“It takes a village to raise a child” is a proverb which means that it takes an entire community of different people interacting with children so they can experience life and grow up in a safe environment. According to Lawrence Mbogoni, an African studies professor:
“Proverb or not, ‘It takes a whole village to raise a child’ reflects a social reality some of us who grew up in rural areas of Africa can easily related to. As a child, my conduct was a concern of everybody, not just my parents, especially if it involved misconduct. Any adult had the right to rebuke and discipline me and would make my mischief known to my parents who in turn would also mete their own ‘punishment’. The concern of course was the moral well-being of the community”
The other day at the barbershop, a place where all things political, spiritual, and social are debated and discussed, we were speaking about a mentoring program for young men at ArkBuilders and about expanding it. The barber casually mentioned, “Well, we all know it takes a village to raise a child.” Suddenly, my “George mindset” kicked in and I said internally, “If we believe it takes a village to raise a child, what does it take to be a village?”
What is a village? The actual definition is:
“A group of houses and associated buildings, larger than a hamlet and smaller than a town, situated in a rural area; a self-contained district or community within a town or a city, regarded as having features characteristic of village life; (in the US) a small municipality with limited corporate powers.”
That is the generic and technical definition of what a village is. To me, a village is not just a group of people in a shared location, it isn’t a neighborhood of people living separate lives filled with walls and fences where no one knows or cares for each other. When I conduct training in a community, I use a picture of a frog in a pond to illustrate how prevention efforts are most effective if we concentrate on the condition of the pond to help nurture healthy frogs.
If a frog in the pond starts to behave strangely, whether physical or mental, our first reaction should not be to punish or treat the frog. Instinctively, we should wonder what is going on with the pond that would be causing the changes in the frog. This analogy is to remind us not to focus on just the individuals and changing their physical or mental behavior, but to also look at the context of the situation. This will help us in understanding what might be influencing the problems and determine how to make changes to reduce said problems. Instead of concentrating on the health/issues of the individual (frog), we should concentrate on the village/environment (pond) to help increase positive results. To have healthy youth/individuals (frogs), we need to make sure we have a healthy community/environment (pond).
What is an empowering village? How do you build an empowering community to empower the village? We’ll continue to explore these subjects in other posts, so if you’d like to learn how to help your pond and its’ frogs, stayed tuned and click here or the button below to learn about our community outreach efforts!
