At community dinner last week we did an activity called “individual values/group values.” This activity was taken from the book Creating a Life Together by Diana Leafe Christian.
We were each given several post-it notes and a marker. Before the activity, we were asked to reflect on the times in our life when we felt “most alive in community”. Drawing on those reflections, we were then asked to write down words (hopes, aspirations, feelings, etc) that capture the essence of what we most valued in our various experiences with community. We then took turns telling each other our stories of community, and putting our post-it notes on a marker board.
Afterward, we began rearranging the post-it notes in order to look for themes. Nine themes emerged:
- Common Goals
- Common activity
- Intentionality
- Faith/spirituality
- Interpersonal Relationships
- Discussion
- Care
- Service
- Food
- Solitude
Once all the post-it notes were grouped together, we looked at them and were each asked to put a star next to four post-its that stood out to us. As shown in the photograph above, the results of this activity read as follows:
Observations about this data:
- Common Goals is the most strongly represented value, followed by Common Activity and Intentionality.
- The concepts Common Goals and Common Activity are strongly linked. Together, these concepts represent the most strongly represented value.
- Rhythms and Openness about Personal Needs were the two most starred individual values.
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Action Points:
At an upcoming community meeting, we plan to take another look at the results of this activity and generate action points to help us continue to turn our abstract values into concrete activities. The goal of these action points is to strengthen the fabric of our community and make our lives together even more rewarding. Stay tuned!
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