You Can Make a Difference
by William “Brother” Rogers
What can we do as individuals to make a difference in our community? How can we bring people together to solve problems? How can citizens become more involved in the decisions that affect us all?
The answers to all of these questions can be found at the Quality Council’s second annual Goals Conference on Thursday, May 23, 1996, from 3:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. at Memorial Hall on the campus of Mississippi State University.
Starkville and Oktibbeha County have a new sense of vitality, and it’s no accident. Creating a strong community is never an accident; it takes intentional effort on the part of many people with a remarkable range of backgrounds, interests, and perspectives.
This goals conference is a natural outgrowth of a community that is on the move in the right direction. It is a tangible statement that our community has within itself the ability to solve our own problems.
The success of this conference hinges critically on one factor: your participation. To stay on the right path, we need citizen involvement from throughout the city and the county. This conference is about community, about citizenship, and about the role we all can play in determining our future. The quality of the direction resulting from this conference is directly linked to the diversity of participation.
Our challenge is to revitalize our civic society – that network of families, friends, schools, clubs, churches and so forth who participate in community building. U.S. Senator Bill Bradley uses the imagery of a three-legged stool to show that a healthy America needs not only a strong market economy and an effective government; we need a robust civic sector. It is our responsibility as citizens – not the government – to strengthen civic capacity to ensure that the stool stands firm.
Many of us believe there has been an erosion of core values that hold us together as a society. These core values are the unifying thread in an otherwise disconnected world. Perhaps the core value that has suffered most is individual responsibility. It is no secret that Americans today pay more attention to their rights than to their obligations and responsibilities.
This goals conference represents an opportunity to personally participate in true community building. We will regain the motivation to tackle our problems with spirit and energy. We will communicate across boundaries. We will learn something about ourselves. Most of all, we will learn much from each other.
The words of John Gardner, a former secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, put this second annual Goals Conference in perspective. “We must understand,” he writes, “that the goal isn’t a true endpoint where we can climb into a hammock and relax, but a starting point for the next stage in a journey of endless renewal. What we should pray for is not a final solution but freedom to continue working on the problems the future will never cease to throw at us.” Let us all join together May 23 on the journey to make Starkville and Oktibbeha County a better place to live.
Brother Rogers is a facilitator at the Starkville Goals Conference and a guest columnist for the Starkville Daily News.
What can we do as individuals to make a difference in our community? How can we bring people together to solve problems? How can citizens become more involved in the decisions that affect us all?
The answers to all of these questions can be found at the Quality Council’s second annual Goals Conference on Thursday, May 23, 1996, from 3:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. at Memorial Hall on the campus of Mississippi State University.
Starkville and Oktibbeha County have a new sense of vitality, and it’s no accident. Creating a strong community is never an accident; it takes intentional effort on the part of many people with a remarkable range of backgrounds, interests, and perspectives.
This goals conference is a natural outgrowth of a community that is on the move in the right direction. It is a tangible statement that our community has within itself the ability to solve our own problems.
The success of this conference hinges critically on one factor: your participation. To stay on the right path, we need citizen involvement from throughout the city and the county. This conference is about community, about citizenship, and about the role we all can play in determining our future. The quality of the direction resulting from this conference is directly linked to the diversity of participation.
Our challenge is to revitalize our civic society – that network of families, friends, schools, clubs, churches and so forth who participate in community building. U.S. Senator Bill Bradley uses the imagery of a three-legged stool to show that a healthy America needs not only a strong market economy and an effective government; we need a robust civic sector. It is our responsibility as citizens – not the government – to strengthen civic capacity to ensure that the stool stands firm.
Many of us believe there has been an erosion of core values that hold us together as a society. These core values are the unifying thread in an otherwise disconnected world. Perhaps the core value that has suffered most is individual responsibility. It is no secret that Americans today pay more attention to their rights than to their obligations and responsibilities.
This goals conference represents an opportunity to personally participate in true community building. We will regain the motivation to tackle our problems with spirit and energy. We will communicate across boundaries. We will learn something about ourselves. Most of all, we will learn much from each other.
The words of John Gardner, a former secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, put this second annual Goals Conference in perspective. “We must understand,” he writes, “that the goal isn’t a true endpoint where we can climb into a hammock and relax, but a starting point for the next stage in a journey of endless renewal. What we should pray for is not a final solution but freedom to continue working on the problems the future will never cease to throw at us.” Let us all join together May 23 on the journey to make Starkville and Oktibbeha County a better place to live.
Brother Rogers is a facilitator at the Starkville Goals Conference and a guest columnist for the Starkville Daily News.