This could be your neighborhood or town where you participate or organize local events, block parties, and projects. It could also be your community where you join in activities like student government, sports teams, or clubs.
Or your participation in Girls Who Code, where you mentor younger students and work on coding projects to promote tech education among girls.
You might write about a book club that meets weekly to discuss literature and share different perspectives on literary genres, or a sport you play such as community basketball or baseball.
Or a community that formed during a summer camp, where you developed close bonds with peers while participating in outdoor activities and team-building exercises.
The best tip that we could give you is to choose the community where you can share most about yourself. Think about the different “identities” you have and what groups of people you spend time with at school, work, or elsewhere. Don’t limit yourself to the literal definition of “community” if something truly resonates what your definition of “community” pops up.
As we’ve mentioned before, this college essay about community is an open-ended question. So take this as an opportunity for you to get creative! Reflect on your experiences and how they have shaped who you are today. Use these guide questions to help structure your thoughts and outline your essay:
All college essay prompts are designed to help admissions officers get to know you better. So a college essay about community is one of the best places to accomplish this goal. One advice we can give students is to get personal! Don’t be afraid to show off your quirky side, something unique about you, a little bit about your background, and everything that makes you…well, you !
Although the college essay about community does involve other people, the question is mainly asking what group you identify with. Similarly, in diversity essay examples, the emphasis is on how your unique background, identity, or perspective has influenced your life and how it might contribute to the diversity of the college community.
While you’ll no doubt mention and even describe other people, don’t forget to talk about yourself and how this community changed or affected you. This should be your primary focus throughout the piece as it’s what the college is most interested in learning more about.
If you feel that the topic you chose is a little too personal for you to really open up, consider switching to another sense of the word “community” about which you’re more comfortable talking.
At the heart of it, a college essay about community is asking you to talk about your achievements…at least a little. As a member of a community, you need to be offering something to the group, not just benefitting. Showing this reciprocity means you are contributing to a larger community.
Many students talk about dreaming of changing the world, but not all of them know where to start. If you are actively doing something positive for your community, in a sense, you are changing the world… your own little world. Positive contributions and acts of service to your community may be small, but they are a start, and that still counts as something.
For example, if you’ve been part of a local food bank, you might talk about how you organized a fundraising event that raised thousands of dollars and significantly increased the food bank’s capacity to serve those in need. Or perhaps you volunteered with Habitat for Humanity and led a team of volunteers in building homes for underprivileged families.
Since there aren’t many college essays on volunteering, this would be a great opportunity to talk about it. While you shouldn’t go overboard, don’t be afraid to earnestly talk about how you’re helping others within your community.
Still, what makes college community service essay examples genuine is that you’ll need to share how the experience shaped who you are today. If you have read other students’ community service essay examples before, you’d notice that they talk about how the experience led them to a positive change in their lives. Discuss how leading those fundraising efforts teaches you about perseverance and the power of community. Or how did building homes with Habitat for Humanity instill in you a deep sense of empathy and responsibility? Sharing these insights will make your community service essay stand out.
For admissions counselors, this is an important part of deciding whether or not you’ll fit right in at their university. They want to know how you’re going to contribute to their community other than being an academic member.
The basics of writing an essay is to pick how you’re going to tell it. Choosing the right format is the way to effectively convey your experiences and insights. Here are some points to consider:
The Story Structure
The Story Structure is ideal for students who have encountered a challenge within their community. If you opt for this format, consider addressing these three questions in your essay:
The Collection Structure
If this doesn’t apply to you, the Collection Structure might be more suitable. When using this format for writing your essay, check out these points:
For example, you might write about your involvement in multiple community projects, such as organizing local clean-up events, mentoring younger students in a science club, and participating in cultural festivals. Each of these vignettes would showcase different facets of your character and how you contribute to your community.
You can also combine the narrative and collection structures by discussing a challenge while highlighting a range of values and lessons learned at the same time. This hybrid approach showcases your diverse experiences and insights within your community.
East meets west.
I look around my room, dimly lit by an orange light. On my desk, a framed picture of an Asian family beaming their smiles, buried among US history textbooks and The Great Gatsby. A Korean ballad streams from two tiny computer speakers. Pamphlets of American colleges were scattered on the floor. A cold December wind wafts a strange infusion of ramen and leftover pizza. On the wall in the far back, a Korean flag hangs beside a Led Zeppelin poster.
Do I consider myself Korean or American?
A few years back, I would have replied: “Neither.” The frustrating moments of miscommunication, the stifling homesickness, and the impossible dilemma of deciding between the Korean or American table in the dining hall, all fueled my identity crisis.
Standing in the “Foreign Passports” section at JFK, I have always felt out of place. Sure, I held a Korean passport in my hands, and I loved kimchi and Yuna Kim and knew the Korean Anthem by heart. But I also loved macaroni and cheese and LeBron. Deep inside, I feared I’d be labeled by my airport customs category: a foreigner everywhere.
This ambiguity, however, has granted me the opportunity to absorb the best of both worlds. Look at my dorm room. This mélange of cultures in my East-meets-West room embodies the diversity that characterizes my international student life.
I’ve learned to accept my “ambiguity” as “diversity,” as a third-culture student embracing both identities.
Now, I can proudly answer: “Both.”
As a reader, what did you notice in the essay? How did it make you feel? Here’s our take:
Let’s look at another example:
I was raised in “The Pumpkin House.” Every Autumn, on the lawn between the sidewalk and the road, grows our pumpkin. Every summer, we procure seeds from giant pumpkins and plant them on this strip of land. Every fall, the pumpkin grows to be a giant. This annual ritual became well-known in the community and became the defining feature of our already quirky house.
The pumpkin was not just a pumpkin, but a catalyst to creating interactions and community. Conversations often start with “Aren’t you the girl in the pumpkin house?” My English teacher knew about our pumpkin and our chickens. His curiosity and weekly updates about the pumpkin helped us connect.
One year, we found our pumpkin splattered across the street. We were devastated; the pumpkin was part of our identity. Word spread and people came to our house to share in our dismay. Clearly, that pumpkin enriched our life and the entire neighborhood’.
The next morning, our patch contained twelve new pumpkins. Anonymous neighbors left these, plus, a truly gigantic 200 lb. pumpkin on our doorstep.
Growing up, the pumpkin challenged me as I wasn’t always comfortable being the center of attention.
But in retrospect, I realize that there’s a bit of magic in growing something from a seed and tending it in public. I witnessed how this act of sharing creates an authentic community spirit. I wouldn’t be surprised if someday I started my own form of quirky pumpkin growing and reap the benefit of true community.
This time around, pause and reflect on this essay. How did the community the author described change their perspective? How did it affect them personally? What action did the author mention going forward? Here’s what we think:
Lastly, once the inspiration finally strikes, seize the moment by immediately putting your thoughts on paper. Start drafting your essay about community with sincerity and passion, and let your heart guide your words.
1. What are the words to describe community?
A community is a group of people who share something in common. You can define your community by the shared traits of the people in it or by the strength of the connections among them. It’s about finding a group of people who are similar in some way and feel a sense of belonging or connection with one another.
2. Why do colleges ask for a community essay?
Colleges use community essays to understand how you might fit into their school community. These prompts give you the chance to show admissions officers why you’d be a great addition to their campus.
3. How do I write a community essay?
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Blog > Essay Advice , Supplementals > How to Write a Community Supplemental Essay (with Examples)
Admissions officer reviewed by Ben Bousquet, M.Ed Former Vanderbilt University
Written by Kylie Kistner, MA Former Willamette University Admissions
If you're applying to college, there's a good chance you'll be writing a Community Essay for one (or lots) of your supplementals. In this post, we show you how to write one that stands out.
This post is one in a series of posts about the supplemental essays . You can read our core “how-to” supplemental post here .
When schools admit you, they aren’t just admitting you to be a student. They’re also admitting you to be a community member.
Community supplemental essays help universities understand how you would fit into their school community. At their core, Community prompts allow you to explicitly show an admissions officer why you would be the perfect addition to the school’s community.
Let’s get into what a Community supplemental essay is, what strategies you can use to stand out, and which steps you can take to write the best one possible.
Community supplemental essay prompts come in a number of forms. Some ask you to talk about a community you already belong to, while others ask you to expand on how you would contribute to the school you’re applying to.
Let’s look at a couple of examples.
1: Rice University
Rice is lauded for creating a collaborative atmosphere that enhances the quality of life for all members of our campus community. The Residential College System and undergraduate life is heavily influenced by the unique life experiences and cultural tradition each student brings. What life perspectives would you contribute to the Rice community? 500 word limit.
2: Swarthmore College
Swarthmore students’ worldviews are often forged by their prior experiences and exposure to ideas and values. Our students are often mentored, supported, and developed by their immediate context—in their neighborhoods, communities of faith, families, and classrooms. Reflect on what elements of your home, school, or community have shaped you or positively impacted you. How have you grown or changed because of the influence of your community?
Your Community essay strategy will likely depend on the kind of Community essay you’re asked to write. As with all supplemental essays, the goal of any community essay should be to write about the strengths that make you a good fit for the school in question.
Most Community essay prompts give you a lot of flexibility in how you define “community.” That means that the community you write about probably isn’t limited to the more formal communities you’re part of like family or school. Your communities can also include friend groups, athletic teams, clubs and organizations, online communities, and more.
There are two things you should consider before you even begin writing your essay.
What school values is the prompt looking for?
Whether they’re listed implicitly or explicitly, Community essay prompts often include values that you can align your essay response with.
To explain, let’s look at this short supplemental prompt from the University of Notre Dame:
If you were given unlimited resources to help solve one problem in your community, what would it be and how would you accomplish it?
Now, this prompt doesn’t outright say anything about values. But the question itself, even being so short, implies a few values:
a) That you should be active in your community
b) That you should be aware of your community’s problems
c) That you know how to problem-solve
d) That you’re able to collaborate with your community
After dissecting the prompt for these values, you can write a Community essay that showcases how you align with them.
What else are admissions officers learning about you through the community you choose?
In addition to showing what a good community member you are, your Community supplemental essays can also let you talk about other parts of your experience. Doing so can help you find the perfect narrative balance among all your essays.
Let’s use a quick example.
If I’m a student applying to computer science programs, then I might choose to write about the community I’ve found in my robotics team. More specifically, I might write about my role as cheerleader and principle problem-solver of my robotics team. Writing about my robotics team allows me to do two things:
Show that I’m a really supportive person in my community, and
Show that I’m on a robotics team that means a lot to me.
Now, it’s important not to co-opt your Community essay and turn it into a secret Extracurricular essay , but it’s important to be thinking about all the information an admissions officer will learn about you based on the community you choose to focus on.
The other segment of Community essays are those that ask you to reflect on how your specific experiences will contribute to your new community.
It’s important that you read each prompt carefully so you know what to focus your essay on.
