies have not done so.
In building for community service the community should not make the mistake of economizing because it imagines it cannot afford the best. No community should build less than the best. If it does so, it handicaps the community for a generation or more ”

“ Villages are more easily defined as to the number of interests holding the group together.
One principal objective in the modern local community organization movement seems to be to bring together at some central point the focal points of as many local interests as possible, thus strengthening the community bonds and increasing the community consciousness. As this end is achieved the necessity for the strict definition given above disappears and the "community" becomes that aggregation of people the majority of whose local interests have a common center. ”

“ The spirit of the social center is the spirit of neighborhood, and its method is the method of Christmas and Thanksgiving extended to take in the family of the neighborhood, of the town.
As in every other movement, the appeal varies with the community. In one the need is recognized as the demand for social life. In another the need is for recreational life for the young people, "to keep the young people off the streets," they say. In another it is to satisfy the instinct for organization. ”

“ The redirection of rural forces must be effected by the rural people themselves; (2) for the present, and probably for a good many years to come, the active work of such redirection must be carried on mainly by means of community activities centering around the school.” (Author’s preface) Contents: The community center and the world war; Leadership and the community center; The community center idea; The enjoyment of leisure; Recreation; Social capital—its development and use; The community center as an aid to teaching ”

“ This month, as we recognize the importance of our Nation's community centers, we also salute the many dedicated professionals and volunteers who make them work. These Americans are brilliant Points of Light whose efforts are making a real difference in the neighborhoods, cities, and towns in which they live. ”

“ In another too many organizations have rent the life of the town, until a common meeting-place is needed to win back the town's dignity and its unity—its sacred unity. And in these days of social readjustment the blunders committed because some folk are the first by whom the new is tried and some are the lingering last by whom it is laid aside would be far less frequent, the Social Center Idea maintains, if there were some place for general discussion of new community and State measures besides saloons and partisan political meetings—if there were a citizens' forum. ”

“ The purpose of the Center shall be to coordinate agency efforts to eliminate regulatory, contracting, and other programmatic obstacles to the participation of faith-based and other community organizations in the provision of social and community services. ”

“ In some cases somewhat successful efforts are being made to have such consolidated schools serve as social centers, but it is believed that in the long run community life will flow to its natural centers and that the seeming success of such social centers in the open country, unless the neighborhood be an isolated one, will tend to weaken the communities concerned. Usually a consolidated district of this sort will contain parts of two or three community areas and the location of the school at a point between them weakens the support of the community centers to that extent. ”

“ The most deliberate and conscious movement for neighborhood organization is the Community Centre movement. This is a movement to mobilize community forces and to get these forces expressed in our social and political life. Each community, it is becoming recognized, has its own desires, its own gifts, its own inherent powers to bring to the life of the whole city. ”

“ Yet whichever of these motives leads us to the schoolhouse or the community building, the result is always the same—a closer forging of the neighborhood bond. Whoever takes the initiative in organizing the Community Centre—a parents’ association, a men’s civic club, a mothers’ club, a committee of citizens, the city council, the board of education—the result is always the same, a closer forging of the community bond.
The Community Centre movement has made rapid progress in the last ten years. All over the country new Centres are springing up constantly. ”

“ And beyond this conscious effort to organize neighborhoods, or rather to help neighborhoods to organize themselves, much spontaneous initiative in both rural and urban communities, springing from the daily needs of the people, is finding neighborhood organization to be the result of concerted effort. Mothers want to learn more of the care of their homes, men want to discuss local improvements, young men and women want recreation, there is a hunger for a wider social intercourse or for some form of community art-expression, music or drama. ”

“ An educated and healthy people require surroundings in harmony with their hopes. In our urban areas the central problem today is to protect and restore man's satisfaction in belonging to a community where he can find security and significance. The first step is to break old patterns--to begin to think and work and plan for the development of the entire metropolitan areas. We will take this step with new programs of help for the basic community facilities and for neighborhood centers of health and recreation. ”

“ The development of professional social service, growing out of the charity movement, but now embracing community work of every kind, will probably lessen the evils of the modern neighborhood, and retain its desirable features. ”

“ And so it may be in Garden City. There will be discovered many opportunities for public service which [87] neither the community as a whole, nor even a majority of its members, will at first recognise the importance of, or see their way to embrace, and which public services it would be useless, therefore, to expect the municipality to undertake; but those who have the welfare of society at heart will, in the free air of the city, be always able to experiment on their own responsibility, and thus quicken the public conscience and enlarge the public understanding. ”

“ In many cases the neighborhood, particularly the school district, forms a desirable unit for certain purposes of social organization, and, indeed, in [Pg 10] many cases it may be necessary to develop the neighborhood as a social unit before its people will actively associate themselves in community activities, but the neighborhood cannot function in the same way as the larger community which brings people together in several of their chief interests. The community can support institutions impossible in the neighborhood, such as a grange, lodge, library, various stores, etc. ”

“ City planning has long been an accepted principle for service in the more progressive larger centers. The time has come when plans for the most efficient organization of village and open country communities should be made. It is interesting to note that already in many sections of the United States the movement toward community planning has made considerable progress. It is now generally recognized that with rare exceptions the village rather than an open country point is the normal basis for such a plan. ”

“ But owing to the fact that each interest has grown largely without reference to the others, their centers of activity have been determined largely by conditions of local convenience. Now, these centers may have been well adapted to the times when they were established, but as time has passed shifts of population have come, road improvements have been made, and new interests developed so that the traditional centers not only tend to lessen community solidarity but also tend to prevent its accomplishment. ”