Flowing shallow and dark southward out of Barnwell County, the Salkehatchie River joins the Little Salkehatchie to form the Combahee River. The Combahee is pronounced “Combee” by folks in the low country, much like the dialectic eccentricities we have for Maybinton and Mollohon, and it meanders on down toward St. Helena Sound.
Not too far from the confluence of the two Salkehatchies is the little community of Gifford in Hampton County. It was here in 1978 that was established the first Salkehatchie Summer Service with about 40 workers.
From this small but heartfelt beginning grew what is now an effort that includes thousands of people across the entire state of South Carolina.
Not surprisingly, Newberry is home to one of these camps, as was attested in the article last week.
I’m not recapping the work of Salkehatchie but reinforcing the idea that it is fitting to have a Salkehatchie camp here in Newberry. That’s one of the first things I found out about Newberry when I came here twenty-bunch years ago: We take care of each other.
There may be a couple of loops in the stitching that aren’t completely cinched down, but all in all, we’re a pretty tight-knit community.
You might not find the term “tight-knit” in Washington, D.C., but the synonymous term used there is “community cohesion.”
Community cohesion describes the aspect of togetherness and bonding that is exhibited by members of a particular community. In simpler terms, it can be referred to as the bond that holds a community together. To me, “tight-knit” sounds a lot better.
Community cohesion leads to community empowerment. Community empowerment enables more people to play an active role in the decisions that affect their communities.
On the website reviewing his celebrated book Bowling Alone: the Collapse and Rise of American Community, Robert Putnam suggests that being an active part of your community can render positive benefits for both emotional health and physical health. However, Putnam charts a decline in sociability in the U.S. associated with a range of factors including changing patterns of work, television, and computers.
He shows that Americans have become increasingly disconnected from family, friends, neighbors and democratic structures, but he makes suggestions about how they can reconnect. An important lesson from Putnam’s work is that where people connect well in cohesive communities, the stock of social capital increases and that includes the state of people’s health and well-being.
On Aug. 4, Newberry will have two wonderful opportunities to underscore our community cohesion and empowerment and to prove Putnam wrong about being disconnected from each other. On that morning, in the Whitmire Community Center, our Cultivating CommUNITY series will continue to look at the assets in Newberry County and orienting those assets toward long-term problem-solving and growth for our county.
In the evening of Aug. 4, National Night Out will be celebrated at the Smith Road Complex of Newberry College.
National Night Out was established by the National Association of Town Watch, which is dedicated to the development and promotion of various crime prevention programs including neighborhood watch groups, law enforcement agencies, state and regional crime prevention associations, businesses, civic groups, and individuals, devoted to safer communities. The nation’s premiere crime prevention network works with law enforcement officials and civilian leaders to keep crime watch volunteers informed, interested, involved and motivated.
Efforts like Salkehatchie, Cultivating CommUNITY, and the National Night Out tell us that community empowerment works. By taking part in these types of activities, each to his or her own abilities, we as a community grow together and become problem-solvers instead of spectators. We take the opportunity to cinch down the stitching even a little tighter.