These kinds of Community prompts let you explicitly drive home why you belong at the school you’re applying to.
Here are two suggestions to get you started.
Draw out the values.
This kind of Community prompt also typically contains some kind of reference to values. The Rice prompt is a perfect example of this:
Rice is lauded for creating a collaborative atmosphere that enhances the quality of life for all members of our campus community . The Residential College System and undergraduate life is heavily influenced by the unique life experiences and cultural tradition each student brings. What life perspectives would you contribute to the Rice community? 500 word limit.
There are several values here:
a) Collaboration
b) Enhancing quality of life
c) For all members of the community
d) Residential system (AKA not just in the classroom)
e) Sharing unique life experiences and cultural traditions with other students
Note that the actual question of the prompt is “What life perspectives would you contribute to the Rice community?” If you skimmed the beginning of the prompt to get to the question, you’d miss all these juicy details about what a Rice student looks like.
But with them in mind, you can choose to write about a life perspective that you hold that aligns with these five values.
Find detailed connections to the school.
Since these kinds of Community prompts ask you what you would contribute to the school community, this is your chance to find the most logical and specific connections you can. Browse the school website and social media to find groups, clubs, activities, communities, or support systems that are related to your personal background and experiences. When appropriate based on the prompt, these kinds of connections can help you show how good a fit you are for the school and community.
Looking at school values means doing research on the school’s motto, mission statement, and strategic plans. This information is all carefully curated by a university to reflect the core values, initiatives, and goals of an institution. They can guide your Community essay by giving you more values options to include.
We’ll use the Rice mission statement as an example. It says,
As a leading research university with a distinctive commitment to undergraduate education, Rice University aspires to pathbreaking research , unsurpassed teaching , and contribution to the betterment of our world . It seeks to fulfill this mission by cultivating a diverse community of learning and discovery that produces leaders across the spectrum of human endeavor.
I’ve bolded just a few of the most important values we can draw out.
As we’ll see in the next section, I can use these values to brainstorm my Community essay.
Step 1: Read the prompt closely & identify any relevant values.
When writing any supplemental essay, your first step should always be to closely read the prompt. You can even annotate it. It’s important to do this so you know exactly what is being asked of you.
With Community essays specifically, you can also highlight any values you think the prompt is asking you to elaborate on.
Keeping track of the prompt will make sure that you’re not missing anything an admissions officer will be on the lookout for.
Step 2: Brainstorm communities you’re involved in.
If you’re writing a Community essay that asks you to discuss a community you belong to, then your next step will be brainstorming all of your options.
As you brainstorm, keep a running list. Your list can include all kinds of communities you’re involved in.
Communities:
Step 3: Think about the role(s) you play in your selected community.
Narrow down your community list to a couple of options. For each remaining option, identify the roles you played, actions you took, and significance you’ve drawn from being part of that group.
Community: Orchestra
Roles | Actions | Significance |
---|---|---|
Section leader | Lead sectionals, be available for others to ask questions, coordinate with orchestra director to set section goals, set a good example for the rest of the section | My involvement in this community is significant because it’s taught me to balance my own technical skill with teamwork and collaboration. |
Fundraiser coordinator | Coordinate fundraiser activities to raise money for orchestra room upgrades | I showed my dedication to my orchestra community by putting in a lot of extra work to raise $5,000 for the new equipment we needed. |
These three columns help you get at the most important details you need to include in your community essay.
Step 4: Identify any relevant connections to the school.
Depending on the question the prompt asks of you, your last step may be to do some school research.
Let’s return to the Rice example.
After researching the Rice mission statement, we know that Rice values community members who want to contribute to the “betterment of our world.”
Ah ha! Now we have something solid to work from.
With this value in mind, I can choose to write about a perspective that shows my investment in creating a better world. Maybe that perspective is a specific kind of fundraising tenacity. Maybe it’s always looking for those small improvements that have a big impact. Maybe it’s some combination of both. Whatever it is, I can write a supplemental essay that reflects the values of the university.
While writing Community essays may seem fairly straightforward, there are actually a number of ways they can go awry. Specifically, there are three common mistakes students make that you should be on the lookout for.
They don’t address the specific requests of the prompt.
As with all supplemental essays, your Community essay needs to address what the prompt is asking you to do. In Community essays especially, you’ll need to assess whether you’re being asked to talk about a community you’re already part of or the community you hope to join.
Neglecting to read the prompt also means neglecting any help the prompt gives you in terms of values. Remember that you can get clues as to what the school is looking for by analyzing the prompt’s underlying values.
They’re too vague.
Community essays can also go awry when they’re too vague. Your Community essay should reflect on specific, concrete details about your experience. This is especially the case when a Community prompt asks you to talk about a specific moment, challenge, or sequence of events.
Don’t shy away from details. Instead, use them to tell a compelling story.
They don’t make any connections to the school.
Finally, Community essays that don’t make any connections to the school in question miss out on a valuable opportunity to show school fit. Recall from our supplemental essay guide that you should always write supplemental essays with an eye toward showing how well you fit into a particular community.
Community essays are the perfect chance to do that, so try to find relevant and logical school connections to include.
Example essay: robotics community.
University of Michigan: Everyone belongs to many different communities and/or groups defined by (among other things) shared geography, religion, ethnicity, income, cuisine, interest, race, ideology, or intellectual heritage. Choose one of the communities to which you belong, and describe that community and your place within it. (Required for all applicants; minimum 100 words/maximum 300 words)
From Blendtec’s “Will it Blend?” videos to ZirconTV’s “How to Use a Stud Finder,” I’m a YouTube how-to fiend. This propensity for fix-it knowledge has not only served me well, but it’s also been a lifesaver for my favorite community: my robotics team(( The writer explicitly states the community they’ll be focusing on.)) . While some students spend their after-school hours playing sports or video games, I spend mine tinkering in my garage with three friends, one of whom is made of metal.
Last year, I Googled more fixes than I can count. Faulty wires, misaligned soldering, and failed code were no match for me. My friends watched in awe as I used Boolean Operators to find exactly the information I sought.(( The writer clearly articulates their place in the community.)) But as I agonized over chassis reviews, other unsearchable problems arose.
First((This entire paragraph fulfills the “describe that community” direction in the prompt.)) , there was the matter of registering for our first robotics competition. None of us familiar with bureaucracy, David stepped up and made some calls. His maturity and social skills helped us immediately land a spot. The next issue was branding. Our robot needed a name and a logo, and Connor took it upon himself to learn graphic design. We all voted on Archie’s name and logo design to find the perfect match. And finally, someone needed to enter the ring. Archie took it from there, winning us first place.
The best part about being in this robotics community is the collaboration and exchange of knowledge.((The writer emphasizes a clear strength: collaboration within their community. It’s clear that the writer values all contributions to the team.)) Although I can figure out how to fix anything, it’s impossible to google social skills, creativity, or courage. For that information, only friends will do. I can only imagine the fixes I’ll bring to the University of Michigan and the skills I’ll learn in return at part of the Manufacturing Robotics community((The writer ends with a forward-looking connection to the school in question.)) .
Want to see even more supplemental essay examples? Check out our college essay examples post .
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“Duke University seeks a talented, engaged student body that embodies the wide range of human experience; we believe that the diversity of our students makes our community stronger. If you’d like to share a perspective you bring or experiences you’ve had to help us understand you better—perhaps related to a community you belong to, your sexual orientation or gender identity, or your family or cultural background—we encourage you to do so. Real people are reading your application, and we want to do our best to understand and appreciate the real people applying to Duke.”
As with every essay you ship off to admissions – think about something you want admissions to know that hasn’t been represented. What can you expand upon to show your versatility, passion and ability to connect with the world around you?
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Category: Admissions , College Admissions , Essay Tips , Essay Writing , Supplemental Essays
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A step-by-step guide to this popular supplemental prompt.
When college admissions officers admit a new group of freshmen, they aren’t just filling up classrooms — they’re also crafting (you guessed it) a campus community. College students don’t just sit quietly in class, retreat to their rooms to crank out homework, go to sleep, rinse, and repeat. They socialize! They join clubs! They organize student protests! They hold cultural events! They become RAs and audition for a cappella groups and get on-campus jobs! Colleges want to cultivate a thriving, vibrant, uplifting campus community that enriches students’ learning — and for that reason, they’re understandably curious about what kind of community member they’ll be getting when they invite you to campus as part of their incoming class.
Enter the “community” essay — an increasingly popular supplemental essay prompt that asks students to talk about a community to which they belong and how they have contributed to or benefited from that community. Community essays often sound something like this:
University of Michigan: Everyone belongs to many different communities and/or groups defined by (among other things) shared geography, religion, ethnicity, income, cuisine, interest, race, ideology, or intellectual heritage. Choose one of the communities to which you belong, and describe that community and your place within it. (250 words)
Pomona College: Reflecting on a community that you are part of, what values or perspectives from that community would you bring to Pomona? (250 words)
University of Rochester: Spiders are essential to the ecosystem. How are you essential to your community or will you be essential in your university community? (350-650 words)
Swarthmore: Swarthmore students’ worldviews are often forged by their prior experiences and exposure to ideas and values. Our students are often mentored, supported, and developed by their immediate context—in their neighborhoods, communities of faith, families, and classrooms. Reflect on what elements of your home, school, or community have shaped you or positively impacted you. How have you grown or changed because of the influence of your community? (250 words)
Yale: Reflect on a time when you have worked to enhance a community to which you feel connected. Why have these efforts been meaningful to you? You may define community however you like. (400 words)
Breathe. You belong to LOTS of communities. And if none immediately come to mind, it’s only because you need to bust open your idea of what constitutes a “community”!
Among other things, communities can be joined by…
Take 15 minutes to write down a list of ALL the communities you belong to that you can think of. While you’re writing, don’t worry about judging which ones will be useful for an essay. Just write down every community that comes to mind — even if some of them feel like a stretch.
When you’re done, survey your list of communities. Do one, two, or three communities jump out as options that could enable you to write about yourself and your community engagement? Carry your top choices of community into Step 2.
For each of your top communities, answer any of the following questions that apply:
Different questions will be relevant for different community prompts. For example, if you’re working on answering Yale’s prompt, you’ll want to focus on a community on which you’ve had a concrete impact. But if you’re trying to crack Swarthmore’s community essay, you can prioritize communities that have impacted YOU. Keep in mind though — even for a prompt like Yale’s, which focuses on tangible impact, it’s important that your community essay doesn’t read like a rattled-off list of achievements in your community. Your goal here is to show that you are a generous, thoughtful, grateful, and active community member who uplifts the people around you — not to detail a list of the competitions that Math club has won under your leadership.
Some community essay prompts ask you — or give you the option — to talk about how you plan on engaging with community on a particular college campus. If you’re tackling one of those prompts (like Pomona’s), then you guessed it: it’s research time!
