Why I chose to start building Communities through their leaders…

Where I come from, we are told that children do not belong to households or rather families… they belong to the community they live in. Now, that had never made a lot of sense because if at all that was true then why are parents told that their children’s success depends on how they are trained.

Well, that is some food for thought from my village. I will re-visit my grandfather for clarification and I will come back with the exact meaning.

Today, I want to talk about building communities. This according to my description is a bit different from community building. Here, I refer to building communities of people who have something in common. It is the bringing of people who have things, ideas etc to share but do not know where and how to share the same.

These communities already exist but most of the time not in very structured formats. They might not know that they are communities as some would refer themselves groups, or “chamas” (self-help groups). Most are driven by the need to come together to either fundraise for something or just to meet and plan for something big.

However, there is one type of communities that I am referring to today. This is where an individual has seen the need to create awareness for a certain purpose, problem or solution to a problem and wants to make others aware about the same. This individual does this through online social media platforms and more specifically our all-time favorite Facebook groups and they encourage members to share their stories. These groups start very small and grow beyond a single individual capability to manage and give each individual member the much needed attention.

Self-sacrificing group heads & moderators

As these groups grow so does the need for proper management of the groups becomes a big challenge. Creation of content that glues the members together is al required. Checking on spammers is also very important. So what do the owners of these groups do?

Most of the group heads better known as Admins, opt to make a hard decision. Personally, when my group Africa Farmers Club started growing I kept on asking myself this question as it required a lot of attention. I decided to take the challenge and decided to do what few of us do…to ask for helping hands (this is literally as the moderators have to use their hands holding their smartphones and other gadgets) to help moderate the group. These moderators have helped me take the group to being one of the best farming groups, at least by what members say. I have told them, but today on behalf of all Admins, I tell them once again, Thank you for helping grow our community. I am sure very many Admins out there share the same feeling. More importantly the members of these communities are grateful for all the self-sacrificing work you are doing.

Big groups with good content…. So what & what next..

Now I have something that I really want to tell you. Please grab a cup of your favorite drink and follow through.

We now have big groups (I repeat big in numbers) and good content. We all meet online and sometimes offline but what next? What do our members want from the group? Are they getting what they need from the community we manage? Are there others who can assist improve the quality of the group? How do we encourage more members to share their stories? How do we increase engagement in our online communities? How do we help other people to start new groups and join us in building communities? But more importantly how do we move from online communities to physical communities where we actually bring members of out communities closer together?

This I am sure would make the world smaller and have real interactions.

Well, we may think very hard on how to do this and try out a few ways on how to do this. This would definitely work but how long might this take?

I have started a journey and I would like to bring you onboard. Pack your bags and let’s start this journey.

I would like to introduce you to the:

Facebook Community Leadership Circles. These are Local chapters of community leaders who meet up in person to connect, learn, and collaborate. Here we connect with one another and share our challenges, solutions and best practice.

Are you in Kenya and an Admin of a Facebook group? Let us start this journey that will help us get the right insights on how to build stronger communities and bring the world closer together.

To join click here: Facebook Community Leadership Circles — Nairobi and let us bring the world closer together.