essay on defining community

How to Write the Community Essay – Guide with Examples (2023-24)

September 6, 2023

Students applying to college this year will inevitably confront the community essay. In fact, most students will end up responding to several community essay prompts for different schools. For this reason, you should know more than simply how to approach the community essay as a genre. Rather, you will want to learn how to decipher the nuances of each particular prompt, in order to adapt your response appropriately. In this article, we’ll show you how to do just that, through several community essay examples. These examples will also demonstrate how to avoid cliché and make the community essay authentically and convincingly your own.

Emphasis on Community

Do keep in mind that inherent in the word “community” is the idea of multiple people. The personal statement already provides you with a chance to tell the college admissions committee about yourself as an individual. The community essay, however, suggests that you depict yourself among others. You can use this opportunity to your advantage by showing off interpersonal skills, for example. Or, perhaps you wish to relate a moment that forged important relationships. This in turn will indicate what kind of connections you’ll make in the classroom with college peers and professors.

Apart from comprising numerous people, a community can appear in many shapes and sizes. It could be as small as a volleyball team, or as large as a diaspora. It could fill a town soup kitchen, or spread across five boroughs. In fact, due to the internet, certain communities today don’t even require a physical place to congregate. Communities can form around a shared identity, shared place, shared hobby, shared ideology, or shared call to action. They can even arise due to a shared yet unforeseen circumstance.

What is the Community Essay All About?             

In a nutshell, the community essay should exhibit three things:

• An aspect of yourself, 2. in the context of a community you belonged to, and 3. how this experience may shape your contribution to the community you’ll join in college.

It may look like a fairly simple equation: 1 + 2 = 3. However, each college will word their community essay prompt differently, so it’s important to look out for additional variables. One college may use the community essay as a way to glimpse your core values. Another may use the essay to understand how you would add to diversity on campus. Some may let you decide in which direction to take it—and there are many ways to go!

To get a better idea of how the prompts differ, let’s take a look at some real community essay prompts from the current admission cycle.

Sample 2023-2024 Community Essay Prompts

1) brown university.

“Students entering Brown often find that making their home on College Hill naturally invites reflection on where they came from. Share how an aspect of your growing up has inspired or challenged you, and what unique contributions this might allow you to make to the Brown community. (200-250 words)”

A close reading of this prompt shows that Brown puts particular emphasis on place. They do this by using the words “home,” “College Hill,” and “where they came from.” Thus, Brown invites writers to think about community through the prism of place. They also emphasize the idea of personal growth or change, through the words “inspired or challenged you.” Therefore, Brown wishes to see how the place you grew up in has affected you. And, they want to know how you in turn will affect their college community.

“NYU was founded on the belief that a student’s identity should not dictate the ability for them to access higher education. That sense of opportunity for all students, of all backgrounds, remains a part of who we are today and a critical part of what makes us a world-class university. Our community embraces diversity, in all its forms, as a cornerstone of the NYU experience.

We would like to better understand how your experiences would help us to shape and grow our diverse community. Please respond in 250 words or less.”

Here, NYU places an emphasis on students’ “identity,” “backgrounds,” and “diversity,” rather than any physical place. (For some students, place may be tied up in those ideas.) Furthermore, while NYU doesn’t ask specifically how identity has changed the essay writer, they do ask about your “experience.” Take this to mean that you can still recount a specific moment, or several moments, that work to portray your particular background. You should also try to link your story with NYU’s values of inclusivity and opportunity.

3) University of Washington

“Our families and communities often define us and our individual worlds. Community might refer to your cultural group, extended family, religious group, neighborhood or school, sports team or club, co-workers, etc. Describe the world you come from and how you, as a product of it, might add to the diversity of the UW. (300 words max) Tip: Keep in mind that the UW strives to create a community of students richly diverse in cultural backgrounds, experiences, values and viewpoints.”

UW ’s community essay prompt may look the most approachable, for they help define the idea of community. You’ll notice that most of their examples (“families,” “cultural group, extended family, religious group, neighborhood”…) place an emphasis on people. This may clue you in on their desire to see the relationships you’ve made. At the same time, UW uses the words “individual” and “richly diverse.” They, like NYU, wish to see how you fit in and stand out, in order to boost campus diversity.

Writing Your First Community Essay

Begin by picking which community essay you’ll write first. (For practical reasons, you’ll probably want to go with whichever one is due earliest.) Spend time doing a close reading of the prompt, as we’ve done above. Underline key words. Try to interpret exactly what the prompt is asking through these keywords.

Next, brainstorm. I recommend doing this on a blank piece of paper with a pencil. Across the top, make a row of headings. These might be the communities you’re a part of, or the components that make up your identity. Then, jot down descriptive words underneath in each column—whatever comes to you. These words may invoke people and experiences you had with them, feelings, moments of growth, lessons learned, values developed, etc. Now, narrow in on the idea that offers the richest material and that corresponds fully with the prompt.

Lastly, write! You’ll definitely want to describe real moments, in vivid detail. This will keep your essay original, and help you avoid cliché. However, you’ll need to summarize the experience and answer the prompt succinctly, so don’t stray too far into storytelling mode.

How To Adapt Your Community Essay

Once your first essay is complete, you’ll need to adapt it to the other colleges involving community essays on your list. Again, you’ll want to turn to the prompt for a close reading, and recognize what makes this prompt different from the last. For example, let’s say you’ve written your essay for UW about belonging to your swim team, and how the sports dynamics shaped you. Adapting that essay to Brown’s prompt could involve more of a focus on place. You may ask yourself, how was my swim team in Alaska different than the swim teams we competed against in other states?

Once you’ve adapted the content, you’ll also want to adapt the wording to mimic the prompt. For example, let’s say your UW essay states, “Thinking back to my years in the pool…” As you adapt this essay to Brown’s prompt, you may notice that Brown uses the word “reflection.” Therefore, you might change this sentence to “Reflecting back on my years in the pool…” While this change is minute, it cleverly signals to the reader that you’ve paid attention to the prompt, and are giving that school your full attention.

What to Avoid When Writing the Community Essay  

• Avoid cliché. Some students worry that their idea is cliché, or worse, that their background or identity is cliché. However, what makes an essay cliché is not the content, but the way the content is conveyed. This is where your voice and your descriptions become essential.
• Avoid giving too many examples. Stick to one community, and one or two anecdotes arising from that community that allow you to answer the prompt fully.
• Don’t exaggerate or twist facts. Sometimes students feel they must make themselves sound more “diverse” than they feel they are. Luckily, diversity is not a feeling. Likewise, diversity does not simply refer to one’s heritage. If the prompt is asking about your identity or background, you can show the originality of your experiences through your actions and your thinking.

Community Essay Examples and Analysis

Brown university community essay example.