Often, for these kinds of community prompts, it will serve you to first write about a community that you’ve engaged with in the past and then write about how you plan to continue engaging with that same kind of community at college. For example, if you wrote about throwing a Lunar New Year party with international students at your high school, you might write about how excited you are to join the International Students Alliance at your new college or contribute to the cross-cultural student magazine. Or, if you wrote about playing in your high school band, you might write about how you can’t wait to audition for your new college’s chamber orchestra or accompany the improv team for their improvised musicals. The point is to give your admissions officer an idea of what on-campus communities you might be interested in joining if you were to attend their particular school.
Check out our full College Essay Hub for tons of resources and guidance on writing your college essays. Need more personalized guidance on brainstorming or crafting your supplemental essays? Contact our college admissions team.
Home — Essay Samples — Sociology — Community — What Does Community Mean to You: A Personal Reflection
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Published: Sep 7, 2023
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My personal definition of community, the unifying thread: connection, geographic community, interest-based community, cultural community, social network community.
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When we think about community, we often think about a group of people who share something in common. This could be a shared interest, background, or identity. But what exactly is a community? And what does it mean to belong to one?
There’s no single answer to these questions, as communities can take many different forms. But psychologists have proposed some key features that are often present in successful communities. These include a sense of shared purpose or goals, a sense of social cohesion or connection between members, and a sense of belonging.
Belonging is an important part of human psychology. We all have a need to feel like we’re part of something larger than ourselves. This could be a, friends, family, or a community. When we feel like we belong, we tend to be happier and more content. We may also be more motivated to achieve our goals.
belonging to a community can provide us with a sense of purpose and social connection. It can also help us to develop a stronger sense of self-identity. If you’re thinking about joining a community, look for one that shares your values and goals.
A lot of people believe that in order to belong somewhere as a teen, you have to dress a certain way or do something to fit into their apparent “community.” I couldn’t disagree more. To me, community is my friends, family, and people who mean a lot to me. However, that’s not the correct meaning. Community actually refers to a group of people living in close proximity. In my opinion, this should be how everyone thinks of community.
A group of friends or family who are there for you and love you no matter what. Thats the type of community i want to be apart of.
A sense of belonging is important for our psychological and cognitive development. Without a sense of belonging, we can feel isolated, anxious and depressed. A strong sense of belonging can help us to feel more secure, confident and happy. Belonging to a community can provide us with a support network, a sense of identity and a feeling of connectedness.
There are many different types of communities that we can belong to, such as our families, Friends, neighbourhoods, religious groups, sporting clubs or cultural associations. It is important to feel like we fit in and belong within these groups.
We can belong to more than one community and our sense of belonging can change over time. For example, we may feel more or less connected to our community during different stages in our lives. There are many factors that can influence our sense of belonging, such as our age, gender, culture or social status.
Belonging is a basic human need and it is important for our mental health and wellbeing. A sense of belonging can enhance our self-esteem, increase our resilience and help us to cope with difficult times. When we feel like we belong, we are more likely to cooperate with others and behave in ways that benefit the community.
I am not sure if it is something special, yet it was largely values and thoughts that I gathered as I grew older. My father is a wonderful guy with excellent principles who has helped to shape who I am today. My mother also taught me numerous good qualities and assisted in forming who I am.
I grew up in a lower-income family so we had to stick together and help each other out, which I think helped create a strong bond between us. I was also always around my cousins and uncles and they were like brothers to me, so I think that sense of community has always been important to me.
Belonging to a community is important for many reasons. It can provide individuals with a sense of identity and purpose, as well as a support network of people who can offer advice, help and companionship. Additionally, being part of a community can encourage people to participate in activities that contribute to the greater good, such as volunteering, fundraising or working on behalf of a cause. Finally, belonging to a community can simply be enjoyable and make people feel happy and connected.
There are many different types of communities to which people can belong. Some examples include religious communities, political communities, online communities, neighbourhoods, sports teams and clubs. It is important to find a community that fits with an individual’s beliefs and values in order to get the most out of the experience.
My friends have great ways of thinking and are really wonderful people, so I can’t take all the credit. I must give some credit to my pals since they have fantastic methods of thinking and are wonderful individuals. That isn’t everything, though; many of these ideas come from me and ideas I conceive in my head about how the world should be run.
One of the things I’ve been thinking about recently is the idea of community and how important it is to our lives. I was born and raised in a small town in New Hampshire and ever since I can remember, community has been an important part of my life. The people in my town were always there for me when I needed them and I knew that I could always count on them.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that community is even more important than I thought it was. Studies have shown that belonging to a community can have a positive impact on our mental and physical health. Being a part of a community gives us a sense of purpose and belonging. It helps us to feel connected to something larger than ourselves and to feel supported by others.
The community that we belong to can also have a big impact on our cognition. Studies have shown that people who are a part of a supportive community tend to have better cognitive function than those who don’t. This is likely because belonging to a community gives us a sense of social connectedness and support, which can help to protect our brain from the negative effects of stress.
So why is community so important? There are many reasons, but one of the most important is that it helps us to thrive. When we feel like we belong to something larger than ourselves, we are more likely to take care of ourselves and our community. We are also more likely to feel happy and fulfilled in our lives. So if you’re looking for a way to improve your life, consider finding a community that you can belong to. It just might be the best thing you ever do for yourself.
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Do you know how to talk about your hometown?
What can you say about where you live? How can you describe the town you live in?
This is a very common question in the IELTS test . It could appear in part one of the IELTS speaking test, it could also come up in part two or three.
But despite this being a common topic question in IELTS , I am surprised to find that many English students have so much trouble with it. As if they have no idea about their hometown at all.
In the following guide, I will show you step by step how to talk about every aspect of your hometown no matter what question the examiner asks you.
Let’s get started.
Table of Contents
Many students just reel off a list of phrases without putting any further thought into what they are saying.
If you do this in the IELTS test, the examiner will probably be unimpressed.
I am talking about these kinds of answers:
My hometown is modern
My hometown is famous
My hometown is beautiful
My hometown is crowded
My hometown has many people
This says nothing about your hometown at all!
And it just makes you sound like a robot reeling off recited answers!
So don’t do it.
The examiner wants to hear more than this. If you say your hometown is modern, then describe how it is modern. Tell me about the high-rise buildings and the city skyline. If your hometown is famous, tell me why it is famous. What stories can you tell me that show me how famous your hometown is?
This is what you need to do when talking about the town or city where you grew up.
Every town and city has at least one landmark.
Do not say to me that your hometown doesn’t have any landmarks because I will not believe you. There must be at least one. So you can talk about that.
I am from England and these are the kind of landmarks you can find in English towns:
A town hall
A well-known pub (every English town has many pubs)
A town square
A statue or monument of some kind
Once you identify what these landmarks are, then you talk about them.
My hometown has a very old church in the centre. I never go there but I can hear the bells ringing on a Sunday for the Sunday service. There is a cemetery next to the church which always looks a bit creepy at night.
We have a nice library in our town. It is in a nice old building. It’s a great place to relax and read. They have free newspapers too.
There’s a pub called The Red Lion. It’s a pretty quiet place, I think most of the regulars are old men, always complaining about the news or talking about football.
All you have to do about the landmarks in your town is make observations about it — what it looks like, where it is and who visits this place. If you have a story to tell about it that is great.
There’s a shopping centre in the middle of my hometown. It’s kind of boring but me and my friends go there because it’s the only place for us to go on a Saturday evening.
One time we went there, and they had a little show in the middle of the centre. Some local singers who sing in a choir were doing a performance. I think they were trying to raise money for a local charity.
Other landmarks could be:
A shopping mall
A restaurant
A school or university
Spend some time thinking about the landmarks in your hometown. Write some sentences about each one, describing the landmarks in detail. If you have any interesting stories to tell about the landmarks, then write them down too.
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The next thing you can do is to talk about the people .
Without people, there is no town so you have to talk about the people.
Think about the following questions when talking about the people in your hometown:
What jobs do they do?
Do they have a special accent?
What kind of things do they like to do?
What do the people enjoy doing at the weekend?
Do they all know each other?
Then you try to answer these questions. It may not come easy, but the more you practice the easier it will become. You just add whatever information you can add about the people in your hometown.
I think a lot of people in my hometown work for Amazon. There is a big Amazon warehouse in my hometown so I think a lot of people work there.
This may be true or untrue, but it is a good answer based on the observations of the Amazon warehouse in the town.
People in my hometown speak with a kind of country accent. The town is in the countryside of England so people sound a little bit like that. The people speak much slower than people from London.
In your hometown, the people may have their own dialect. If so, talk about that.
There’s a very famous rugby club in my town so I think many people support rugby. Whenever there is a game you can hear all the crowd cheering the team on for miles around.
I imagine not everyone goes to the rugby games, but this gives a clear picture of what many people in the town like to do.
I think many people in my hometown like to take care of their garden. I see many people at the weekend, mowing their lawns or pruning bushes in their gardens. It seems to be a popular thing where I live.
You can only give an idea of how you think people spend their weekends. It would be impossible for you to know exactly what all the people in your hometown are doing every weekend!
I think many people in my hometown know each other as it is a small town. It is not like London where no one seems to know each other.
And again, you can only give a very rough impression here. There are some towns where everyone seems to know each other, and others where no one knows anyone else. And in London, there are entire districts where the people have grown up with each other.
You cannot know everything about all the people in your hometown. But you can give an impression based on what you have seen people do.
When introducing the people in your hometown that is enough.
Try to think of answers for the above questions. Write down some sentences about the people in your hometown.
This part is very easy.
Every town and city has a kind of dish that is very popular to eat. All you have to do is talk about that.
It doesn’t matter if this food was originally created in your hometown, if the people like to eat it then you can talk about that.
For example, in nearly every English town and city, you can find Indian restaurants. Why? Because English people love Indian food. It is not an ethnic food of England; it comes from India, but when talking about the food in an English town it would be a good subject to use in the IELTS test.
But maybe your town or city does have a unique dish or style of food that originates from your hometown. If so, then you can talk about that.
You have to think of the following questions:
What are the ingredients of this food or special dish?
What does it taste like? Spicy, sweet, sour, salty?
Why do the local people like it in your hometown?
Where can I buy it if I visit your hometown? Do people cook it at home or is it only available in restaurants? Or is it a special kind of ‘street food’? Or maybe all three?
Do people eat this food for breakfast, lunch or dinner?
Do they eat in on special occasions?
So let’s use an example that can be found in England.
Fish & Chips.
This is a very popular dish that can be found all over the country. It is not very healthy, but it is delicious and many people love to eat it.
If we go through all the questions one by one we can break down how to talk about fish and chips in this part.
Ingredients
Fish and potatoes. Also, some oil for cooking and you can add salt and vinegar to your own taste.
Often very salty.
Why do people like it?
It’s delicious! Not so healthy but it does taste good. It’s also very convenient to buy.
