Communities are an essential part of our society, because we all depend and interact with each other. Communities are groups of people that help an individual to learn and develop new ideas. A society is where peoples relations with each other are direct and personal and where a complex web of ties link people in mutual bonds of emotion and obligation. The idea of community has provided a model to contrast to the emergence of more modern less personal societies where cultural, economic and technological transformations have uprooted tradition and where complexity has created a less personal and more rationalized and goal directed social life. In todays globalizing but still fragmented and dangerous world, nations more than ever need effective governments to provide security, social cohesion and order, governance, infrastructure and basic services. They need, too, a vigorous private sector to mobilize the productive forces of the market, thereby creating national wealth and a strong national economy linked to international trade and markets. These two alone are not enough, however. Without the balance and political integration provided by the action of a third sector civil society too often the outcome is to centralize even more power in an already highly-centralized public sector and to concentrate even more wealth in an elite segment of the private sector. A dynamic civil society is needed to bring much greater political voice, social engagement, and economic participation to grassroots citizens. The three sectors need to work together in cross-sector partnerships to advance social progress and reverse the growing gap between the haves and the have-nots. And these three sectors must jointly address the problem of how to balance the need for open market conditions for economic growth against the markets adverse effects on the environment, on the distribution of income and wealth, and on cultural values and diversity. When go...