I used to hate the NYC subway. I’ve taken it since I was six, going up and down Manhattan, to and from school. By high school, it was a daily nightmare. Spending so much time underground, underneath fluorescent lighting, squashed inside a rickety, rocking train car among strangers, some of whom wanted to talk about conspiracy theories, others who had bedbugs or B.O., or who manspread across two seats, or bickered—it wore me out. The challenge of going anywhere seemed absurd. I dreaded the claustrophobia and disgruntlement.

Yet the subway also inspired my understanding of community. I will never forget the morning I saw a man, several seats away, slide out of his seat and hit the floor. The thump shocked everyone to attention. What we noticed: he appeared drunk, possibly homeless. I was digesting this when a second man got up and, through a sort of awkward embrace, heaved the first man back into his seat. The rest of us had stuck to subway social codes: don’t step out of line. Yet this second man’s silent actions spoke loudly. They said, “I care.”

That day I realized I belong to a group of strangers. What holds us together is our transience, our vulnerabilities, and a willingness to assist. This community is not perfect but one in motion, a perpetual work-in-progress. Now I make it my aim to hold others up. I plan to contribute to the Brown community by helping fellow students and strangers in moments of precariousness.    

Brown University Community Essay Example Analysis

Here the student finds an original way to write about where they come from. The subway is not their home, yet it remains integral to ideas of belonging. The student shows how a community can be built between strangers, in their responsibility toward each other. The student succeeds at incorporating key words from the prompt (“challenge,” “inspired” “Brown community,” “contribute”) into their community essay.

UW Community Essay Example

I grew up in Hawaii, a world bound by water and rich in diversity. In school we learned that this sacred land was invaded, first by Captain Cook, then by missionaries, whalers, traders, plantation owners, and the U.S. government. My parents became part of this problematic takeover when they moved here in the 90s. The first community we knew was our church congregation. At the beginning of mass, we shook hands with our neighbors. We held hands again when we sang the Lord’s Prayer. I didn’t realize our church wasn’t “normal” until our diocese was informed that we had to stop dancing hula and singing Hawaiian hymns. The order came from the Pope himself.

Eventually, I lost faith in God and organized institutions. I thought the banning of hula—an ancient and pure form of expression—seemed medieval, ignorant, and unfair, given that the Hawaiian religion had already been stamped out. I felt a lack of community and a distrust for any place in which I might find one. As a postcolonial inhabitant, I could never belong to the Hawaiian culture, no matter how much I valued it. Then, I was shocked to learn that Queen Ka’ahumanu herself had eliminated the Kapu system, a strict code of conduct in which women were inferior to men. Next went the Hawaiian religion. Queen Ka’ahumanu burned all the temples before turning to Christianity, hoping this religion would offer better opportunities for her people.

Community Essay (Continued)

I’m not sure what to make of this history. Should I view Queen Ka’ahumanu as a feminist hero, or another failure in her islands’ tragedy? Nothing is black and white about her story, but she did what she thought was beneficial to her people, regardless of tradition. From her story, I’ve learned to accept complexity. I can disagree with institutionalized religion while still believing in my neighbors. I am a product of this place and their presence. At UW, I plan to add to campus diversity through my experience, knowing that diversity comes with contradictions and complications, all of which should be approached with an open and informed mind.

UW Community Essay Example Analysis

This student also manages to weave in words from the prompt (“family,” “community,” “world,” “product of it,” “add to the diversity,” etc.). Moreover, the student picks one of the examples of community mentioned in the prompt, (namely, a religious group,) and deepens their answer by addressing the complexity inherent in the community they’ve been involved in. While the student displays an inner turmoil about their identity and participation, they find a way to show how they’d contribute to an open-minded campus through their values and intellectual rigor.

What’s Next

For more on supplemental essays and essay writing guides, check out the following articles:

• How to Write the Why This Major Essay + Example
• How to Write the Overcoming Challenges Essay + Example
• How to Start a College Essay – 12 Techniques and Tips
• College Essay

Kaylen Baker

With a BA in Literary Studies from Middlebury College, an MFA in Fiction from Columbia University, and a Master’s in Translation from Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis, Kaylen has been working with students on their writing for over five years. Previously, Kaylen taught a fiction course for high school students as part of Columbia Artists/Teachers, and served as an English Language Assistant for the French National Department of Education. Kaylen is an experienced writer/translator whose work has been featured in Los Angeles Review, Hybrid, San Francisco Bay Guardian, France Today, and Honolulu Weekly, among others.

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How Do You Define Community and Why Is it Important?

• First Online: 30 September 2023

Cite this chapter

• Laurene Tumiel-Berhalter 18 &
• Linda Kahn 18  

Part of the book series: Philosophy and Medicine ((PHME,volume 146))

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Researchers have an ethical responsibility to understand the communities they invite to participate in their research and that their research ultimately impacts. The commonalities that characterize a community are broad and complex, and everyone belongs to multiple, diverse, formal, and informal communities. Understanding experiences of members of different communities can help researchers fine tune their questions, assesses disparities faced by these communities, refine recruitment strategies, and assess whether proposed interventions would be equally as effective in the broader patient population. Before planning research with or in any community, it is important to explore what data has already been collected. Incorporating community voices can also help frame research to be the most inclusive and therefore more generalizable. When researchers understand a community, this can help with recruitment and improve study outcomes.

• Intersectionality

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Acknowledgements

We are truly grateful to the many community partners that we have worked with over the years that have shared their stories, their insight, and their passion with us. We are honored to have been part of your lives and humbled by all you have taught us.

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Tumiel-Berhalter, L., Kahn, L. (2023). How Do You Define Community and Why Is it Important?. In: Anderson, E.E. (eds) Ethical Issues in Community and Patient Stakeholder–Engaged Health Research. Philosophy and Medicine, vol 146. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40379-8_7

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What is 'community' and why is it important?

Article highlights.

.@tobyjlowe shares his thoughts on what 'community' means & why its an important concept for those interested in #socialchange

.@tobyjlowe defines a community as "a group of people who share an identity-forming narrative", but why is this a helpful concept for understanding & creating social change?

"Community is an important concept for social change because it helps us to see that social change requires a change in some of the most important stories we tell ourselves" @tobyjlowe

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The following thoughts are a brief summary of my PhD. The PhD was written in the 1990s but its central theme — the use and misuse of the term “community” in politics — seems not to have gone away. So, for what it’s worth, here are my thoughts on what “community” means and why it’s an important concept for people interested in social change…

The word “community” has a strange power to it. It conveys a sense of togetherness and positivity. It speaks both of solidarity and homeliness. For example, attach the word “community” to “policing” and it turns the legitimate monopoly power of the state over the use of force into something warm and cuddly.

You will hear “community” from the mouths of politicians, officials and other people with microphones in their hands. They speak of “the community” and how important it is to listen to, consult with or hear the voice of this strange collective thing. You will never hear someone in this context say that “community” is a thing that can be ignored or should be feared. And you will, almost never, hear people say what they mean by “community”.

The word “community” has a strange power to it. It conveys a sense of togetherness and positivity. It speaks both of solidarity and homeliness.