Where ca n I buy this food?
In the local fish and chips shop. These are small shops that make fish and chips and then you take it home and eat it. Some restaurants make it too. These restaurants are very simple but the food is always good. It is cheap to buy.
When do people eat it?
Usually, people eat it in the evenings. There is a custom to eat fish and chips on a Friday. We always say Fish on a Friday.
You see how simple it is to talk about food in your hometown?
Now you try.
Take all the questions and talk about a well-known or popular dish in your hometown. Just look at all the questions and answer them one by one.
When you have written all your answers down, practice speaking out loud.
Each town and city in every country has its own unique kind of customs. There are special events or festivals that your hometown holds every year and these are part of the culture of your hometown.
Take a few minutes and think about what special events or festivals your hometown holds every year.
What happens at on these special days?
Why do people go to this event?
Is there a historical meaning behind it?
If you get stuck, you can search online and find out what customs and special holidays are celebrated in your hometown or city. Do some research and you will find many examples.
Other things make up the culture of the town or city — the food, the people, the daily habits, the lifestyle. These all add up to create a special culture that is unique to your hometown.
Let me give you an example from England.
Cheese Rolling
In a few towns across England, there are cheese-rolling festivals. This is usually held on Spring Bank Holiday Monday. A big round block of cheese is rolled down a hill and people chase after it. The first person to catch it is the winner.
This is a very old tradition that began hundreds of years ago. Cheese was believed to be a sign of fertility in the springtime so it was important to celebrate it years ago.
Now people celebrate it because it is good fun and an old custom.
People in my hometown like to drink tea. It is a very important thing to sit down and drink tea with your friends and spend time catching up with some local news.
Tea is considered a very sociable activity so people like to drink tea together.
In my hometown, people like to make apple cider. It is quite a strong kind of beer and easy to make. Many local farms make it and they sell it to the local people.
There is a small green field in my town and people like to sit and play cricket on a Sunday. They have free time to sit with their family and friends. Also, cricket is a very relaxing game, so it is nice to play on a Sunday before going back to work on a Monday.
Think of some local traditions or festivals that take place in your hometown. What happens on these special days? What do people do? What is the history behind it?
Also, think of customs or activities that people regularly like to do in your town.
Write all your ideas on paper and then practice speaking out loud with your friends.
What is the weather like in your hometown? Is it icy cold in the winter? Steaming hot in the summer?
Are the mornings filled with fog from the sea or is the sky brilliant blue and the sun shining?
Some towns and cities have four distinct seasons, while others have very little difference between the seasons or have only one kind of climate all year round.
No matter what the weather, it is a good idea to try to talk about it in the IELTS test if the examiner asks you about your hometown.
My hometown is a small town in the north of Thailand. It is always very hot here, usually the temperature is around 30 degrees centigrade most of the year, but in the winter it goes down to about 24 or 25 degrees. The summer is always very hot.
And in the summer it rains a lot. Wow, we get a lot of rain! From around May until September it rains so much. But the rain only falls very quickly. It kind of cools you down a little and then it feels hot again.
I come from Marrakesh in Morocco. It can get very hot in my hometown in the summer. Usually over 35 degrees. In the winter it can go down to around 16 degrees, so a big difference.
Because Marrakesh is in the desert, the difference between night and day temperature is quite big. It can be 35 degrees in the daytime, then go down to 20 degrees at night.
And it hardly ever rains in my hometown. It is usually dry all year round.
My hometown is Stuttgart in Germany. We have four very distinct seasons but the summer is the best season in my opinion. The summer is warmer; the temperature reaches as high as 30 degrees on some days.
In the winter it gets pretty cold, and it rains a lot in the winter too.
Another thing you can talk about with the weather in your hometown is the kind of activities that people like to do at certain times of the year.
Think about each season and try to think of things that people do, the kind of food they like to eat and the clothes they wear.
Look at the table below to help you.
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Using the table above and the examples I wrote above, write down some ideas about the weather in your hometown. If there are differences, then write about all of those things. If the weather is the same all year round you have to talk about that.
When you have written some ideas down, practice speaking out loud.
I have asked students what can people do in their hometown and I often receive one answer — NOTHING!
There’s nothing to do in my hometown. It’s so boring.
That can’t be true. There must be things for people to do. Even if you don’t like to do these things, other people may enjoy doing these things and that means there are definitely some activities that people can do in your hometown.
Here is a list of ideas to inspire you.
Going to the gym
Playing tennis
Walking in the hills on the outskirts of town
Walking on the seafront of the town
Shopping malls and going shopping
Coffee shops and coffee culture
Eating out and going to restaurants
Going to bars and nightclubs (for older students!)
Dancing in the town square
Visiting the library
Helping charity organisations
Fishing in the local river
Swimming in the swimming pool
Many evening classes in the local community college
Now let me show you some examples
There is a swimming pool in my hometown and many people go there. Whenever I go there, it always seems very busy. I try to go early in the morning to avoid all the crowds.
The pool is really nice and clean. There is an area for the serious swimmers to swim in laps and then there is an area for people and children who just want to lounge around in the water and cool off a little bit.
There is also a diving area with three diving boards. The top board is very high, but I jumped off it once!
We are lucky because in my hometown we have so many restaurants. I think you could go out to dinner every night of the week and still not visit every restaurant in the city.
And the restaurants are all very different in style and cuisine. We have the local food but we also have Indian, Thai, French and Italian. It’s really nice for people to go out in the evening and eat a delicious meal with friends and family.
In my hometown, some older ladies like to go to the town square and do a special kind of dancing. They do it for exercise I think but also they can meet up and chat with each other. So it’s a social activity for them too.
Some people say that the music they play when they do their dancing is too loud. But I think we should just let them do it. They’re not really causing anyone any harm.
Look at the list of ideas I gave you above.
Use these and the examples and write down your own ideas for talking about things to do in your hometown. Practice together with a friend or show your teacher.
The architecture in your hometown means all the buildings. Are these buildings very old and traditional? Or new and modern? Is the architecture boring — if so, why do you think so?
You can use the following words to describe buildings and architecture in your hometown.
Poor | High-rise | Residential |
Wooden | Expensive | Old |
Traditional | Beautiful | Modern |
Luxurious | Spacious | Steel and glass |
Brick | Boring | Ugly |
Many cities these days have a downtown area with many high-rise buildings, all very modern and expensive. The suburbs of the city might consist of smaller houses and buildings or low-rise buildings — this is where the people usually live.
Let me show you some examples
Bath is a very old city, and the architecture is very old. Most of the buildings in the centre of the city are over 200 years old. I think there is a law to protect these buildings and houses. They look nice because they all have the same colour, made out of a special sandstone found in the local area.
But once you leave the city centre, the architecture changes. The houses are more modern in the suburbs. This is where people live.
The downtown area of my city is filled full of high-rise buildings. They are all very high and look very modern. It feels so busy walking around this area surrounded by such high buildings. Some of the buildings are so high that you can walk on one side of the street and be in the shade from the sun.
I live in a very quiet village in the countryside. All the houses are pretty old and there is no real special architecture. People just need a place to live and the local post office to buy some things. There is an old church though, and it looks very nice from the outside. I don’t know how old it is, but it looks very old.
Write down your own ideas about the buildings in your hometown. When you have enough sentences speak them out loud with a friend or classmate.
Your hometown doesn’t just consist of the actual town itself. When talking about your hometown you can also talk about the surrounding area of the town or city where you live.
This is especially true of a smaller town.
Your town may be surrounded by countryside.
What is in the countryside?
Are there farms and little villages?
Are they developing the land and building more houses or factories?
There must be something in this area, now is the time for you to talk about it.
There might be hills or mountains in the surrounding area of your hometown. Or maybe you live near the sea in which case you can talk about that.
Whatever exists just outside your hometown you can talk about it in the IELTS test. This is all part of the description of where you live and the examiner wants to hear about it.
I’ll give you some examples:
The surrounding area of my hometown is just countryside. Some small villages with just a few people living there. There is a new factory that makes tyres just outside my town. I think many people from my hometown work there now.
If you go south of my town, there is a big lake. I have gone past this lake and seen people fishing there.
All around my hometown are hills. It’s like my entire town is in a big hole in the ground! But it’s nice to see all the hills around the town. In the summer, they all look so green and in the winter, if it snows, all the hills are covered and everything looks white.
What is in the surrounding area of your hometown?
Take a few minutes and write down some ideas and thoughts. You must have seen what is just outside your hometown. Talk about this for a few minutes if you can.
If you live in a very small town, then chances are you may have only one bus an hour that takes you to the nearest big town. Or no bus at all.
In a bigger town, you could have several bus services taking people to different parts of the town. Or to other towns and the nearest big city.
You might have a train service. You might live in a big city and have a subway system.
The fact is that every town and city has a public transportation system — even if it is only one bus an hour.
These are the main kinds of public transportation:
Taxi (not really public but let’s put it in there)
Other lesser-known systems:
Shared bike (many cities use this these days)
The best way to talk about this is to look at the following questions and answer them:
What is this public transportation system?
Why do you use it?
Why do other people in your hometown use it?
Is it convenient?
Is it cheap/expensive to use?
How many lines does it have? (for bus and subway)
Is it crowded during rush hour?
And here is some vocabulary you might use when talking about public transportation:
Miss | Stop | Exit |
Line | Change | Commuters |
Fare | Catch | Delay |
Ticket | Pass (a special card) | Passengers |
Leave | Cancel | Run |
Unreliable | Rush hour | On-time |
When talking about the public transportation system in your hometown, in the IELTS test I advise you to talk about the most common or most popular public transportation system. If you try to talk about some public transport that is less known or used, you could run into trouble.
That means that you should only really talk about the bus, the subway or the train.
You can add at the end of your talk that there are other kinds of public transportation in your hometown.
Something like this:
…we also have many taxis, and a ferry that takes people over the river, but I have never used it. I only use the subway as it is the most convenient.
Shall we look at a couple of examples?
In my hometown, we have a new subway system. It is brand-new, so it is very clean and modern-looking. There are only three lines so far but there will be more lines in the future.
It is so much better than the bus. Much quicker and much more convenient. We don’t have any traffic jams now!
Some people complain and say that it is more expensive than the bus. It is a little more expensive but I think it is worth it for the convenience and the speed.
During rush hour it is a little difficult to get a seat but if you arrive early, you can find a seat no problem. I really love the subway in my hometown, it just makes going to school so much easier.
We have a bus system in my hometown. There are plenty of buses to take you wherever you want to go. But if you use the bus during rush hour, then you will definitely get stuck in traffic. There’s just no escaping it.
Sometimes I use a shared bike. These are easy to find and they are cheap to use. If it’s raining, I don’t use the shared bike but most other days I do.
You want to try?
Look at all the vocabulary and make sure you know the meanings of the words and then make sentences of your own.
Then think about the public transportation systems in your hometown and which one is the most common for people to use.
