Citizenship and Collaboration

Citizenship: active community participation as a result of a sense of responsibility to the communities in which people live. After discussing citizenship this week in class I have come to the conclusion that one can be a part of a community without actually being an active citizen of that community. I think with Greek Life in particular there are the active citizens on every chapter who help out whenever needed and then there are just the chapter members who just sit by and watch what goes on but do not get actively involved. I would say Delta Zeta's view citizenship as working to give back to the communities which they are a part of. This takes time working together and realizing what Delta Zeta's vision is so we are all on the same page. I know one area of citizenship that our chapter excells at is service. Whenever there is a service project multiple girls always sign up and are excited to give back. They enjoy doing service because they see how it benefits other people. Another idea we talked about in class is social capital, and how a communities success are more likely if the citizens are actively engaged with each other. I know in Delta Zeta we try to attend everyone's philanthropy events and if not we at least try to give a donation because this helps us become more actively engaged with other chapters on campus spreading the word about Delta Zeta and gives us a better chance of success within the community.
Shifting from citizenship to collaboration, I view collaboration as a group of people working together toward a common goal. Something I loved that was discussed in this chapter is that collaboration tries to achieve mutual goals while cooperation is based on helping each party acheive its own goals. I think people get collaboration and cooperation confused all the time. I like to think of collaboration as a win win situation. You sit down with your group and discuss everything each person wants and come up with a solution that does not compromise anyones ideas but collaborates them all into one idea. Collaboration deals a lot with trusting one another, something that takes a while to be built up but can be lost in a instant. In order for people to trust me I pride myself on keeping things private that need to be kept private. If someone comes to me with a concern I will not go tell another sister because then the person who came and told me would lose trust in me. Another way to build trust is to trust other people. I know as president that I cannot do everything and sharing ownership is a big part of building trust. When you trust other people with specific leadership roles or leaderless groups they will in return trust you and what you are doing. We also try to create powerful compelling experiences to help build trust. I know when I was a sophomore we had a chapter retreat and went on a scavenger hunt around campus. I had never felt so closer to my sisters until that point because we all worked together and trusted each other to get the scavenger hunt done, it was a great experience.