We’re told it takes a village to raise a child.
It’s one of those phrases everyone loves. Politicians use it. Community leaders use it. Parents use it. We repeat it so often that it has become accepted wisdom, the sort of thing nobody would dare disagree with.
The trouble is that we’ve become so busy repeating the phrase that we’ve stopped asking what it actually means.
Who is building the village?
And who is maintaining it? And who is making sure it’s still there in ten or twenty years?
Because the uncomfortable truth is that while we continue to talk fondly about the importance of community, we’ve spent decades systematically underinvesting in the very things that make community possible.
We speak endlessly about loneliness, mental health, social cohesion, youth disengagement and community safety. We commission reviews. We publish strategies. We announce initiatives. We hold inquiries, roundtables, and summits to discuss why people feel increasingly disconnected from one another.
Then we quietly neglect the places, organisations and relationships that hold communities together.
It’s a strange thing to witness.
Perhaps that’s why this conversation feels so urgent. At a time when people are talking about loneliness, declining trust, social division and the fraying of public life, we should not be surprised that communities are struggling. We have spent decades treating connection as a by-product rather than a public good. The harvest reflects the investment.
We seem determined to fund the consequences of community breakdown while treating investment in community itself as an optional extra.
Every year governments spend billions responding to crisis. Housing stress. Family breakdown. Social isolation. Disengaged young people. Growing demand for mental health services. Communities struggling to recover from disasters and economic shocks.
These responses matter. Of course they do.
But at some point, surely, we have to ask whether our approach has become trapped in a never-ending cycle of intervention without prevention.
The old saying about funding the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff remains as relevant today as ever. What has changed is the scale. We have become incredibly good at building bigger ambulances, employing more ambulance drivers and expanding the road to the hospital. Yet we pay very little attention to the condition of the fence at the top of the cliff.
The fence, in this case, is community. Not community as a slogan.
Community as a living, breathing thing.
The relationships that exist between neighbours.
The places where people gather.
The organisations that build trust.
The networks that connect people before they find themselves alone, isolated or in crisis.
For reasons that nobody has ever adequately explained, we have reached a point where governments readily accept the need to invest in roads, schools, transport systems, libraries, sporting facilities and public buildings, yet continue to treat the infrastructure that allows people to know one another, participate in community life and respond collectively to local challenges as though it were somehow less important.
Yet when communities weaken, the costs are felt everywhere.
We see it in growing loneliness.
We see it in declining trust.
We see it in the increasing number of people who feel disconnected from the places where they live.
We see it whenever people no longer know their neighbours, no longer participate in community life and no longer believe they can influence what happens around them.
What we call a social crisis is often the accumulated result of years of community erosion. It rarely happens overnight!
A local group folds.
A gathering place closes.
Volunteer numbers decline.
Opportunities for participation disappear.
People become more isolated from one another.
The threads begin to fray.
Then one day we collectively look around and ask what happened to community.As though it vanished by accident. The reality is much simpler.
Communities don’t simply exist.
They are built.
They are nurtured.
They are maintained.
And like every other form of infrastructure we rely upon, they require ongoing investment.
That is why the Local Community Services Association’s campaign to fund Neighbourhood and Community Centres as Essential Social Infrastructure matters.
Not because neighbourhood centres are special, but because communities are.
Neighbourhood and community centres are among the few remaining places whose primary purpose is helping people connect. They create opportunities for participation. They support volunteering. They build local leadership. They help people navigate difficult times. They provide welcoming spaces where relationships can form, and community can grow.
Most importantly, they help create the conditions under which people are more likely to thrive than merely survive.
Yet too often this work is treated as peripheral. Nice to have. Valuable if funding permits.
As though belonging were optional.
As though trust somehow builds itself.
As though healthy communities emerge naturally without effort, investment or care.
History tells us otherwise.
Strong communities have always required deliberate investment. Every generation inherits social infrastructure built by those who came before them. The question is whether we intend to leave that infrastructure stronger or weaker for those who follow.
This debate is not really about neighbourhood centres. It is about whether we believe people deserve places where they can belong.
It is about whether we value participation as much as we value consumption.
It is about whether we think relationships matter.
It is about whether we are prepared to invest in the foundations of healthy communities rather than endlessly paying for the consequences of their absence.
The truth is that nobody is arguing against stronger communities.
Nobody is arguing against social connection.
Nobody is arguing against belonging.
What we are arguing about is whether those things are worth investing in.
I believe they are. In fact, I believe they may be among the most important investments we can make.
Because if it truly takes a village to raise a child, support a family, welcome a newcomer, care for an older person and help people through difficult times, then surely, we have a responsibility to ensure the village still exists.
Not just as a comforting phrase.
Not as a nostalgic idea.
But as a real and living part of Australian life.
So support the Local Community Services Association campaign.
Sign the petition.
Share it.
Talk about it.
But don’t do so because neighbourhood centres need saving.
Do it because strong communities don’t happen by accident.
Somebody builds them.
Somebody maintains them.
Somebody invests in them.
Because villages do not appear by accident, somebody builds them. Somebody maintains them. Somebody invests in them. The question facing us today is whether we intend to be that generation, or the one that allowed the village to disappear while wondering why nobody felt connected anymore.
Support the campaign:
“We keep asking why people feel disconnected. Perhaps the better question is why we’ve spent so many years disinvesting in the places and relationships that create connection in the first place.”
Michael Mackenzie Shreenan
CEO, Counterpoint Community Services
Operations manager of the International Federation of Settlements
And founder of Provocare Coaching
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