Global Community Engagement Day Date in the current year: January 28, 2024

According to Wikipedia, community engagement is “involvement and participation in an organization for the welfare of the community”. Volunteering is one of the most common forms of community engagement. To make their communities better, people can volunteer at neighborhood cleanup programs, emergency assistance programs, homeless shelters, food banks, local NGOs or faith-based groups, etc.

Community engagement isn’t just about individual participation. Various organizations and businesses engage with community leaders and groups to address and solve various issues that impact the community’s well-being. This is a mutually beneficial arrangement: organizations and businesses get a chance to realize various projects that address specific issues faced by a community or community group (for example, accessibility for people with disabilities), and communities benefit from these projects.

Community engagement helps to build and strengthen relationships between residents, community groups, volunteers, organizations, and businesses. Working together, they can solve a wide range of issues that need to be addressed and in the end, make this world a better place for everyone. Global Community Engagement Day was created to highlight the contribution of community leaders, volunteers, business owners, and other people who solve problems within communities through community engagement.

The observance is the brainchild of Engage 2 Act, a non-profit organization committed to fostering, nourishing, leading, and breaking new ground in community engagement. Its team created Global Community Engagement Day in 2018 to raise awareness about community engagement, as well as to encourage businesses, organizations and individuals to contribute to their communities.

Engage 2 Act chose the date by asking their followers on social media about the most inspiring community engagement leader they had ever met. The person who came up with the best answer, Wendy Sarkissian, was born on January 28, so the winner’s birthday became the date of Global Community Engagement Day.

How to observe Global Community Engagement Day? You can learn more about the different forms of community engagement and ways you can get more involved and change your community for the better, encourage your employer to get your company more involved in the local community, donate to or volunteer at a local charity, come up with a list of the things that will make your community better and reach out to people, organizations and businesses that can make these things happen, or organize an event in your community.

And don’t forget to share your community engagement story and spread the word about the observance on social media with the hashtag #GlobalCommunityEngagementDay. The more people know about it, the more our communities will thrive.