How do you define success?

When you plan an event of any kind, and a fund raiser in particular how do you define success?

·         Is it how much money you make?

·         How many donations you collect?

·         How many people attend?

·         Whether you have enough food for everyone, or not?

·         How many volunteers are recruited?

·         How smoothly everything runs?

Or

·         Is it the smiles on the faces?

·         The support expressed by the community?

·         The celebration of life and friendship? 

In many ways the Silent Dessert auction, at least for Ocean, was  a coming of age ceremony: a ceremony where the community rose up to acknowledge and support her as she stands firm in the center of her being doing what she was created to do. 

Yes, the event was successful. It was successful financially. It was successful because there was enough food, enough people to eat it, and enough people to serve and clean up afterwards. It was successful because there were only a few glitches.

But more than anything it was successful because the girls go to see that with a lot of planning, a lot of hard work, with determination and perseverance they can accomplish great things. They learned that with many small acts they can accomplish great things. Most of all they learned what it is like to have a community come out and support them.  See It takes a Community. 

It takes a community to raise a child. 

What is a community? When Ocean was in kindergarten and grade one, they were taught that a community is the services in your neighbourhood with field trips to the bakery, the grocery store, the fire station. They had guest speakers from Lucerne and Canada Meet Packers. They learned that a community is the butcher, the baker the candlestick maker.  And I always had trouble with this.

To me a community is a group of people providing collective support creating what my friend Lewis Cardinal calls a psychic net, upon which one can lean back upon and receive support. At times it is this net that catches you when you fall.

With this idea, some time ago I hung a mirror at the front door. Around it I wrote, “It takes a community to raise a child.” Around that I hung pictures of families who were very involved in our lives and who created our community. 

But yesterday, at the Silent Dessert Auction, my definition expanded. A community really is the community is the butcher, the baker the candlestick maker. But in Ocean’s case it is the jeweller (Romeo from Birks), the restaurateur ( Deborah C, owner of The Junction Eatery and Bar), the Reverend (Christopher New), the Entrepeneur (Jim Spiers), the Event Planner (Shiela Stauffer, ED of Cornerstone Counselling).

Indeed it does take a community to raise a child: a community created not only by the psychic net of friends and families but also by the people who provide the services in the neighbourhood who become friends and family.... and those who volunteered.