How to Drive Change in Your Community

Change is pivotal to a community’s growth and development and very fulfilling for the people who initiate it, both career-wise and personally. Here are some critical steps to ensure that you can drive sustainable change in your community.

Utah Stories

April 18, 2023

Change is pivotal to a community’s growth and development and very fulfilling for the people who initiate it, both career-wise and personally. The change should be impactful, inspiring, positive, and engaging for it to result in all these different benefits. Notable changes, when successfully implemented, can help solve problems, improve the quality of life, foster peace, increase prosperity, and achieve objectives set in place. Here are some critical steps to ensure that you can drive sustainable change in your community.

Get an Education

Education will equip you with skills, knowledge, and qualities that will ensure you confidently achieve the highest level of your career and develop moral and social ethics by introducing you to great educators and leaders who inspire thought.

Good education builds strong analytical and critical thinking skills for community change and development. It also enables real-world problem-solving by exposing you to different scenarios in the classroom that help you address critical issues affecting your community. One of the best options to prepare you in this way is enrolling in an online Ed.D degree open to Utah residents.

Find a Cause

Communities and societies deal with different issues, and people constantly face challenges, so finding a worthy cause is relatively easy. For instance, Utah’s homeless or unsheltered population is a great place to start since multiple problems afflict that demographic. They must deal with a lack of proper clothing, food, skills, training, and mental health issues. You can tackle any of these challenges and invest your time and new education into developing sustainable solutions.

Communicate Your Views and Intentions Clearly

Clear communication with yourself and others will help you get the help and the support you need if it is from donors or institutions that support such causes as yours. It is also an excellent way to build a community around your cause to help you work towards that end. Establishing different channels to reach the people you will likely work with or assist would be best.

Find People Doing Something Similar

After finding a cause you are willing and passionate about helping to solve, it is time to find people with the same intent or who are doing something similar. If they have been doing it for much longer, they are more likely to know how to handle the challenges you will meet.

They are also an excellent source of how you can navigate the social barriers that may slow down your progress. They will also provide a great support system and may be part of a different community of people who want to drive change.

Join the Local Government

Often, the local government tries to address some of the community’s issues, and they would be more than glad to get help. Some government programs can help or assist people who want to address the issues you wish to address. The local government helps you to engage with your community more effectively and find solutions to the challenge. You will also be liable to find resources to help you achieve the change you want, especially if you are clear about your objectives and how they will help the local government.

Driving sustainable change relies on these critical steps for easy and efficient progress toward your valued goal. The skills you get from the education will sharpen your mind and your thought processes, the cause will define the direction of your efforts, and communication will help you build a community. When you find people doing something similar, you will have the arsenal to tackle tough challenges unique to your cause. Working with your local government will help you engage your community more effectively and give you access to government resources.

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To understand what Alta really looked like, you don’t begin with legend. You begin with its trash — and this time, that happened almost by accident.

Alta Ski Area was installing underground water reservoirs to support snowmaking. Because the project sits on Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest land, an archaeologist was required to monitor the excavation. No one expected the trench to produce much.

But, It did.

Artifacts began surfacing almost immediately. Enough that the Forest Service contacted the Utah State Historic Preservation Office for help. Lexi Little, who coordinates the Utah Cultural Site Stewardship Program, helped mobilize nearly 30 volunteers to assist with what quickly became a focused two-week excavation.

Winter deadlines were approaching. The pipes for the reservoirs had to go in the ground. There wasn’t time for a slow, extended dig.

“It was two weeks of digging in the dirt and helping figure out exactly what we were looking at,” Little said.

Most of the people screening soil weren’t professional archaeologists. They were trained stewards from around Utah — part of a statewide volunteer network that now approaches 500 people. They poured dirt through shaker screens, scanning for fragments that could piece together a town long buried.

“Archaeology is human trash,” Little explained. “Archaeologists are very into trash.”

Alta had left plenty behind.

https://youtu.be/hzIHzx3OGoo?si=dKcl2CEz-t6FZzYw

Victorian-style ceramics appeared first — the kind typically used in hotels. Medicine bottles followed. Ink bottles. Hand-blown glass. A porcelain doll’s foot surfaced from the soil, a small detail that shifted the mental image of the town. Families were here. Children were here. This wasn’t only a camp of miners.

The bottles helped establish time. Manufacturing details — whether glass was hand-blown or mold-made, whether a maker’s mark appeared on the base — allowed archaeologists to date many of the artifacts to the 1870s through the 1890s, when Alta was booming as a silver mining town.

“That gives you that range of dates for when Alta was really booming,” Little said.

One reusable soda bottle clearly stamped “Salt Lake City” connected the canyon to the valley economy below.

Then something unusual rolled out of a dirt pile.

A corked bottle. Intact. Liquid still inside.

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