Emmy McCarthy + Naomi Hattaway
Emmy and Naomi often like to joke that they are one brain split over two continents. After "meeting" on a podcast about community building they quickly realised that not enough people who actually steward thriving communities were talking about how to build and grow communities. They also realised how much they had to say about that.
Emmy and Naomi believe that every individual is capable of making an impact on society but often lack the support and information on how to do so.
Through #RedefiningCommunities they hope to open up the conversation on the communities we are building, gather together the people creating impact through action and provide a space for learning and growing together.
A selection of our most recent writing on communities, how to build them, how to grow them and how to make them thrive.
As founders of large scale, community driven Facebook groups, Emmy and Naomi have watched the ebb and fall of Facebook groups with great interest. As part of their Conversations About Community series, they discuss the recent closure of several Facebook groups with memberships in the tens of thousands and ask the question “What is the future of Facebook Groups?”
As we continue the discussion and conversation around community, we realize that in order to redefine community, we must begin by exploring the myriad of definitions which already exist. This will allow us to form a baseline from which we can collectively discuss how the term has evolved and what, if any, further evolution is needed.
More and more of us are seeking to find belonging, and desperately wish to discover communities where trust and caring is at the forefront, and where impact can be made, encouraged and seeded. We are on a mission to further this conversation on redefining communities. We now must personally define the word answer the question “what is community?”