Write down some ideas in your notebook and make sentences.
Then with a friend speak them out loud.
Practice every day!
Do you have many shops in your hometown? Are there just a few local shops or do you have a giant shopping mall with all the latest fashion brands?
Every town has at least one shop to buy something.
These are the main kind of shops you might have in your town:
supermarket | greengrocer | baker |
butcher | fishmongers | florist |
wine store | drug store | convenience store |
book store | pet store | candy store |
As I have said before, let’s look at some questions and you answer them one by one.
What kind of shops and stores are there in your hometown?
What can people buy in these places?
Where are all the shops and stores?
Are they expensive?
What kind of people go there?
And then let’s look at some examples
I live in a big city and there are many shopping malls. There is one big shopping mall near my home and it is very popular with people, especially young people.
Younger people like to go there because it looks very fashionable and modern. All the shops are mainly selling fashionable clothes and there are two cool coffee shops on the first floor where you can sit and drink coffee.
The shopping mall huge. It is on five floors. On the top floor, there is a cinema and in the basement, there is a supermarket but it is a little expensive I think. I don’t go there. I only go to the clothes stores and shoe stores with my friends. We can’t always buy something we like but we like to look!
If I go to the mall with my friends, we like to drink coffee after we have looked all around the stores.
There are many small shops and stores in my neighbourhood. These shops are not very fashionable but they are very convenient and they sell many useful things that we might need in the house or in our daily life.
One shop we always use in the nearest convenience store. It is open until very late and opens very early in the morning. If we run out of things that we need then we can always go to the convenience store and buy what we need.
I see many of my neighbours there and my father always goes there in the morning to buy cigarettes.
The shop sells newspapers, snacks and sandwiches, soft drinks and ice cream. Every time I go there, they always have customers inside.
Now it’s your turn.
Look up the vocabulary and make sure you understand what all the words mean. Make your own sentences if you wish.
Then look at the questions above and the examples. This can help you to form your own answers. Write down all your ideas and put them into sentences in order.
Then practice speaking out loud.
You will not need to talk about all of the above topics about your hometown in the IELTS test.
If you were to talk about your hometown using all the topics included in this guide you would be talking for about 30 minutes!
The reason I included all the topics above is so you can answer any question the examiner fires at you in the IELTS test. If he asks you to talk about shopping or public transportation in your hometown, then you should be prepared. If he asks you about food or customs in your hometown, no problem for you.
Just go through all the steps and you can find out how to talk about your hometown no matter the question.
And as always — let me know in the comments below!
30 thoughts on “how to talk about your hometown in english”.
It is so important to cover these areas used for IELTS tests because they are the ones that often catch students off guard. I especially liked the study charts as they ground students with vocabulary and observation points. The ideas also triggered memories of towns I’ve visited. Travel really helps as it gives you things to compare your town with. For example I visited a tiny town in Sweden and it was like a charming hobbit town with wondrous new customs and scenery quite unlike my own tiny hometown.
That is a great idea, Leona. I forgot to add that to the article… I used to ask students to compare their hometown to the big city we were living in and talk about the similarities and differences. It gives them a lot more to talk about, and in the IELTS test that really helps. How was Sweden? I’ve always wanted to visit.
It is amazing lesson and explanation. I can share this lesson to my students, even they are beginners. And I use this subject as my reference in teaching. I hope you don’t mind. Thank you very much. Wish you all the best.
Hi Nani! I’m very glad you like this lesson plan. Feel free to use it in your class. If you want to download the lesson, you can get it here: https://gumroad.com/l/howtotalkaboutyourhometowninenglish Thank you Nani.
Awesome tips, thanks a lot and congratulations!
Hi Carlos, many thanks! I am glad it was helpful.
Hello my name is Ronald, Great work David!
Hi Ronald! Many thanks. I appreciate it. Keep coming back!
Hi David. I really liked the content of the page. Hugs. José Roberto (Univesp)
Hi José! I am glad you liked it. Many thanks!
Great compilation of tips! I enjoyed a lot! My university teacher choose your article as a base text this week. Congratulations, as your compilation is helping so much students. Cheers from Brazil.
Hi Marcos, many thanks! I am glad you liked it. Please say a big thank you to your university teacher for suggesting this article. I am so glad it is helping the students. Cheers!
Hi David, My name is Claudio, I’m from Brazil and I thank you for the tips and suggestions.
Hi Claudio, many thanks for reading. I really appreciate it. Keep coming back!
Esses topicos ajudam muito pois vejo muitas pessoas quando deparam com americanos ou travam por medo ou por náo ter dialogo …
These topics help a lot because I see a lot of people when they encounter Americans or they stop because of fear or because they don’t have a dialogue …
Many thanks,Franklin. Much appreciated.
Thanks so much, the essay really had it all. all the information and the ideas.
Thank you Iten! I am glad it could help you.
Thank you so much. I can say that one thing, I am really keen on your English lessons and explanations and you know it’s marvellous . I think it is really fail to express your helps for me ?
Hi Durdona! Many thanks, I am glad it is of some use to you. Keep working hard and you will succeed.
Hi, I’m Marli Congratulations on your page.
Thank you, Marli! Please come back soon!
Perfect …Thanks alot
You are welcome, Azadeh!! Many thanks for reading!
You are the best. Thank you very much. I’m beginning to self study and your essay helps me so much.
Thank you very much, Farnoush! I am very happy to hear that!
Comprehensive and very informative????????
Many thanks for reading, Farshid! I appreciate it!
Thanks a lot.I appriciate it…….
You are very welcome, Swetha!!
The Tool Box needs your help Your contribution can help change lives.
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Sixteen training modules
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Examine the community and record your findings in a community description or overview for credibility and awareness. |
What do we mean by understanding and describing the community, why make the effort to understand and describe your community, whom should you contact to gather information, how do you go about understanding and describing the community.
For those of us who work in community health and development, it's important to understand community -- what a community is, and the specific nature of the communities in which we work. Anything we do in a community requires us to be familiar with its people, its issues, and its history. Carrying out an intervention or building a coalition are far more likely to be successful if they are informed by the culture of the community and an understanding of the relationships among individuals and groups within it.
Taking the time and effort to understand your community well before embarking on a community effort will pay off in the long term. A good way to accomplish that is to create a community description -- a record of your exploration and findings. It's a good way to gain a comprehensive overview of the community -- what it is now, what it's been in the past, and what it could be in the future. In this section, we'll discuss how you might approach examining the community in some detail and setting down your findings in a community description.
While we traditionally think of a community as the people in a given geographical location, the word can really refer to any group sharing something in common -- place (such as a city, neighborhood, or school district), experience (such as shared experience of racism), or interest (e.g., a community's concern about poverty or violence prevention).
These various communities often overlap. A Black art teacher, for example, might see herself (or be seen by others) as a member of the Black, arts, and/or education communities, as well as of a particular faith community. Whichever community defines your work, you will want to get to know it well.
Understanding the community entails understanding it in a number of ways. Whether or not the community is defined geographically, it still has a geographic context -- a setting that it exists in. Getting a clear sense of this setting may be key to a full understanding of it. At the same time, it's important to understand the specific community you're concerned with. You have to get to know its people -- their culture, their concerns, and relationships -- and to develop your own relationships with them as well.
Physical aspects . Every community has a physical presence of some sort, even if only one building. Most have a geographic area or areas they are either defined by or attached to. It's important to know the community's size and the look and feel of its buildings, its topography (the lay of the land -- the hills, valleys, rivers, roads, and other features you'd find on a map), and each of its neighborhoods. Also important are how various areas of the community differ from one another, and whether your impression is one of clean, well-maintained houses and streets, or one of shabbiness, dirt, and neglect.
If the community is one defined by its population, then its physical properties are also defined by the population: where they live, where they gather, the places that are important to them. The characteristics of those places can tell you a great deal about the people who make up the community. Their self-image, many of their attitudes, and their aspirations are often reflected in the places where they choose -- or are forced by circumstance or discrimination -- to live, work, gather, and play.
We'll discuss all of these aspects of community in greater detail later in the section.
There are obviously many more aspects of community that can be explored, such as health or education. The assumption here is that as part of an assessment, you'll aim for a general understanding of the community, as described in this section, and also assess, with a narrower focus, the specific aspects you're interested in.
Once you've explored the relevant areas of the community, you'll have the information to create a community description. Depending on your needs and information, this description might be anything from a two-or three-page outline to an in-depth portrait of the community that extends to tens of pages and includes charts, graphs, photographs, and other elements. The point of doing it is to have a picture of the community at a particular point in time that you can use to provide a context for your community assessment and to see the results of whatever actions you take to bring about change.
A community description can be as creative as you're capable of making it. It can be written as a story, can incorporate photos and commentary from community residents (see Photovoice), can be done online and include audio and video, etc. The more interesting the description is, the more people are likely to actually read it.
You may at this point be thinking, "Can't I work effectively within this community without gathering all this information?" Perhaps, if it's a community you're already familiar with, and really know it well. If you're new to the community, or an outsider, however, it's a different story. Not having the proper background information on your community may not seem like a big deal until you unintentionally find yourself on one side of a bitter divide, or get involved in an issue without knowing about its long and tangled history.
While researching and writing a community description can take time, your work can almost always benefit from the information you gather.
Much of your best and most interesting information may come from community members with no particular credentials except that they're part of the community . It's especially important to get the perspective of those who often don't have a voice in community decisions and politics -- low-income people, immigrants, and others who are often kept out of the community discussion. In addition, however, there are some specific people that it might be important to talk to. They're the individuals in key positions, or those who are trusted by a large part of the community or by a particular population. In a typical community, they might include:
To begin, let's look at some basic principles to keep in mind.
Participant observation is a technique that anthropologists use. It entails becoming part of another culture, both to keep people in it from being influenced by your presence and to understand it from the inside. Some researchers believe it addresses the problem of changing the culture by studying it , and others believe that it makes the problem worse.
To find out about various aspects of the community, you'll need a number of different methods of gathering information . We've already discussed some of them, and many of the remaining sections of this chapter deal with them, because they're the same methods you'll use in doing a full community assessment. Here, we'll simply list them, with short explanations and links to sections where you can get more information about each.
Interviews may include enlisting as sources of information others who've spent time learning about the community. University researchers, staff and administrators of health and human service organizations, and activists may all have done considerable work to understand the character and inner workings of the community. Take advantage of their findings if you can. It may save you many hours of effort.
Observation can take many forms. In addition to simply going to a place and taking notes on what you see, you might use other techniques -- Photovoice, video, audio, simple photographs, drawings, etc. Don't limit the ways in which you can record your observations and impressions.
Now let's consider what you might examine to understand and describe the community. You won't necessarily look for this information in the order given here, although it's a good idea to start with the first two.
The community's physical characteristics.