So — what does community mean? And why is it important?

Here are the things that I think a definition of community must be able to explain in order to reflect the various communities in the world, and to be useful as a tool for social analysis.

A definition of community must be able to account for the different types of communities that exist in the world. For example, it must be able to account for both a community of place, and something more dispersed, like “the academic community” or “the Islamic community”.

It must be able to account for the positive feelings that people have about “community” (e.g. the sense of togetherness) but without saying that “community” is necessarily good (after all, one of the best examples of a community is the Mafia, and even with the kindest reading of their activities, you’d struggle to argue that, on balance, they are a force for good in the world).

It must be able to explain the sense of identity and belonging associated with “community”. It must explain the feeling of pride or hurt we feel when a community of which we are part is praised or attacked. And it must explain the in group/out group nature of this identity — why some people are part of a particular community, and others are not.

It must be able to explain why “community” has the normative (moral) power that it does –how communities shape our sense of what ‘good’ and ‘bad’ means. For example, our community shapes our understanding of what being a good neighbour, means — the shared understanding of how we should treat people around here.

It must be able to explain why “community” is different from other social groups — such as “society”, “family” or just a group of people.

It must be able to account for the fact that people can be part of different communities simultaneously.

Given that framing, I offer this as my definition of “community”:

A community is a group of people who share an identity-forming narrative.

This means, a group of people who share a story that is so important to them that it defines an aspect of who they are. Those people build the shared story archetypes (characters) of that community into their sense of themselves; they build the history of those communities into their own personal history; and they see the world through the lens of those shared stories.

So, one of the communities that I consider myself to be part of is the community based around the city of Newcastle. The manifestations of this are that I take pride in showing people around the city. I feel slighted when people say horrible things about it. I feel at home whenever I hear a Geordie (Newcastle) accent (despite not having one myself). And so on.

But what makes me part of this community is my choice to write Newcastle’s stories into my own story: the character traits for how Geordies are supposed to behave (be friendly, talk to strangers at bus stops, support Newcastle United etc etc) are character traits that I have adopted. I take part in shared events where this story is played out — such as attending football matches at St James Park and other cultural events in the city. I feel that arguments about the future of the city (should this building be built here? What green spaces does the city need? etc etc) are arguments about my own future. I see arguments about the UK’s future through the lens of the future of Newcastle.

It is this choice to participate in the making and remaking of these stories about the city that makes me part of the community of Newcastle. It’s not just about where you live, or where you work: it is possible to live and work in Newcastle without doing these things, without becoming part of this community. And there are many people who are from Newcastle originally, but who now live elsewhere, who would still consider themselves part of the Newcastle community because they still take an active part in conversations about what it means to be a part of this community.

Let’s see how this definition works against the six key criteria for being an accurate and useful definition of “community”:

It can account for all the different kinds of community — what people call “communities of interest” and “communities of place”. The essence of community is a shared story — that story can be about a place, or it can be about a religion, or any other social practice. It challenges the notion of “communities of identity” by saying that all communities are communities of identity, so “community of identity” isn’t a helpful concept (it’s tautological).

It can account for the positive feelings people have about being part of a community. The sense of a shared identity, of being part of something larger than we are, is well known as a source of good feeling. But it is also morally-neutral. Being part of a community is just part of how we live our lives. Communities can be positive social forces, doing good in the world, and they can be negative, doing harm (and they can be both of those things at once). Community is not, in and of itself, morally praiseworthy. It just is.

This definition of community explains the nature of shared identity in communities, and highlights the specific mechanism by which this occurs. It is the process of telling a story about yourself that draws on the shared cultural story archetypes which creates and maintains a shared identity. It is the process of a set of people sharing (and arguing) about a particular set of stories — their meaning, interpretation and value — that reinforces those social bonds and creates the shared cultural resources.

It explains why community has the normative (moral) force that it does, because it is our narratives that provide us with our explanations for what good/bad look like. A good neighbour is someone who fits the story we tell ourselves about how a good neighbour behaves, a good colleague is someone who fits with the archetype of how that character behaves etc. Our narratives provide our moral framing.

It explains why “community” is different from other types of social groups. A community is a group with a shared identity-forming narrative. This is different from the set of people who live in a place, or have a shared interest. A group of people waiting at a bus stop have a shared interest, but they are not a community. (Unless they’ve been waiting for a really long time…)

The definition understands that people can be part of many communities simultaneously, and also how they can become part of (and drift away from) particular communities. It also is able to account for the tension that people can feel when they are part of multiple communities — when different aspects of their identity-defining stories clash, for example.

A group of people who share a story that is so important to them that it defines an aspect of who they are. Those people build the shared story archetypes (characters) of that community into their sense of themselves; they build the history of those communities into their own personal history; and they see the world through the lens of those shared stories.

Why does this matter?

On one level, this is simply a plea for a more precise use of language. I am not saying that “community” is the only (or even most important) social grouping, but it is a particular type of social grouping that explains the strong sense of shared identity that people feel, and membership of particular groups give us a lens through which we see the world.

Sometimes, this will make “community” important to our political (policy/management) conversations. Many times community will not be relevant. In those cases people should stop using the word “community” just to generate a warm fuzzy feeling, or as a euphemism for talking about poor people. If you mean “people”, say “people”. If you mean “community”, say which community you mean, and say why those identity-forming narratives are important to what you’re trying to do.

Why ‘community’ is a helpful concept for understanding and creating social change

I think my key message is that community is an important concept for social change because it helps us to see that social change requires a change in some of the most important stories we tell ourselves. Social change requires that we rewrite our communal narratives. Social change is change in community.

SOCIAL CHANGE IS ALWAYS PARTICULAR — IT LOOKS AND FEELS DIFFERENT DEPENDING ON THE COMMUNITIES OF WHICH YOU ARE PART

Our communities shape our understanding of the world. If you’re looking to create change in the world, it is these meanings and understandings which have to change. This applies whether the change you seek is macro scale (like gender equality) or micro scale (like making this street a better place to live).

It is easy to understand why changing people’s sense of community is important on the micro scale (if you want to change how it is to live on this street, you need people’s sense of what it means to live on this street, and what is possible for the people who live here —  like this story of change in Granby ).

It is less immediately obvious why ‘community’ is important for macro change like gender equality. I think it is important because what gender equality looks like will be different for each community. Translating gender equality from the abstract language of human rights into the concrete practices of people requires each set of stories that define men and women’s roles in each community to change (and also the stories that construct our sense of what men and women are). It is change in these stories that makes macro change real.

NARRATIVE CHANGE IS (PART OF) SOCIAL CHANGE

This understanding helps us to understand that a key part of social change is narrative change. It helps us to ask the following types of question: what are the stories that define our understanding of how life should be lived in this context? Who and what shapes those stories? Where are they told, and who tells them? In technical language, social change must include the politics of narrative construction.

