Overview on Community Engagement, Solidarity and Citizenship

The word community can vary depending upon the context on how it is being used.

Hillery (1955) reviewed 94 different definitions of community, and he concluded that the central
link in understanding community is by focusing on its people (including their common ties and
interaction), aside from regarding it as a place. But when people talk about community, they
generally refer to it as either one of the three most common notions of defining community:

(1) Community as shared political territory and heritage

Refers to a group of people living in the same geographical area (either as a

neighbourhood, village, town, or city) where interpersonal ties are locally bounded and
are based on a shared government and a common cultural and historical heritage
(Wellman 1999; Johnson, Headey and Jensen 2005; Dictionary.com 2016).

Since the community is viewed here as something that is situated within local boundaries,
this notion of community is applied to the institutional and grassroots perspectives. Among
the examples of the institutions are educational, military, government and health care, while
examples of grassroots include people living in territorial enclaves (sitios), villages, or
barangays organized into groups called people’s organizations (POs). It must be noted,
however, that local boundaries within the context of the community are fluid and dynamic
because communities can exist within larger communities. For example, one can associate
himself or herself to a village where he or she lives, (e.g. Sitio Galilee community.) But it is
also possible for one to associate herself or himself to the barangay where her or his village is
located (e.g. Brgy. San Angel community). This kind of association can go up the ladder to
town or municipal affiliation (e.g. San Jose community), or provincial affiliation (e.g.
Antique community), regional affiliation (e.g. Region VI community), and so on, as long as a
sense of affiliation- coupled with sustained human interaction with other members of the
community-remains intact.

(2) Community as network of interpersonal ties based on common interest

Refers to a network of interpersonal ties that are based around a common interest.

These ties, in turn, provide mutual support, a sense of identity, and a sense of belongingness
for the members (Wellman 2001; Byrne 1999; Johnson, Headey, and Jensen 2005). For
example, one can refer to a sporting community; a business community; or the lesbian, gay
bisexual, and transsexual (LGBT) community, to name a few. A special type of community
based on common interest that is gaining popularity ad increasing in membership today is the
virtual or online community, whose members are popularly known as netizens. This virtual
community makes use of computer hardware and software applications in order to support,
mediate, and facilitate social interaction and solidarity (Preece 2000). On the other hand, the
notion of community as a network of interpersonal ties is often applied to civil society
perspectives. Specifically, civil society organizations (CSOs) are built around the foundations
of common interest in addressing social problems. They operate outside the government, but
they work for the welfare of citizens. Civil society organizations can include
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), trade unions, faith-based organizations, indigenous
people’s movements, human rights movement, and foundations, among others. Examples of
known CSOs are Haribon Foundation, World Vision, Gawad Kalinga, Focalare movement,
KASAMAKA-CBR, and many others.

(3) Community as profound sharing of spiritual and/or emotional connection

Pertains to a sense of spiritual and/or emotional connection to others, or communion

with others on the basis of an experience of a common problem (e.g. being afflicted with
cancer or any form of terminal illness), bond (e.g. experiencing life after death), or a
situated cognition (e.g., having realizations that individual actions are inevitably linked
to others, which evoked meaningful attachments) (Wilmott 1989, Sundaram et al. 2012).

In other cases, such spiritual and/or emotional connection is based on an epiphany that
human beings, and even all creation, are one since all came from the same life matter (secular
belief of connectedness) or all are created by a certain deity (seeing each other as brother or
sisters in Jesus Christ or Allah, or in some other cases, a belief in pantheism). This notion of
community is the most transcendent of the three. Examples of such communities are brethren
community, community of disaster survivors, a community of people living with HIV, and
Christian /Muslim community to name a few.