Get a map of the community and drive and/or walk around. (If the community isn't defined by geography, note and observe the areas where its members live, work, and gather.) Observe both the built and the natural environment. In the built environment, some things to pay attention to are:
This is a topic that is ripe for examination. In many rural areas, particularly in developing countries, but often in the developed world as well, there is very little infrastructure. Roads and bridges may be impassable at certain (or most) times of year, phone service and TV reception nonexistent, Internet access a distant dream. Public transportation in many places, if it exists at all, may take the form of a pickup truck or 20-year-old van that takes as many passengers as can squeeze into or onto the bed, passenger compartment, and roof. Is any of this on the government's or anyone else's radar as a situation that needs to be addressed? What is the general policy about services to rural and/or poor populations? Answers to these and similar questions may both explain the situation (and the attitudes of the local population) and highlight a number of possible courses of action.
I n the category of natural features, we can include both areas that have been largely left to nature, and "natural" spaces created by human intervention.
There is an overlap between the community's physical and social characteristics. Does the lay of the land make it difficult to get from one part of the community to another? (Biking, or in some cases even walking, is difficult in San Francisco, for example, because of the length and steepness of the hills.) Are there clear social divisions that mirror the landscape -- all the fancy houses in the hills, all the low-income housing in the flats, for instance?
Studying the physical layout of the community will serve you not only as information, but as a guide for finding your way around, knowing what people are talking about when they refer to various areas and neighborhoods, and gaining a sense of the living conditions of any populations you're concerned with.
Community demographics.
Demographics are the facts about the population that you can find from census data and other similar statistical information. Some things you might like to know, besides the number of people in the community:
In the U.S., most of this and other demographic information is available from the U.S. Census , from state and local government websites, or from other government agencies. Depending on what issues and countries you're concerned with, some sources of information might be the U.S. Centers for Disease Control , the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services , similar websites in other countries, and the various agencies of the United Nations .
On many of these websites, notably the U.S. Census, various categories can be combined, so that you can, for example, find out the income levels in your community for African American women aged 25-34 with a high school education. If the website won't do it for you, it's fairly easy to trace the patterns yourself, thus giving you a much clearer picture of who community residents are and what their lives might be like .
Another extremely useful resource is County Health Rankings & Roadmaps , which provides rankings for nearly every county in the nation. The County Health Rankings model includes four types of health factors: health behaviors, clinical care, social and economic, and the physical environment. The County Health Rankings illustrate what we know when it comes to what’s making people sick or healthy, and the new County Health Roadmaps show what we can do to create healthier places to live, learn, work and play. These reports can help community leaders see that our environment influences how healthy we are and how long we live, and even what parts of our environment are most influential.
Community history.
This can be a complex topic. The "standard" history -- when the community was founded and by whom, how long it has existed, how people lived there in the past, its major sources of work, etc. -- can often be found in the local library or newspaper archives, or even in books or articles written for a larger audience. The less comfortable parts of that history, especially recent history -- discrimination, conflict, economic and/or political domination by a small group -- are may not be included, and are more likely to be found by talking to activists, journalists, and others who are concerned with those issues. You might also gain information by reading between the lines of old newspaper articles and tracking down people who were part of past conflicts or events.
If this all sounds a lot like investigative reporting, that's because it is. You may not have the time or skills to do much of it, but talking to activists and journalists about recent history can be crucial. Stepping into a community with an intervention or initiative without understanding the dynamics of community history can be a recipe for failure.
Community government and politics.
T here are a number of ways to learn about the structure and operation of local government:
In most of the U.S., these meetings are public by state law, and must be announced in specific ways at least two days ahead.
Reading the newspaper every day is a good idea in general if you're trying to learn about the community. It will not only have stories about how the community operates, but will give you a sense of what's important to its readers, what kinds of activities the community engages in and views as significant, what the police do -- a picture of a large part of community life. Real estate ads will tell you about property values and the demand for housing, ads for services can help you identify the major businesses in town, and the ages and education levels of the people in the marriage and birth announcements can speak volumes about community values. Newspaper archives can also reveal the stories that help you understand the emotions still surrounding events and issues that don't seem current. The newspaper is an enormous reservoir of both direct and between-the-lines information.
As we all know, government isn't only about the rules and structures that hold it together. It's about people and their interactions...politics, in other words. The political climate, culture, and assumptions in a particular community often depend more on who elected and appointed officials are than on the limits or duties of their offices.
The politics of many communities embody the ideal of government working for the public good. In other communities, politics takes a back seat to economics, and politicians listen largely to those with economic power -- the CEO's, owners, and directors of large businesses and institutions. In still others, the emphasis is on power itself, so that political decisions are made specifically to keep a particular party, group, or individual in control.
Obviously, only in the first case is the public well served. In the other situations, fairness and equity tend to go out the window and decisions favor the powerful. Understanding the politics of the community -- who has power, who the power brokers are, who actually influences the setting of policy, how decisions are made and by whom, how much difference public opinion makes -- is fundamental to an understanding of the community as a whole.
There's no formal way to get this information. Government officials may have very different interpretations of the political scene than activists or other community members. You'll have to talk to a variety of people, take a good look at recent political controversies and decisions (here's where newspaper archives can come in handy), and juggle some contradicting stories to get at the reality.
Institutions.
Community institutions, unless they are dysfunctional, can generally be viewed as assets. Finding them should be easy: as mentioned above, the Chamber of Commerce will probably have a list of them, the library will probably have one as well, the local newspaper will often list them, and they'll be in the phone book.
They cover the spectrum of community life, including:
Groups and organizations.
The groups and organizations that exist in the community, and their relative prestige and importance in community life, can convey valuable clues to the community's assumptions and attitudes. To some extent, you can find them in the same ways that you can find institutions, but the less formal ones you may be more likely to learn about through interviews and conversations.
These groups can fall into a number of categories:
Economics/employment.
Some of the information about economic issues can be found in public records, but some will come from interviews or conversations with business people, government officials, and activists, and some from observation. It's fairly easy to notice if one huge industrial plant dominates a community, for example, or if every third building appears to be a construction company. There are a number of questions you might ask yourself and others to help you understand the community's economic base and situation: What is the anchor of the community's tax base? Who are the major employers? Does the community have a particular business or business/industry category that underlies most of the jobs? Are there lots of locally-owned businesses and industries, or are most parts of larger corporations headquartered elsewhere? Are there corporate headquarters in the community? Is there a good deal of office space, and is it empty or occupied? Is there new development, and is the community attracting new business? What is the unemployment rate?
Social structure.
This may be the most difficult aspect of the community to understand, since it incorporates most of the others we've discussed, and is usually unspoken. People's answers to questions about it may ignore important points, either because they seem obvious to those who've lived with them for all or most of their lives, or because those things "just aren't talked about." Distrust or actual discrimination aimed at particular groups -- based on race, class, economics, or all three -- may be glossed over or never mentioned. The question of who wields the real power in the community is another that may rarely be answered, or at least not answered in the same way by a majority of community members. It's likely that it will take a number of conversations, some careful observation and some intuition as well to gain a real sense of the community's social structure.
Once you've gathered the information you need, the next step is describing the community. This is not really separate from understanding the community: in the process of organizing and writing down your information, you'll be able to see better how it fits together, and can gain greater understanding.
There are many ways you can create a description of the community. The most obvious is simply to organize, record, and comment on your information by category: physical description, government, institutions, etc. You can comment about what has changed in the community over time, what has stayed the same, and where you think the community might be going. You might also include an analysis of how the various categories interact, and how that all comes together to form the community that exists. That will give you and anyone else interested a reasonably clear and objective description of the community, as well as a sense of how you see it.
For a fuller picture, you could add photographs of some of the locations, people, conditions, or interactions you describe (perhaps as a Photovoice project), as well as charts or graphs of demographic or statistical information. For even more detail, you might compose a portrait in words of the community, using quotes from interviews and stories of community history to bring the description to life.
Given the availability of technology, you don't have to limit yourself to any specific format. Computers allow you to easily combine various media -- photos, graphics, animation, text, and audio, for example. The description could add in or take the form of a video that includes a tour of the community, statements from and/or interviews with various community members (with their permission, of course), an audio voice-over, maps, etc. A video or a more text-based description -- or both -- could then be posted to a website where it would be available to anyone interested.
Once you have a description put together, you might want to show it to some of the community members you talked to in the course of exploring the community. They can suggest other things you might include, correct errors of fact, and react to what they consider the accuracy or inaccuracy of your portrait and analysis of their community. With this feedback, you can then create a final version to use and to show to anyone interested. The point is to get as informative and accurate a picture of the community as possible that will serve as a basis for community assessment and any effort that grows out of it.
The last word here is that this shouldn't be the last community description you'll ever do. Communities reinvent themselves constantly, as new buildings and developments are put up and old ones torn down, as businesses move in and out, as populations shift -- both within the community and as people and groups move in and out -- and as economic, social, and political conditions change. You have to keep up with those changes, and that means updating your community description regularly. As with most of the rest of the community building work described in the Community Tool Box, the work of understanding and describing the community is ongoing, for as long as you remain committed to the community itself.
Understanding a community is crucial to being able to work in it. Failing to understand it will deny you credibility and make it difficult for you both to connect with community members and to negotiate the twists and turns of starting and implementing a community initiative or intervention. An extremely important part of any community assessment, therefore, is to start by finding out as much about the community as you can -- its physical and geographical characteristics, its culture, its government, and its assumptions. By combing through existing data, observing, and learning from community members, you can gain an overview of the community that will serve you well. Recording your findings and your analysis of them in a community description that you can refer to and update as needed will keep your understanding fresh and help others in your organization or with whom you collaborate.
Online Resources
A community description of Nashua, New Hampshire .
County Health Rankings & Roadmaps . Ranking the health of nearly every county in the nation, the County Health Rankings help us see how where we live, learn, work, and play influences how healthy we are and how long we live. The Rankings & Roadmaps show us what is making residents sick, where we need to improve, and what steps communities are taking to solve their problems. The health of a community depends on many different factors – ranging from individual health behaviors, education and jobs, to quality of health care, to the environment, therefore we all have a stake in creating a healthier community. Using the County Health Rankings & Roadmaps, leaders and advocates from public health and health care, business, education, government, and the community can work together to create programs and policies to improve people's health, reduce health care costs, and increase productivity.
Describing the Community , from a WHO (World Health Organization) manual: Emergency Preparedness: A Manual for Managers and Policy Makers. WHO, 1999.
The Distressed Communities Index (DCI) is a customized dataset created by EIG examining economic distress throughout the country and made up of interactive maps, infographics, and a report. It captures data from more than 25,000 zip codes (those with populations over 500 people). In all, it covers 99 percent — 312 million — of Americans.
Ericae.net is a clearinghouse for information on evaluation, assessment, and research information.