Obviously, these aren’t the only important questions. But if they’re not addressed, social change becomes significantly harder.

CHALLENGING OUR OWN NARRATIVES

If social change involves narrative change for each community, then it is up to members of those communities to challenge and refresh their own narrative construction processes. We know that imposing change on the stories of others is perilous (and usually counter-productive). That gives each community a responsibility to (critically) reflect on their own stories, and on the story-making process. What do our stories have to say about justice/care/kindness (whatever value is the subject of reflection)? Who is involved in this process? Who gets to explore and tell their stories? Whose voice counts?

Community is an important concept for social change because it helps us to see that social change requires a change in some of the most important stories we tell ourselves. Social change requires that we rewrite our communal narratives. Social change is change in community.

FREEDOM, DIVERSITY AND TOLERANCE

We can also view other questions through the lens of community. What’s our attitude to those who don’t share our stories? What can we learn from the narratives of others? What is required for people to have a voice in our shared story-making?

And finally, community helps us to understand what freedom means. It means being free to write your own story — and that is both an individual and collective process. It means being free to find the community that best suits you, and it means participating in the creation of narratives that enable others to be free.

In conclusion

I hope that’s been useful. Inevitably, some of the shortcuts I’ve taken in order to fit this into any kind of readable length mean I’ve also skipped over a range of important ideas and questions too quickly. But I hope some of the key ideas are expressed with enough clarity to be useful.

My grateful thanks to Pritpal Tamber for giving helpful feedback on drafts of this. Go check out his excellent work on Health and Community .

This piece is also published on Medium here .

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What Is Community Anyway?

Our understanding of community can help funders and evaluators identify, understand, and strengthen the communities they work with.

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By David M. Chavis & Kien Lee May 12, 2015

“Community” is so easy to say. The word itself connects us with each other. It describes an experience so common that we never really take time to explain it. It seems so simple, so natural, and so human. In the social sector, we often add it to the names of social innovations as a symbol of good intentions (for example, community mental health, community policing, community-based philanthropy, community economic development).

But the meaning of community is complex. And, unfortunately, insufficient understanding of what a community is and its role in the lives of people in diverse societies has led to the downfall of many well-intended “community” efforts.

Adding precision to our understanding of community can help funders and evaluators identify, understand, and strengthen the communities they work with. There has been a great deal of research in the social sciences about what a human community is (see for example, Chavis and Wandersman, 1990 ; Nesbit, 1953 ; Putnam, 2000 ). Here, we blend that research with our experience as evaluators and implementers of community change initiatives.

It’s about people.

First and foremost, community is not a place, a building, or an organization; nor is it an exchange of information over the Internet. Community is both a feeling and a set of relationships among people. People form and maintain communities to meet common needs.

Members of a community have a sense of trust, belonging, safety, and caring for each other. They have an individual and collective sense that they can, as part of that community, influence their environments and each other.

That treasured feeling of community comes from shared experiences and a sense of—not necessarily the actual experience of—shared history. As a result, people know who is and isn’t part of their community. This feeling is fundamental to human existence.

Neighborhoods, companies, schools, and places of faith are context and environments for these communities, but they are not communities themselves.

People live in multiple communities.

Since meeting common needs is the driving force behind the formation of communities, most people identify and participate in several of them, often based on neighborhood, nation, faith, politics, race or ethnicity, age, gender, hobby, or sexual orientation.

Most of us participate in multiple communities within a given day. The residential neighborhood remains especially important for single mothers, families living in poverty, and the elderly because their sense of community and relationships to people living near them are the basis for the support they need. But for many, community lies beyond. Technology and transportation have made community possible in ways that were unimaginable just a few decades ago.

Communities are nested within each other.

Just like Russian Matryoshka dolls, communities often sit within other communities. For example, in a neighborhood—a community in and of itself—there may be ethnic or racial communities, communities based on people of different ages and with different needs, and communities based on common economic interests.

When a funder or evaluator looks at a neighborhood, they often struggle with its boundaries, as if streets can bind social relationships. Often they see a neighborhood as the community, when, in fact, many communities are likely to exist within it, and each likely extends well beyond the physical boundaries of the neighborhood.

Communities have formal and informal institutions.

Communities form institutions—what we usually think of as large organizations and systems such as schools, government, faith, law enforcement, or the nonprofit sector—to more effectively fulfill their needs.

Equally important, however, are communities’ informal institutions, such as the social or cultural networks of helpers and leaders (for example, council of elders, barbershops, rotating credit and savings associations, gardening clubs). Lower-income and immigrant communities, in particular, rely heavily on these informal institutions to help them make decisions, save money, solve family or intra-community problems, and link to more-formal institutions.

Communities are organized in different ways.

Every community is organized to meet its members’ needs, but they operate differently based on the cultures, religions, and other experiences of their members. For example, while the African American church is generally understood as playing an important role in promoting health education and social justice for that community, not all faith institutions such as the mosque or Buddhist temple are organized and operate in the same way.

Global migration has led to an assortment of communities based on people’s needs and desire for that sense of trust, belonging, safety, and caring for each other. For example, one group of new immigrants may form a community around its need to advocate for better treatment by law enforcement. Another group may form a community around its need for spiritual guidance. The former may not look like a community, as we imagine them, while the latter likely will.

The meaning of community requires more thoughtfulness and deliberation than we typically give it. Going forward, researchers, practitioners, and policymakers must embrace this complexity—including the crucial impact communities have on health and well-being—as they strive to understand and create social change.

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Defining Community: The Essence of Connection and Collaboration

Table of contents, exploring the dimensions of community, the role of community in individuals' lives, fostering unity and collaboration, challenges and benefits of community, conclusion: the tapestry of human connection.

• Geographical Community: This refers to a group of people living in close proximity, often sharing physical spaces such as neighborhoods, towns, or cities.
• Social Community: It involves individuals connected by shared interests, values, hobbies, or affiliations, regardless of physical proximity.
• Cultural Community: This encompasses people who share common cultural practices, traditions, and historical backgrounds.
• Virtual Community: In the digital age, virtual communities are formed online through common interests, discussions, and interactions.
• Social Support: Communities provide a safety net of emotional, practical, and financial support during times of need.
• Shared Resources: Communities pool resources, skills, and knowledge, maximizing opportunities for growth and development.
• Identity and Belonging: Being part of a community provides a sense of belonging and helps individuals define their sense of self.
• Mutual Growth: Communities offer environments for learning, collaboration, and shared growth, fostering personal and collective development.
• Interconnectedness: Communities highlight the interconnected nature of human lives, reminding us that our actions impact those around us.
• Shared Responsibility: Individuals within a community are collectively responsible for its well-being, encouraging collaboration to address challenges.
• Collective Achievements: Achievements within a community are shared, amplifying the sense of pride and accomplishment.
• Cultural Exchange: Diverse communities provide opportunities for cultural exchange and understanding, breaking down barriers.
• Emotional Support: Communities provide a network for emotional solace and encouragement, particularly during tough times.
• Diverse Perspectives: Interacting with a diverse community exposes individuals to different viewpoints and enriches their understanding.
• Collaborative Problem-Solving: Collective efforts can lead to innovative solutions for challenges affecting the community.
• Resilience: Communities that work together develop resilience, facing adversity with strength and determination.

