Community Leadership essay! Draft!

To understand the meaning of the word "Community Leadership", which by the way has multiple meanings depends on what component it is involves, I would like to highlight my own experience and my view of what the word means to me by sharing a story of the Somali Community in the Twin Cities. The American melting pot was in the works since the immigrants began to arrive on the shores of America and today is not different. Every year new immigrants come to America to assimilate and become part of their new homeland with their new distinct beliefs and culture. When the civil war began in Somalia in 1991, many Somalis sought refuge in different countries to escape a devastating civil war that is still raging. A large portion of those Somali immigrants arrived in Minnesota to rebuild their shuttered lives. As one may expect new immigrants bring with them their beliefs and cultural norms to their new-homeland and the Somalis were not exception. When we first arrived in Minnesota 18 years ago with a few belonging we begin to adjust our new home and environment.
The Somali community of Minnesota is unique in many ways. From their language, religion, clothes, food, and family structure to their behavior, bias, believe systems, attitudes, and relation towards the rest of Minnesotans. However, just like any other community in the state of Minnesota, the Somali community in the twin cities of Minnesota has distinctive beliefs attitudes, and specific folkloric customs within the different tribes. Even though Somali community was very strong and viable, and adaptive to any environment and circumstances, yet coming to a totally new systems, languages, and communities, was the hardest situation we have ever encountered. Thus without strong community leadership, capabilities, advocates, maneuvers, and drivers within the community, we, the Somali community wouldn't be where we are.
At that time, the majority of Somalis in Minnesota had little or no skills to navigate their new home so we started to work in the manufacturing and other odd jobs with a meager earning to sustain our families. On the other side we faced enormous cultural difference with our new neighbors, friends and coworkers since we use to live in a homogeneous culture and faith. The Mosque was the center of all activities in Somalia where we use to get our spiritual and social needs. The mosque is prayer center, and where our wedding festivals, farewell burial ceremonies, and other important issues take place. So it becomes apparent to our leaders to get a center that can fulfill the cultural and spiritual needs of the Somali community in Minnesota. In Somalia mosque constructions was not an issue for the public since wealthy Somali individuals use to take care, but here it became necessary that each individual member of the Community to deduct a portion of their meager paycheck to achieve this important Center. It took us Five years to acquire our new center, The Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center.
Thus, fuelling from this aspect let me come back to the main reason for this writing as to understanding the concept of what is a community leadership? In order to understand that meaning of community leadership, it is imperative for me to understand the meaning of a Community Leadership. In the beginning of this writing I highlighted the meaning of a community in the sense of going back and unpacking my own people in another length as to why I call them Somali Community and not only Somali or Community. Thus, to move forward with my understanding of the word Community Leadership from this point of view, I would like to also highlight the meaning of a leader. I tackled the meaning of a leader and its qualities in depth from the previous chapter. In this chapter, as a read through to understand the meaning of not just a leader, but the key concepts and the Dimensions of a Community Leadership, I am amazed by the meaning of these qualities, characteristics, and the Dimensions of Leadership such as the Process, Task, Strategic, and Ethical Leadership. Throughout the chapter, the author explained, and described each of these dimension in detail. On the reading the author described the meaning of a leader and put it this way, "The leader is one who mobilizes others toward a goal shared by both the leaders and followers." Garry Wills. The reading explained the definition to be elegant in its simplicity and yet comprehensive enough to include all the critical elements in real world leadership. In addition, based on my understanding, Community Leadership and these concepts gives me a sense of a direction to not only my leadership qualities but the entire picture of what it means to be a community leader and why it is important to know the importance of a leadership. Thus when the Somali community came to America without understanding the new customs and systems of their new environment, there were few American Somalis living here since 80s whom chipped in, and lend a hand to lead the way and the Somali community followed and learned from them. This is a community in a community leadership.
Now that we understand each of these words in a nutshell, lets comeback to understand chapter two, and the concept of the Community in Community Leadership? What is it? What are the differences between Community Leadership and Community in Community Leadership? In this chapter, the meaning of Community as it frames has multiple meaning, from emotional experience as in sense of "community; as a physical place such as a neighborhood or town; as a set of shared interests or pursuits, like the environmental community or legal community; or as common ethnic or cultural identity, such as the Somali community or Evangelical community. We often think of community as something fixed; something that just is. In fact, from a leadership perspective, communities are made and maintained through human relationships. People create community."
Moreover, in reality, the principle and skills of effective community leadership is applicable in business, government and the military as mention in out reading. Community leadership is unique because as our reading highlighted of its context. It takes place in civil society such as large spaces between government and the market where people with the same interest come together to pursued a common good, debate, confront, and find solutions to the issues they care about collectively.
The four Dimensions of a community pretty much incorporated the sheer aspect of what I mention above. For instance, the first Dimension of a community indicates that "We" as in all of us people, belong to many communities and they are not mutually exclusive. Whereas the second Dimension in Community determines us to be Active, Dynamic, and changing in responding to our values. This is because we are not one in the sense of Ethnicity, Culture, and Religion, yet we are inclusive in the sense of being human. Tighten this to the third Dimension as to the Multiple Meaning and Locations to the core value and how we see what we see, and how we do what we do typically is wire to the approaches and the ways we approach. In another words, what united us is greater than what divides us as we all have common interest so we can have and live in a better world, where safety, health, education, good governance and all in between unify us yet how we pursue that interest, and our way of thinking, doing, approaching and practicing differentiates us. Now, the last and the final Community Dimension integrates and combines all of us to be one people, neighbors, nation, and community and is rooted as civil servants.
In conclusion, "A community is democratic only when the humblest and weakest person can enjoy the highest civil, economic, and social rights that the biggest and most powerful possess." A Philip Randolph quotes Nevertheless, grounding my understanding of Community leadership to the story of my community; it is inevitable for us to clearly understand what made them unique. They understand that they are one community with a common interest, good, and values and because of that, they collectively united to seek and protect their interest. Yet, they worked, collaborated, created, learned and confront other communities, and neighborhoods, so they can together live one nation under God. Because to them, this was very important to keep their values, by figuring out what was needed collectively, and together conveyed a solution and accomplished without the help of any other affiliation. That is community leadership, period.