This Human Development Index Map is a valuable tool from Measure of America: A Project of the Social Science Research Council . It combines indicators in three fundamental areas - health, knowledge, and standard of living - into a single number that falls on a scale from 0 to 10, and is presented on an easy-to-navigate interactive map of the United States.
The Institute of Medicine advances scientific knowledge to improve health and provides information and advice concerning health policy.
The National Institute for Literacy provides information about research and initiatives to expand the community of literacy practitioners, students, and policymakers.
Sustainable Measures provides a searchable database of indicators by broad topics (health, housing) and keywords (AIDS, access to care, birth weight, etc.) for communities, organizations and government agencies at all levels.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services , the principal agency for protecting the health of U.S. citizens, is comprised of 12 agencies that provide information on their specific domains, such as the Administration on Aging . Others cross health boundaries, such as the Centers for Disease Control , which maintains national health statistics. The " WONDER " system is an access point to a wide variety of CDC reports, guidelines, and public health data to assist in research, decision-making, priority setting, and resource allocation.
The U.S. National Institute of Mental Health provides statistics and educational information for the public as well as information for researchers.
Print Resources
Jones, B. (1979). Defining your neighborhood. In Neighborhood Planning: A Guide for Citizens and Planners . Chicago, IL: Planners Press, pp. 8-11.
Scheie, D. (1991). August-September). Tools for taking stock. The Neighborhood Works . Chicago, IL: Center for Neighborhood Technology, pp. 16-17.
Spradley, J. P. (1980). Locating a social situation. In Participant Observation . Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, pp. 45-52.
Warren, R.B., Warren, D.I. (1977). The Neighborhood Organizer's Handbook . Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, pp.167-196.
An online publication of Appalachian State University
Sometimes fun, sometimes serious podcast of impromptu conversations with students and Appalachian State University’s own Dave Blanks.
We use the word community a lot on the Appalachian State University campus, so we thought we’d ask what it means to our students.
Dave: Appalachian State University students answer the question, “What is ‘community’ to you?”
Voice 1: “I’d say community to me is just a group of people who live and work together in a way that benefits everybody equally.”
Voice 2: “I believe community is the people and cultures just coming together. Unity.”
Voice 3: “To me, community is people interacting with each other peacefully in the same environment.”
Voice 4: “Community is being able to greet somebody and go in a space and not feel alienated or impersonal.”
Voice 5: “Community to me is a sense of belonging amongst like minded people.”
Voice 6: “Community is a group of people living in the same area working towards a common goal.”
Voice 7: “It’s people who come together because they believe in the same thing and they are passionate about the same thing, and they work together to make sure that thing happens. So, for me, that’s social justice.”
Voice 8: “Community to me is a group of people that care about one another. They may be united over an issue like the LGTB Center that we’re in right now, or they may just be a group of friends. But it’s people that care about each other enough to create a system of love and support for one another.”
Voice 9: “I think that community is a group of individuals that whether because they come from the same place or live in the same place or are working towards a common goal find it in themselves to work together and support each other.”
Voice 10: “Community is a group of people who are together who are working towards a common goal who have the same beliefs and help each other out through the hard times.”
Voice 11: “Community to me is a sense of support around you from a big group of people who are just welcoming and supportive and loving of you.”
Voice 12: “I guess community to me is a sense of belonging and an organization...a team as well. Everyone has a collective task and a collective goal, trying to better themselves. Not only personally and individually, but as a group as well.”
Voice 13: “This is a good question but I need to brainstorm.”
Voice 14: “What is the question?”
Voice 13: “‘What is community to you.’”
Voice 14: “Oh. This is a community!”
Voice 13: “This is a great community.”
Voice 14: “Everyone just kind of works together and helps each other out, and it’s encouraging.”
Voice 13: “Yeah, encouraging one another!”
“That’s community.”
“And challenging each other in a positive way. And supporting each other. Community.”
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College Admissions , Extracurriculars
Are you applying to a college or a scholarship that requires a community service essay? Do you know how to write an essay that will impress readers and clearly show the impact your work had on yourself and others?
Read on to learn step-by-step instructions for writing a great community service essay that will help you stand out and be memorable.
A community service essay is an essay that describes the volunteer work you did and the impact it had on you and your community. Community service essays can vary widely depending on specific requirements listed in the application, but, in general, they describe the work you did, why you found the work important, and how it benefited people around you.
Community service essays are typically needed for two reasons:
#1: To Apply to College
#2: To Apply for Scholarships
In the following sections, I'll go over each step of how to plan and write your essay. I'll also include sample excerpts for you to look through so you can get a better idea of what readers are looking for when they review your essay.
Before your start writing a single word, you should be familiar with the essay prompt. Each college or scholarship will have different requirements for their essay, so make sure you read these carefully and understand them.
Specific things to pay attention to include:
Below are three real community service essay prompts. Read through them and notice how much they vary in terms of length, detail, and what information the writer should include.
From the Equitable Excellence Scholarship:
"Describe your outstanding achievement in depth and provide the specific planning, training, goals, and steps taken to make the accomplishment successful. Include details about your role and highlight leadership you provided. Your essay must be a minimum of 350 words but not more than 600 words."
From the Laura W. Bush Traveling Scholarship:
"Essay (up to 500 words, double spaced) explaining your interest in being considered for the award and how your proposed project reflects or is related to both UNESCO's mandate and U.S. interests in promoting peace by sharing advances in education, science, culture, and communications."
From the LULAC National Scholarship Fund:
"Please type or print an essay of 300 words (maximum) on how your academic studies will contribute to your personal & professional goals. In addition, please discuss any community service or extracurricular activities you have been involved in that relate to your goals."
Even after you understand what the essay should be about, it can still be difficult to begin writing. Answer the following questions to help brainstorm essay ideas. You may be able to incorporate your answers into your essay.
You don't need to answer all the questions, but if you find you have a lot of ideas for one of two of them, those may be things you want to include in your essay.
How you structure your essay will depend on the requirements of the scholarship or school you are applying to. You may give an overview of all the work you did as a volunteer, or highlight a particularly memorable experience. You may focus on your personal growth or how your community benefited.
Regardless of the specific structure requested, follow the guidelines below to make sure your community service essay is memorable and clearly shows the impact of your work.
Samples of mediocre and excellent essays are included below to give you a better idea of how you should draft your own essay.
You want the person reading your essay to be interested, so your first sentence should hook them in and entice them to read more. A good way to do this is to start in the middle of the action. Your first sentence could describe you helping build a house, releasing a rescued animal back to the wild, watching a student you tutored read a book on their own, or something else that quickly gets the reader interested. This will help set your essay apart and make it more memorable.
Compare these two opening sentences:
"I have volunteered at the Wishbone Pet Shelter for three years."
"The moment I saw the starving, mud-splattered puppy brought into the shelter with its tail between its legs, I knew I'd do whatever I could to save it."
The first sentence is a very general, bland statement. The majority of community service essays probably begin a lot like it, but it gives the reader little information and does nothing to draw them in. On the other hand, the second sentence begins immediately with action and helps persuade the reader to keep reading so they can learn what happened to the dog.
Once you've hooked your reader in with your first sentence, tell them about your community service experiences. State where you work, when you began working, how much time you've spent there, and what your main duties include. This will help the reader quickly put the rest of the essay in context and understand the basics of your community service work.
Not including basic details about your community service could leave your reader confused.
It's the details of your community service that make your experience unique and memorable, so go into the specifics of what you did.
For example, don't just say you volunteered at a nursing home; talk about reading Mrs. Johnson her favorite book, watching Mr. Scott win at bingo, and seeing the residents play games with their grandchildren at the family day you organized. Try to include specific activities, moments, and people in your essay. Having details like these let the readers really understand what work you did and how it differs from other volunteer experiences.
Compare these two passages:
"For my volunteer work, I tutored children at a local elementary school. I helped them improve their math skills and become more confident students."
"As a volunteer at York Elementary School, I worked one-on-one with second and third graders who struggled with their math skills, particularly addition, subtraction, and fractions. As part of my work, I would create practice problems and quizzes and try to connect math to the students' interests. One of my favorite memories was when Sara, a student I had been working with for several weeks, told me that she enjoyed the math problems I had created about a girl buying and selling horses so much that she asked to help me create math problems for other students."
The first passage only gives basic information about the work done by the volunteer; there is very little detail included, and no evidence is given to support her claims. How did she help students improve their math skills? How did she know they were becoming more confident?
The second passage is much more detailed. It recounts a specific story and explains more fully what kind of work the volunteer did, as well as a specific instance of a student becoming more confident with her math skills. Providing more detail in your essay helps support your claims as well as make your essay more memorable and unique.
It would be very hard to get a scholarship or place at a school if none of your readers felt like they knew much about you after finishing your essay, so make sure that your essay shows your personality. The way to do this is to state your personal strengths, then provide examples to support your claims. Take some time to think about which parts of your personality you would like your essay to highlight, then write about specific examples to show this.
After you have described your community service and given specific examples of your work, you want to begin to wrap your essay up by stating your accomplishments. What was the impact of your community service? Did you build a house for a family to move into? Help students improve their reading skills? Clean up a local park? Make sure the impact of your work is clear; don't be worried about bragging here.
If you can include specific numbers, that will also strengthen your essay. Saying "I delivered meals to 24 home-bound senior citizens" is a stronger example than just saying "I delivered meals to lots of senior citizens."
Also be sure to explain why your work matters. Why is what you did important? Did it provide more parks for kids to play in? Help students get better grades? Give people medical care who would otherwise not have gotten it? This is an important part of your essay, so make sure to go into enough detail that your readers will know exactly what you accomplished and how it helped your community.
"My biggest accomplishment during my community service was helping to organize a family event at the retirement home. The children and grandchildren of many residents attended, and they all enjoyed playing games and watching movies together."
"The community service accomplishment that I'm most proud of is the work I did to help organize the First Annual Family Fun Day at the retirement home. My job was to design and organize fun activities that senior citizens and their younger relatives could enjoy. The event lasted eight hours and included ten different games, two performances, and a movie screening with popcorn. Almost 200 residents and family members attended throughout the day. This event was important because it provided an opportunity for senior citizens to connect with their family members in a way they aren't often able to. It also made the retirement home seem more fun and enjoyable to children, and we have seen an increase in the number of kids coming to visit their grandparents since the event."
The second passage is stronger for a variety of reasons. First, it goes into much more detail about the work the volunteer did. The first passage only states that she helped "organize a family event." That really doesn't tell readers much about her work or what her responsibilities were. The second passage is much clearer; her job was to "design and organize fun activities."
The second passage also explains the event in more depth. A family day can be many things; remember that your readers are likely not familiar with what you're talking about, so details help them get a clearer picture.
Lastly, the second passage makes the importance of the event clear: it helped residents connect with younger family members, and it helped retirement homes seem less intimidating to children, so now some residents see their grand kids more often.
One of the final things to include in your essay should be the impact that your community service had on you. You can discuss skills you learned, such as carpentry, public speaking, animal care, or another skill.