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How to Write the “Community” and “Issue” Yale Essays

This article was written based on the information and opinions presented by Hale Jaeger in a CollegeVine livestream. You can watch the full livestream for more info. 

What’s Covered

The “community” essay: choosing a community, structuring the “community” essay, the “issue” essay: choosing your issue, issues to avoid, structuring the “issue” essay.

In this article, we discuss strategies for writing Yale University ’s “Community” and “Issue” supplemental essays. Applicants using the Common App or Coalition Application to apply to Yale are required to choose one of these two prompts and respond to it in 400 words or fewer. The first prompt is the “Issue” essay prompt, which reads:

Yale carries out its mission “through the free exchange of ideas in an ethical, interdependent, and diverse community.” Reflect on a time when you exchanged ideas about an important issue with someone holding an opposing view. How did the experience lead you either to change your opinion or to sharpen your reasons for holding onto it? (400 words)

The second prompt is the “Community” essay prompt:

Reflect on a time when you have worked to enhance a community to which you feel connected. Why have these efforts been meaningful to you? You may define community however you like. (400 words)

In this article, we discuss choosing topics for each of these essays and strategies to structure them.

The Yale “Community” essay prompt clearly states that you can define community however you wish, which means you can choose to write about any kind of community that you feel you are a member of. When considering potential communities, start by brainstorming any groups you are part of that have defined boundaries, such as your town, school, team, or religious organization.

There are also informal communities that you could choose from, such as your friend group, family, coworkers, or neighborhood. Even though these groups have less of a formal definition, they are still communities. What matters most is that the community that you choose is important to you, that you have contributed to it, and that you have learned something from it.

When structuring this essay, think about it in three sections. The first introduces the community, the second demonstrates your contributions to the community, and the third explains what the community has given and taught you. As you write, keep in mind that this essay is a two-way street; you want to show what you have given to your community and what it has given you.

Introduce the Community

The first step in writing this essay is to introduce the community. Explain who is part of the community and what the community is like. Highlight the community’s structure by demonstrating how you are part of it and how you interact with your peers, superiors, or inferiors within the group. It is also important to depict the community’s dynamic in this part of the essay. For example, is it fun, relaxed, and loving, or is it rigorous, challenging, and thought provoking? 

Show What You’ve Contributed

The next section of this essay should discuss your engagement with this community and what you’ve contributed to it. Consider what you’ve done, what initiatives you’ve brought to the community, and what your role is within it. You can also highlight anything that you had to give up to be part of the community.

Show What You’ve Learned

The last part of this essay should discuss what you have gained and learned from this community. For this portion, consider things that the community has given and taught you, as well as ways that it has helped you grow. Think about how this community has shaped who you are and who you are becoming.

The other prompt option is the “Issue” essay. The first step for this one is to define what your issue is. It doesn’t matter what you choose, as long as it’s something that has enough nuance for you to talk about it in a complex and intelligent way.

Make sure it’s an issue of some relevance to you; otherwise, it will come across as dispassionate. As you write this essay, you should show that you are somebody who cares about an issue that they think is significant. 

Grand Issues

When selecting an issue, you can either choose a grand one or a local one. Grand issues are big, unsolved problems that are common in society, such as cancer, homelessness, or food insecurity. If you do choose a grand issue, remind yourself of its personal importance. While grand issues are full of nuance, they may lack personal meaning. Examples of personal connections to grand issues could be if you have encountered homelessness, lived with food insecurity, or have lost someone to cancer.

Local Issues

Another topic option is to write about an issue that is local. For example, maybe your high school has a teaching staff that doesn’t represent the diversity of the student body. While this is not a global issue, it’s something that strongly affects you and your community. 

Perhaps you live in a town that is directly suffering from the opioid crisis, or you have divorced parents and have started an activist group for children of divorced parents. Both of these examples of local issues also have personal importance. 

When choosing a topic to write about, avoid issues that you don’t have any connection to and that aren’t personally important. These are often problems that are too grand and can’t be made personal, such as world peace. 

Another category of issues to avoid is anything that doesn’t align with Yale’s values. Yale, like most universities in the United States, generally has a liberal lean. As such, it is likely not in your best interest to write a strong defense of socially conservative values. While there are values that you are free to hold and express—and Yale welcomes people of all backgrounds and ideologies—this essay is not necessarily the best place to express them.

You are most likely applying to Yale because it’s a place that you want to be and have something in common with. This essay is a great opportunity to emphasize the values that you share with the university rather than the things that divide you. Since a reader only has five to seven minutes to go over your entire application, you don’t want them to come away with the sense that you are somebody who won’t thrive at Yale.

Define the Issue and Highlight Past Experiences

When writing the “Issue” essay, start by identifying the issue and sharing how you came across it. Then, provide insight into why it is meaningful to you and your relationship with it.

Next, show the reader how you have already engaged with the problem by detailing your past with the issue. 

Discuss Future Plans to Approach the Issue

After this, you can look forward and discuss your future with this issue. A great strategy is to write about how your Yale education will address the problem and how your field of study relates to it. You can also highlight any Yale-specific programs or opportunities that will give you insight or context for tackling the issue. 

Alternatively, if there is something about this issue that Yale’s academic flexibility will enable you to explore, you can share that in this part of the essay. For example, maybe you are interested in health policy and plan to take classes in the sciences. You also want to take classes in the history of health, science, and medicine, as well as political science and economics courses, which you plan to utilize to write new healthcare policies.

Another option is to focus on an aspect of Yale’s community, such as peers, professors, or mentors who will help develop your ability to navigate the issue. Ultimately, you want to demonstrate in this essay that what (and how) you learn at Yale will prepare you to take action and move forward with confronting your issue in the future.

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Community: essay on community (737 words) | sociology.

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Here is your essay on Community (737 Words)!

Community is another fundamental concept used in sociology. Because human civilization grows and develop in the lap of community. It is a well known fact that an individual rarely exists alone. He always lives with his fellows in a group. It is also equally true that one can’t be a member of all groups existing in the world. Hence an individual lives and establishes relations with those people who reside in a close proximity with him i.e. within definite territory.

Image Courtesy : theartrium.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/community.jpg

It is also obvious and natural that people residing in a definite area develop likeness, co-operation and fellow-feeling among themselves. As a result they share common customs, traditions, culture and develop common social ideas among themselves. This fact of common social living within a limited or definite geographical area gives birth to community.

But the origin and growth of community goes back to the origin of human civilization. Man has been living in community of some sort since his arrival. Community is the original and first abode of human civilization. The human civilization itself reared up in community. During pre-historic era man was leading a nomadic or barbarian life and was wandering here and there for food and could not settle up anywhere.

