In Houston, Missouri: Belonging Is Built at the Community Pool

 

Sometimes the best examples of community building don't look like community development at all.

They look like cupcakes, swimming pools, quilts, volunteers, children blowing out birthday candles, and a giant American flag hanging from a fire truck.

That is what happened this summer in Houston, Missouri, when the Community Betterment and Arts Council organized a birthday party at the Toni M. McKinney Municipal Pool as part of Houston's Show-Me America 250 celebration.

More than 200 people of all ages attended. Two Houston Middle School Beta Club students dressed as Uncle Sam and Betsy Ross and greeted guests. There were 250 cupcakes, red-white-and-blue popsicles, prizes, commemorative coins and free admission provided by local businesses. The Houston Fire Department brought its ladder truck and helped with the ceremonial lighting of 250 candles.

On the surface, it sounds like a fun community celebration.

But I think something deeper was happening.

Houston was building belonging.

Belonging grows when people repeatedly have opportunities to be together. It develops when residents see familiar faces, meet someone new, volunteer alongside one another and create shared memories.

That is why community events matter.

We sometimes think strengthening a community requires a major new program or an expensive facility. But social connection is often built through much simpler experiences. A child remembers blowing out birthday candles at the community pool. A volunteer remembers working alongside another resident. Two people who have lived in the same town for years finally have a conversation.

Those moments accumulate.

What especially stands out about the Houston celebration is the number of community sectors involved. Local businesses paid for free pool admission. The fire department participated. Students volunteered. A state representative contributed items and read a proclamation. Even the Restorative Justice program at the Licking South Central Correctional Center contributed two quilts that raised more than $725 for the project.

That is more than an event. That is civic infrastructure in action.

Civic infrastructure isn't just city hall, roads or public buildings. It is also the network of relationships among residents, businesses, schools, civic groups, government and organizations that allows people to accomplish things together.

And every time those groups successfully work together, the community strengthens that network.

There is another important lesson here: celebration itself has community value.

Communities spend plenty of time addressing problems. We hold meetings about what needs fixing, what is declining and what we don't have.

But healthy communities also need reasons to celebrate.

Celebrations remind us that we share a town, history, a place and hopefully, one another.

The photographs included with the Houston release help tell that story. They show volunteers gathered together, families posing with Uncle Sam and Betsy Ross, and community members proudly displaying handmade patriotic quilts. The final page even includes the original invitation encouraging residents to come together for "patriotic music, laughter and the spirit of patriotism."

Those images capture something statistics about loneliness and social isolation sometimes miss: people need places and reasons to gather.

We need invitations that get us out of our houses and into places where we encounter one another.

That is also why events like this can have an impact long after the cupcakes are gone.

Someone meets someone. Someone feels included. Someone discovers a place to volunteer.

A child sees adults investing in their hometown. A resident realizes, perhaps without ever saying the words, I belong here.

Houston's America 250 pool party celebrated a national milestone. But in doing so, it also demonstrated something important about the future of our communities.

We strengthen America locally. We build community relationally. And we create belonging one invitation, one gathering and one neighbor at a time.

WRITTEN BY

David L. Burton

For more information, visit the Engaged Neighbor website. Take our pledge and become part of a movement! Or subscribe to our newsletter. Access some of the research documents written by David Burton, the author of this blog. Or better yet, purchase one of his books off Amazon. Contact David L. Burton via email at dburton541@yahoo.