In modern times, the idea of “community” has increasingly been expanded to include not just the place where one lives, but the web of relationships into which one is embedded. Work, school, voluntary associations, computer networks – all are communities, even though the members live quite far apart.
On a humid, Sunday, July afternoon, almost 50 volunteers from the Manhattan based non-profit, Global Health Corps set out to help New Haven Farms clean up what was then a weed strewn area on the Phoenix Press property at 15 James Street in Fair Haven.
Like the previous class of fellows from the Global Health Corps who volunteered their time to get the first farm site off the ground it was time for the new fellows to set out and help the farm launch their fifth.
It’s a tradition for GHC fellows to travel to New Haven to participate in a two week leadership training program at Yale University and I personally saw this as an opportunity to offer my service to communities whose taxes have been influential in improving the welfare of the African Communities, Uganda in particular, and, to be more specific, my small poor town Bugembe in Jinja District.