But when his mental horizon increased he learns the skill to collect food and other needs from a particular place mainly on river banks or fertile areas and permanently settled there. When a group of people or families lived together in a particular area which led them to share each other’s joys and sorrows, as a result a pattern of common living is created which marked the origin of community life. Gradually community life expands with the creation of different socio-economic, cultural and political relations among the people of a particular area. This lead to the emergence of different social, political, economic and cultural institutions. As a result a full- fledged community was created.

However, the term community has been derived from two Latin words ‘Com’ and ‘Munis’ which means ‘together’ and ‘servicing’ respectively. It consists of a group of people with common and shared interests. But in common discourses the term community very often wrongly used such as racial community, caste community, religious community etc.

Here the meaning of the term community differs from the one which is used in sociology. The term is also used both in a narrower and broader sense. In a narrow sense community refers to Hindu or Muslim community but in a broader sense community may refers to a nation or world community. It also refers to a village, a town or a tribal community.

When a group of individual or members of any group small or large live together and share a common life and have developed a strong sense of awe feeling among them they form a community. They enter into definite social, economic and cultural relations and have developed a sense of community consciousness which distinguishes them from others. A group of individuals or group of families living in Physical Proximity with each other in a definite geographical boundary constitutes a community.

But to understand the meaning of the term community we must have to give a look towards the definitions given by sociologists. But sociologists differ among themselves in their approach to the meaning of community. Some puts emphasis on area or ecological aspects where as others puts emphasis on psychological aspects.

(1) According to Maclver, “Community is an area of social living marked by some degree of social coherence”.

(2) According to Kingsley Davis, “Community is the smallest territorial group that can embrace all aspects of social life”.

(3) According to Ogburn and Nimkoff, “Community is the total organisation of social life within a limited area”.

(4) According to Arnold Green, “A Community is cluster of people, living within a contiguous small area, who share a common way of life”.

(5) According to E.S. Bogardus, “Community is a social group with some degree of’we-feeling’ and living in a given area.”

(6) According to G.A. Lundberg, “Community is a human population living within a limited geographic area and carrying on a common inter-dependent life”.

Thus, community refers to a group either small or large whose members live together in such a way that they share a common life and have developed a strong sense of community sentiment or consciousness among them which distinguishes them from others.

Related Articles:

• 13 Most Important Characteristics or Elements of Community
• Difference observed between Society and Community (324 Words) | Sociology

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Home — Essay Samples — Sociology — Discourse Community — “Discourse Community” by John Swales: Summary

"Discourse Community" by John Swales: Summary

• Categories: Cultural Phenomenon Discourse Community

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Words: 707 |

Published: Mar 16, 2024

Words: 707 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Table of contents

Defining discourse communities, genre analysis and communication, socialization and membership, criteria for discourse communities, criticisms and conclusion.

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Defining Characteristic of LGBTQ Community Essay

Introduction, lgbtq as a community, challenges in the community, benefits of the community.

A defining characteristic of human beings is that they are social creatures. As such, relationships play a crucial role in the lives of all individuals. In most cases, people with some similarities group together and form an entity known as a community. By definition, a community is a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals.

Every person has a strong need to belong to a community. We all desire to be accepted by the people around us. As a human being, I desire a relationship with people who have attitudes, interests, and goals similar to my own. I have found this relationship in the LGBTQ community, which I am a member of.

The LGBTQ is a community since it bares some of the defining characteristic of a community. Brown and Hannis (2012) document that a community possesses attributes that easily distinguish it from the rest of the society.

The distinguishing attribute of LGBTQ people is that they have non-heterosexual sexual orientations. Another community characteristic of members of the LGBTQ is that they share in a belief, which is that people should not be discriminated against because of their sexual preferences. In addition to this, the LGBTQ is a community since it is made up of a relatively small segment of the society.

There are a number of challenges to being a part of the LGBTQ community. To begin with, this community still exists in an environment where discrimination based on sexual orientation persists. While the society is today more accepting of LGBTQ lifestyles than in the past decades, there is still significant contempt and negative pressure for LGBTQ members. Fetner, et al. (2012) reveal that once a person is involved in the LGBTQ community, he/she becomes easy to identify by the rest of the society.

This can provoke a backlash and make visible some of the hostilities to LGBTQs that remain hidden so long as the LGBTQ people are not identifiable. Being a member of the community therefore exposes me to being targeted by intolerant people who have strong anti-gay sentiments. If I was not a member of the society, I might have been able to go undetected by such people and therefore avoid discrimination.

Within the community, there is a lot of dispute and infighting. At times it feels like the LGBTQ is made up of five separate communities that have been bundled together but do not share goals or interests. People in the LGBTQ are likely to gravitate to the individuals who most closely share their identity and experiences (Nash, 2011). Lesbians therefore form a sub-community within the LGBTQ and so do gays, bisexuals, transgender and queers.

In addition to this, there is a tendency of the gay and lesbian members to isolate the transgender from their social life (Nash, 2011). This is based on the perception that transgender is not a matter of sexual orientation and as such, the issues affecting this group are different from those of the lesbian, gay and bisexual peoples’. This affects the overall cohesion of the group making it harder to tackle the important issue of obtaining justice in the society.

In spite of the challenges experienced by the LGBTQ, this community imparts a sense of positive identity and belonging to its members. Fetner, Elafros and Bortolin (2012) confirm that the LGBTQ community is a form of social support for individuals who are likely to feel isolated in the wider society because of their sexuality.

While in this society, I feel empowered by being surrounded by people who share my values and attitudes. In addition to this, I am able to gain knowledge and skills from more experienced people in the community. The LGBTQ is a place for sharing experiences and learning from other members who have faced challenges that I am going through in life. By listening to other members, I am able to obtain important life lessons that I can apply in my life.

The LGBTQ community creates a space that is free of the prejudices and discriminative attitudes that are commonplace in the greater society. In this space, I am able to express myself without fear of being judged. Being in a place where I am understood and accepted is emotionally beneficial.

Without the safe environment provided by the community, LGBTQ individuals are at greater risk of a host of social problems including depression, suicide, and drug use (Fetner, et al., 2012). The LGBTQ plays a positive role by creating a safe environment for its members.

Membership to the LGBTQ community is optional and a person has to make an individual choice to join the community. A lot of people who are eligible for membership to the community due to their sexual orientation have not joined since they fear the stigma attached to being an LGBTQ.

My decision to be a member of the LGBTQ was based on my belief that there should be more advocates for the issues that the group currently faces. By being a member of the community, I can make a positive contribution and therefore play a part in bringing about complete equality for the group.

Being a member of the LGBTQ community provides me with the opportunity to access a number of facilities specially created for my community. On of these facilities is the 519, which is a community center that plays a major role in my community. This 519 was created to serve the LGBTQ community in the Toronto area. It offers space for my community to interact and form greater ties. There are a lot of activities that can be engaged in at this space including promoting awareness of LGBTQ issues.

The Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto (MCC) is a Toronto based church that is welcoming to the LGBTQ community. While the church also has a heterosexual membership, it openly affirms the LGBTQ people and advocates for sexual equality in spite of a person’s orientation (MCC, 2014).

While I am a Muslim, I regularly volunteer at the MCC church. I feel that this church plays a major role for member of my community. It provides spiritual nourishment to a community that is otherwise ostracized by the mainstream churches. For this reason, I feel that it is my duty to contribute to the church by providing my services through volunteering.

Belonging in a community is important for the healthy social functional of an individual. Through this paper, I have discussed my membership to the LGBTQ community. For me, being a member of the LGBTQ is not only a positive experience but a beneficial one. This community provides me with a sense of belonging and acceptance that cannot be obtained in the larger society.

Brown, J. D., & Hannis, D. (2012). Community Development in Canada. (2nd ed.). Toronto: Pearson Canada.

Fetner, T., Elafros, A., & Bortolin, S. (2012). Safe Spaces: Gay-Straight Alliances in High Schools. Canadian Review of Sociology, 49 (2), 188-207.

MCC (2014). The Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto: Mission Statement. Web.

Nash, C. J. (2011). Trans experiences in lesbian and queer space. Canadian Geographer, 55 (2), 192-207.

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Defining Community, Occupational And Environmental Health Essay

Type of paper: Essay

Topic: Human , Health , Environment , White Collar Crime , Community , Profession , Training , Risk

Published: 03/08/2020

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Community health is a common term in the field of public health. In essence, community health refers to the discipline, which entails the study and enhancement of the health features or characteristics of biological communities. Noticing that the term community health often has a wider meaning, the usual use of this term focuses on geographical regions instead of people having shared characteristics (Aviles & Filc, 2010). The medical interventions for improving the community health entail improving access to health care, public health campaigns, just but to mention a few. Similarly, the term environmental health is a usual term in the field of public health, which deals with all aspects within the built and natural environment that may influence the health status of human beings. Environmental health involves all the chemical, physical and biological factors that are external to the individual and all the related aspects influencing behaviors. The aforementioned definition excludes behaviors that are not relative to the environment as well as those that have a relationship to cultural and social environment. On the other hand, occupational health is a common term within the discipline of public health. It refers to the identification and control of risks originating from chemical, physical and other workplace hazards with an aim of establishing a healthy and safe working environment. Some of the hazards that occupational health professionals address include electricity, dangerous machinery, chemical agents and solvents, heavy metals such as mercury, loud noise among others (Vonville, 2008). In essence, occupational health programs include training of safety training for workers who handle hazardous wastes. In addition, such programs encompass comprehensive training on environmental restoration for residents living closer to polluted industrial waste sites. All the three branches, community health, occupational health and environmental health are similar to some extent. That is, regardless of their specific areas of focus, all the three branches of public health involve interventions that improve the health status of persons by addressing risk factors. On the contrary, differences among the three disciples exist. For example, community health focuses on the health of a group of people including the levels of well-being with the group while environmental health addresses risk factors external individuals. Occupational health is more different from the other two disciplines because it focuses on improving the health of persons by addressing risk factors in their particular working environments (Vonville, 2008).

Personally, my professional experience attests to the need to maintain high standards of environmental health for the safety of all humanity. While I was at Haiti in 2010 after the occurrence of the earthquake, I witnessed how people suffered from cholera because of using contaminated water. In essence, environmental health can have a serious impact on people’s health, a situation that may threaten human life. In conclusion, it is pertinent to address community, environmental and occupational health issues for the well-being of humanity. The access to health information, provision of safe working environment and campaigns for educating the public on health matters is pertinent to build a healthy and productive society. Therefore, collective responsibility is significant for the realization of health objectives and a quality life for everyone.

Avilés, L. A., & Filc, D. (2010). Evidence-Based Public Health: Origins, Assumptions, and Cautions. doi:10.1007/978-1-4419-1499-6_3 Vonville, H. (2008). A project to improve the information seeking skills and increase the use of evidence-based research in public health practice.

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Opinion Guest Essay

An Idyll on the Shores of a Toxic Lake

Supported by

Text by Jaime Lowe

Photographs by Nicholas Albrecht

Ms. Lowe is the author of, most recently, “Breathing Fire: Female Inmate Firefighters on the Front Lines of California’s Wildfires.” Mr. Albrecht is a photographer based in Oakland, Calif.

• March 29, 2024

There are two ways to experience the town of Bombay Beach, Calif., as a visitor: gawk at the spectacle or fall into the vortex. Thousands of tourists cruise through each year, often without getting out of their cars, to see decaying art installations left over from an annual mid-March gathering of artists, photographers and documentarians known jokingly as the Bombay Beach Biennale. When I went to the town for the first time in 2021, I was looking for salvation in this weird desert town on the Salton Sea south of Palm Springs and Joshua Tree National Park. I dropped in, felt vibes and left with stories. I stared at the eccentric large-scale art, posted photos on Instagram of ruin porn and a hot pink sign on the beach that said, “If you’re stuck, call Kim.” I posed in front of a mountain of painted televisions, swung on a swing over the edge of the lake’s retreating shoreline and explored the half-buried, rusted-out cars that make up an abandoned ersatz drive-in movie theater. On that trip, it felt as if I were inside a “Mad Max” simulation, but I was only scratching the surface of the town.

I returned in December to try to understand why Bombay Beach remains so compelling, especially as extreme weather — heat, hurricanes and drought — and pollution wreak ever more intense havoc on it. Summer temperatures can reach 120 degrees Fahrenheit, tremors from the San Andreas Fault strike regularly, bomb testing from nearby military facilities can be heard and felt, and the air is so toxic from pesticide use, exhaust fumes, factory emissions and dust rising from the retreating Salton Sea that one study showed asthma rates among children in the region are three times the national average. By the end of the decade, the Salton Sea, California’s largest inland body of water, at about 325 square miles, may lose three-quarters of its volume; in the past 20 years, the sea’s surface area has shrunk about 38 square miles .

But people who live in Bombay Beach stay because the town offers a tight-knit community in the midst of catastrophe. Though its residents contend with environmental adversity on a daily basis, they’re also demonstrating how to navigate the uncertain future we all face — neglect, the fight for scarce resources, destruction of home, the feeling of having no place to go. They are an example of how people can survive wild climate frontiers together.

The 250 or so town residents live in the low desert on the east shore of the Salton Sea, which formed in 1905 when the then-flush Colorado River spilled into a depression, creating a freshwater lake that became increasingly saline. There used to be fish — mullet and carp, then tilapia. In the 1950s and ’60s, the area was marketed as a tourist destination and was advertised as Palm Springs by the Sea. More tourists visited Bombay Beach than Yosemite. There were yacht clubs, boat races and water skiing. It became a celebrity magnet: Frank Sinatra hung out there; so did the Beach Boys and Sonny and Cher.