You can also talk about how you changed personally. Are you more patient now? More understanding of others? Do you have a better idea of the type of career you want? Go into depth about this, but be honest. Don't say your community service changed your life if it didn't because trite statements won't impress readers.
In order to support your statements, provide more examples. If you say you're more patient now, how do you know this? Do you get less frustrated while playing with your younger siblings? Are you more willing to help group partners who are struggling with their part of the work? You've probably noticed by now that including specific examples and details is one of the best ways to create a strong and believable essay .
"As a result of my community service, I learned a lot about building houses and became a more mature person."
"As a result of my community service, I gained hands-on experience in construction. I learned how to read blueprints, use a hammer and nails, and begin constructing the foundation of a two-bedroom house. Working on the house could be challenging at times, but it taught me to appreciate the value of hard work and be more willing to pitch in when I see someone needs help. My dad has just started building a shed in our backyard, and I offered to help him with it because I know from my community service how much work it is. I also appreciate my own house more, and I know how lucky I am to have a roof over my head."
The second passage is more impressive and memorable because it describes the skills the writer learned in more detail and recounts a specific story that supports her claim that her community service changed her and made her more helpful.
Just as you started your essay in a way that would grab readers' attention, you want to finish your essay on a strong note as well. A good way to end your essay is to state again the impact your work had on you, your community, or both. Reiterate how you changed as a result of your community service, why you found the work important, or how it helped others.
Compare these two concluding statements:
"In conclusion, I learned a lot from my community service at my local museum, and I hope to keep volunteering and learning more about history."
"To conclude, volunteering at my city's American History Museum has been a great experience. By leading tours and participating in special events, I became better at public speaking and am now more comfortable starting conversations with people. In return, I was able to get more community members interested in history and our local museum. My interest in history has deepened, and I look forward to studying the subject in college and hopefully continuing my volunteer work at my university's own museum."
The second passage takes each point made in the first passage and expands upon it. In a few sentences, the second passage is able to clearly convey what work the volunteer did, how she changed, and how her volunteer work benefited her community.
The author of the second passage also ends her essay discussing her future and how she'd like to continue her community service, which is a good way to wrap things up because it shows your readers that you are committed to community service for the long-term.
Are you applying to a community service scholarship or thinking about it? We have a complete list of all the community service scholarships available to help get your search started!
Do you need a community service letter as well? We have a step-by-step guide that will tell you how to get a great reference letter from your community service supervisor.
Thinking about doing community service abroad? Before you sign up, read our guide on some of the hazards of international volunteer trips and how to know if it's the right choice for you.
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Defining “community”, demonstrating your values.
The University of California system requires you to answer four out of eight essay prompts . The seventh University of California prompt asks, “What have you done to make your school or your community a better place?” For a lot of people, a key to unlocking this essay is to think about defining “community” effectively.
Many people reading this prompt might think they should talk about something they did to make a positive impact in their town or their school. But your community does not need to be defined as something as large as your whole school or whole neighborhood. It can be as small as a club or a class, or even a friend group, all of which are communities to some extent.
Don’t be afraid to even talk about a virtual community in answering this essay prompt. For so many of us these days, the communities we find and belong to are virtual, whether it’s a Reddit forum or Twitch chat, the comments section of a YouTuber you really like, a Discord server, or something along those lines. Not enough students write about virtual communities relative to how much time we all spend in them, so if you’ve done something to make a virtual environment a better place, that is absolutely valuable material for this essay prompt.
Be sure to highlight your personal connection to the community you write about and your motivations for the actions you took to improve it.
Another important consideration in writing this essay is demonstrating your values and how you upheld them through your actions. You’ll also want to mention the positive impact your actions had, but be careful not to spend too much time in this area. Describing the positive impact you had is important, but you don’t want to take up too much of the word count with this.
As an example, say you’re writing about social justice, perhaps a change you drove in your school to promote inclusivity. An essay that focuses too strongly on the impact of your actions isn’t going to be as powerful as an essay that mentions the impacts, but focuses more on your personal motivations. Instead of emphasizing how your actions improved your community, emphasize why you felt motivated to make those improvements.
This is important because, with this essay, you’re not just answering the prompt. You’re also answering the underlying questions of how you define your community, how you relate to it, and how capable you are of having an impact on those around you.
Colleges want to figure out whether an applicant will be a positive contributor to their community. This essay prompt is much more about your personal character than it is about the outcomes of your efforts. In answering this prompt, you’ll be demonstrating how you’ll fit in with and improve the community at your school of choice.
For more information on how to write responses for the other UC essays, consider reading this article on CollegeVine!
Linggo, nobyembre 20, 2011, describe your community.
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"A hallmark of the Columbia experience is being able to learn and live in a community with a wide range of perspectives. Tell us about an aspect of your own perspective, viewpoint or lived experience that is important to you, and describe how it has shaped the way you would learn from and contribute to Columbia’s diverse and collaborative community." (200 words or fewer)
This is one of Columbia's essay prompts and Ive been interpreting it as a "community essay" (bc College Essay Guy said so), where u talk about ur involvement in a community etc. But the actual prompt only seems to rly say you have to describe a personal experience in general and conmect that to Columbia's community. Not exactly having to talk about a community u belong to.
So do yall think itd be fine to maybe talk about like, an individual aneceotal experience and elaborate on how that shaped my perspective and how Ill contribute to Columbia's community?
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Ielts cue card sample 434 - a city or a town where you live or lived, ielts speaking part 2: ielts cue card/ candidate task card., describe a city or a town where you live or lived..
Topic: describe a city or a town where you live or lived..
COMMENTS
Step 1: Decide What Community to Write About. Step 2: The BEABIES Exercise. Step 3: Pick a Structure (Narrative or Montage) Community Essay Example: East Meets West. Community Essay Example: Storytellers. The Uncommon Connections Exercise.
In a nutshell, the community essay should exhibit three things: An aspect of yourself, 2. in the context of a community you belonged to, and 3. how this experience may shape your contribution to the community you'll join in college. It may look like a fairly simple equation: 1 + 2 = 3. However, each college will word their community essay ...
He Community Where I Live, Essay Example. HIRE A WRITER! You are free to use it as an inspiration or a source for your own work. The community in which I live can be described as a sizable place where everyone knows one another, and communicates daily. It is a place that, if there is a stranger or someone who does not belong there is there ...
Examples. Place. Groups of people who live, work, or play near one another. This could be your neighborhood or town where you participate or organize local events, block parties, and community service projects. It could also be your community where you join in activities like student government, sports teams, or clubs.
The first step in writing this essay is to introduce the community. Explain who is part of the community and what the community is like. Highlight the community's structure by demonstrating how you are part of it and how you interact with your peers, superiors, or inferiors within the group. It is also important to depict the community's ...
Step 2: Brainstorm communities you're involved in. If you're writing a Community essay that asks you to discuss a community you belong to, then your next step will be brainstorming all of your options. As you brainstorm, keep a running list. Your list can include all kinds of communities you're involved in.
In this article, we will break down the prompt and go over the purpose behind your writing. By doing this, you can apply what you've learned to your own writing as you write your essay for the University of Michigan. Prompt 2: "Everyone belongs to many different communities and/or groups defined by, among other things, shared geography ...
Duke's prompt this year provides a great example of how a community essay might be worded: "Duke University seeks a talented, engaged student body that embodies the wide range of human experience; we believe that the diversity of our students makes our community stronger. If you'd like to share a perspective you bring or experiences you ...
A community is defined broadly and includes, but is not limited to, one or more of the following: Your nuclear or extended family. Clubs and teams that you are a member of. The street or neighborhood where you live. A place where you work. A religious community or house of worship. A racial or ethnic group.
A community essay refers to a college application essay that answers a question similar to "Tell us about a community you're a part of.". Length can vary but may be dictated by the college you're applying to. The topic of your piece, however, should be about a community you're a part of, how you're a part of it, and/or how it has ...
Take 15 minutes to write down a list of ALL the communities you belong to that you can think of. While you're writing, don't worry about judging which ones will be useful for an essay. Just write down every community that comes to mind — even if some of them feel like a stretch. When you're done, survey your list of communities.
For me, community encompasses a sense of belonging, support, and shared purpose. It is a space where individuals come together, transcending differences, to create a nurturing environment. My community is not confined to a single definition; instead, it takes shape through various aspects of my life, each contributing to my sense of belonging.
There are many different types of communities to which people can belong. Some examples include religious communities, political communities, online communities, neighbourhoods, sports teams and clubs. It is important to find a community that fits with an individual's beliefs and values in order to get the most out of the experience.
Using the table above and the examples I wrote above, write down some ideas about the weather in your hometown. If there are differences, then write about all of those things. If the weather is the same all year round you have to talk about that. When you have written some ideas down, practice speaking out loud.
When should you make an effort to understand and describe the community? When you're about to launch a community assessment. The first step is to get a clear sense of the community, before more specifically assessing the area(s) you're interested in. When you're new to a community and want to be well informed before beginning your work.
Transcript. Dave: Appalachian State University students answer the question, "What is 'community' to you?". Voice 1: "I'd say community to me is just a group of people who live and work together in a way that benefits everybody equally.". Voice 2: "I believe community is the people and cultures just coming together. Unity.".
A community service essay is an essay that describes the volunteer work you did and the impact it had on you and your community. Community service essays can vary widely depending on specific requirements listed in the application, but, in general, they describe the work you did, why you found the work important, and how it benefited people ...
Describe your family, home, neighborhood, or community, and explain how it has shaped you as a person. Check out this post for tips and ways to approach answering Essay A. Essay A Example: Family Paella, Tomas, and Cuban-German Heritage
Defining "Community". Demonstrating Your Values. The University of California system requires you to answer four out of eight essay prompts. The seventh University of California prompt asks, "What have you done to make your school or your community a better place?". For a lot of people, a key to unlocking this essay is to think about ...
Describe your community. The community where i belong is just like any other community out there, same kind of people, same amount of things that is running around the corner. As if you are just simply on the same compound. Once you get here, you will say that there is no instance that our community has any differences.
Answer: 1. • My community has unity. • The people in my community, they love each other and work together. • My community has a cooperativeness. • Has beautiful and clean environment. • My community is peaceful. The advantages of the community: • Community service develops an increased sense of social responsibility. • Provides an opportunity to apply academic learning to real ...
community essay, yes or no? Application Question. "A hallmark of the Columbia experience is being able to learn and live in a community with a wide range of perspectives. Tell us about an aspect of your own perspective, viewpoint or lived experience that is important to you, and describe how it has shaped the way you would learn from and ...
You should say: where it is located. what part of it you are most familiar with. what are the important landmarks and places there. and explain what makes that city or town special to you. Model Answer 1: I live in one of the least populated regions of my country which only has about half a million people. Located in the north-eastern part of ...