What I learned building a Community

Cal Poly Pomona is not a university that is known for its large scale social environment. For a large school with approximately 27,000 students, only about 10 percent of them live on or near campus. This severely impacts the ability for a strong social community to develop, especially on the weekends.

Going in to Cal Poly Pomona as a Jewish student, not only was I unsure how I wanted that part of me to play during my college career, but I was completely unaware as to what this school offered in terms of a Jewish community.

I began my journey with the Jewish community through the organization “Hillel.” Hillel is an international organization that has chapters at universities throughout the world, and seeks to build a strong Jewish community, as well as amplify the voices that are a part of it. I had been contacted by a member of Hillel to join. I can remember very clearly my first day involved with this club. I walk in to a large classroom in the engineering department, with only about 4-5 Jewish students. I introduce myself, and have nice conversations with many of these students.

I left this social event both excited and worried. I had never been extremely involved in a Jewish community growing up, and I found this to be an amazing opportunity to grow personally and learn. The event also left a weird feeling in me. If this is the only amount of people that were there, where’s the Jewish community?

I hadn’t gotten fully involved in the idea of community building until my Sophomore year, where I had been invited to join the board of Hillel as Vice President. This immediately set a flame in me and motivated me for the remainder of my time at school. What is the best way to build a community?

Like I said before, Cal Poly Pomona is not a social school, and that goes without saying that a Jewish community is not much different here. This presented a very difficult challenge when trying to find Jewish students and inviting them to become members of our community. We tried numerous tactics, from tabling at club fairs and resource fairs on campus, to straight up asking people if they were Jewish.

Looking back on my entire experience building up a Jewish community at Cal Poly Pomona, I learned a few extremely important lessons that will serve me for years to come:

1. You can never do this alone

   1. When there is a large task that needs to get done, I would sometimes prefer to do it all myself, so that I can ensure that I am doing it the way I want. This is an unsustainable pathway, and it is far more effective to delegate tasks and collaborate on assignments.

2. Communication is key

   1. The amount of times that dates were misaligned, tasks were miscommunicated, and meetings were unproductive is too many to count. Ensuring that all members are fully understanding of the communication expectations will allow for much more coordination.

3. You can’t do this for the resume

   1. The process of community building, while very beneficial personally and professionally, is something that has to have the proper reasons to succeed. Being on a board position within Hillel is always about putting in the work to build community. You have to always be in this work to build a community and bring people together. Anything else and you will have a much more difficult time succeeding.