Eventually, as agricultural runoff kept accumulating in a body of water with no drainage, it became toxic and created a lake with salinity that is now 50 percent greater than that of the ocean. In the 1980s, dead fish washed up on the sand, car ruins rusted in the sun, tires rotted on the shore. Tourism vanished. But some in the community hung on. One way to define Bombay Beach is through environmental disaster, but another way is as an example of how to live through disaster and how to live in general.

Candace Youngberg, a town council member and a bartender at the Ski Inn, remembers a very different Bombay Beach. When she was growing up in the 1980s, she’d ride bikes with neighborhood children and run from yard to yard in a pack because there were no fences. But over time, the town changed. With each passing year, she watched necessities disappear. Now there’s no gas station, no laundromat, no hardware store. Fresh produce is hard to come by. A trailer that was devoted to medical care shut down. In 2021, 60.9 percent of Bombay Beach residents lived below the poverty line, compared with the national average of 12.6 percent.

As painful as it was to witness the town of her youth disappear and as deep as the problems there go, Ms. Youngberg admits that adversity bonded those who stayed. She wanted to return Bombay Beach to the version of the town she remembered, to recreate a beautiful place to live year-round, not just in winter, not just during the art season, not just for the tourists posing in front of wreckage. She wanted people to see the homes, the town, the community that once thrived thrive again. With the art came attention and the potential for more resources. She got on the Bombay Beach Community Services District, a town council, and started to work toward improvements like fixing the roads and planting trees to improve air quality.

It might just be that Bombay Beach is a small town, but when I visited last winter, there was something that felt more collaborative, as though everybody’s lives and business and projects overlapped. I’m not sure the community that’s there now started out as intentional, but when fragmented groups of people come together as custodians of an enigmatic space, responsible for protecting it and one another, community is inevitable. Plus, there’s only one place to socialize, one place to gossip, one place to dance out anxiety and only about two-thirds of a square mile to wander. Whether you like it or not, your neighbors are your people — a town in its purest form.

When I was there, I walked the streets with Denia Nealy, an artist who goes by Czar, and my friend Brenda Ann Kenneally, a photographer and writer, who would shout names, and people would instantly emerge. A stranger offered a handful of Tater Tots to Czar and me in a gesture that felt emblematic: Of course a complete stranger on an electric unicycle would cruise by and share nourishment. I was given a butterfly on a stick, which I carried around like a magic wand because that seemed appropriate and necessary. I was told that if I saw a screaming woman walking down the street with a shiv in her hand, not to worry and not to make eye contact and she’d leave me alone; it was just Stabby. There was talk of the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting on the beach, the weekly church sermon led by Jack the preacher (who is also a plumber), a potluck lasagna gathering.

Last year Ms. Kenneally created a trash fashion show/photo series for the Biennale in which she created couture designs out of trash collected from the beach, enlisted regulars in town to model the outfits, then photographed them. (She exhibited a similar series at this year’s festival as well.) The work was a way to showcase the people and the place. Jonathan Hart, a fireworks specialist who slept on the beach, posed like a gladiator; a woman who normally rode through town with a stuffed Kermit the Frog toy strapped to her bike was wrapped in a clear tarp and crown, looking like royalty emerging from the Salton Sea. The environment was harsh, the poses striking. Each frame straddled the line between glamour and destruction but also showcased a community’s pride in survival. Residents were undaunted by the armor of refuse; in fact, it made them stronger. The detritus, what outsiders might think of as garbage, became gorgeous. The landscape that is often described as apocalyptic became ethereal and magical. And that’s because it is.

On my second day, we went down to the docks at noon, and I found myself sitting on a floral mustard couch watching half a dozen or so people taking turns riding Jet Skis into the sun. The sun was hot, even though it was the cool season. Time felt elastic. Mr. Hart told me that he and some friends had fixed up the water scooters to give everyone in town the chance to blow off some steam, to smile a little. It had been a rough couple of months in the region. In preparation for Hurricane Hilary, which hit Mexico and the southwestern United States last August, 26 volunteers made 200 sandbags and delivered them door to door. Neighbors helped secure as many structures as possible.

Most media outlets reported that the hurricane was downgraded to a tropical storm because that’s the weather system that hit Los Angeles, but it was close to a hurricane in Bombay Beach, with winds hitting 60 miles per hour, and most properties were surrounded by water. Roofs collapsed or blew away entirely. “When faced with something like that, they were like, ‘Boom, we’re on it,’” Ms. Youngberg told me. They were together in disaster and in celebrating survival.

It reminded me of the writer Rebecca Solnit’s book “A Paradise Built in Hell,” which considers the upside to catastrophe. She finds that people rise to the occasion and oftentimes do it with joy because disaster and survival leave a wake of purposefulness, consequential work and community. Disasters require radical acts of imagination and interaction. It seemed that because Bombay Beach lived hard, surviving climate catastrophes like extreme weather on top of everyday extremes, it celebrated even harder. It seemed that in Bombay Beach there’s enough to celebrate if you just get through the day, gaze at the night sky and do it all again in the morning.

A lot of the residents who live there now arrived with trauma. Living there is its own trauma. But somehow the combination creates a place of care and physical and emotional presence. People experience life intensely, as one. It’s a town that is isolated, but in spite of a loneliness epidemic, it doesn’t seem so lonely to be there. I felt unexpected joy in what, from everything I’d read from afar, was a place that might as well have been sinking into the earth. I felt so safe and so happy that if we had sunk into the earth together, it wouldn’t have felt like such a bad way to go.

On my last night in Bombay Beach, I went to the Ski Inn, a bar that serves as the center of all social activity. I’d been in town for only two days, and yet it felt as if I’d been to the Ski Inn a million times, as if I already knew everyone and they knew me. A band was playing, we danced and drank, and I forgot about the 8 p.m. kitchen cutoff. The chef apologized, but he’d been working since 11:45 a.m. and had already cleaned the grill and fryer. He’d saved one mac and cheese for the bartender, and when she heard I hadn’t eaten, she offered to split it with me, not wanting me to go hungry or leave without having tried the mac and cheese.

Bombay Beach is a weird place. And this was an especially weird feeling. I had been instantly welcomed into the fold of community and cared for, even though I was a stranger in a very strange land.

I realized I didn’t want to leave. There were lessons there — how to live with joy and purpose in the face of certain catastrophe, how to exist in the present without the ever presence of doom. Next time, I thought, I’d stay longer, maybe forever, and actually ride a Jet Ski.

Jaime Lowe is a Knight-Wallace journalism fellow at the University of Michigan and the author of, most recently, “Breathing Fire: Female Inmate Firefighters on the Front Lines of California’s Wildfires.” Nicholas Albrecht is a photographer based in Oakland, Calif. His first monograph, “One, No One and One Hundred Thousand,” was the culmination of a multiyear project made while living on the shores of the Salton Sea.

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