Community. What does it really mean?
We come across the word every single day, scrawled on the back of a cereal box, written on the posh paper from our building society, logging into our social media or grabbing a takeaway coffee. Suddenly everyone and everything seems to be part of a community. Even the hit TV show ‘Community’ probably has its own community. Yet the more we use it, the less we seem to know what it means.
But why does that matter? Who cares if we’re a bit liberal with our use of the word community?
Because community matters.
In fact, community matters more now than ever before. As the traditional meaning of communities continues to change, and we are increasingly unlikely to pop next door for sugar, talk to strangers at bus stops or solely work with those who live nearby, it’s important that our new online communities actually mean something. That they have the potential to supplement these traditional communities and add a real sense of value and meaning to our lives. That these new communities aren’t just something we are a part of, but something we can add to and get back from.
With the world’s largest professional community engaging on LinkedIn every day, we’re passionate about the power of people coming together to make a difference for individuals, organisations, and societies. We want to be part of this ongoing conversation, helping to shape what community means in the future and using our platform to make a positive difference to people’s lives.
As part of this commitment, we’re launching a new social impact project designed to explore whether an online community can have a profound impact on a real-world community. Set in the UK town of Grimsby, famous for its once thriving fishing industry, the project will look at how the power of an online community can help people to access new jobs and careers in an area that has experienced some hard times. Linking potential to untapped opportunity. We will be following the lives of four different people as they search for new opportunities in the area using LinkedIn, capturing their journey in the form of a short documentary series.
We don’t know if the project will be successful, but we’re willing to try. With the world changing faster than ever before, we believe in the passion of our members to help one another and in the power of the LinkedIn community to come together to create opportunity and change lives for the better.
Follow us on LinkedIn with #InItTogether to stay up-to-date on how we progress.