Search for Belonging In A New Country

By Brian Smith

Pictured are very good friends of the Belonging Initiative, Melanie Redman and her partner Phillip. I asked Melanie if she would contribute to our site and she graciously wrote a short letter about her experience recently moving to Canada from the US and her search for belonging therein. Here's a short quote from it:

"I think the most important factor in securing a sense of belonging for me is access to a social safety net. Not only do I have wonderful, supportive friends and family in the U.S., but through my partner Phillip in Toronto, I have access to a local network of caring people as well. I would never claim that what belonging means to me is the same for what it means to my neighbor."

I chose this quote because I think that it exposes two really important insights:
1. That we need social networks to give us a sense of belonging, and
2. That our sense of belonging is different for each of us.

I like how that comes back around to uniqueness and difference as fundamentally necessary to our health and well-being.

Melanie works for Ashoka at the Centre for Social Innovation - whose mission is to catalyze, inform, inspire and support social mission initiatives. One might say that the CSI is building belonging into the social mission community of Toronto.