What Makes a Community Strong?

The Community Strong edition of Showcase is always one of my favorites for the year because it highlights the great people who go above and beyond to make the Danville region an awesome place to live. As we dove into this year’s edition, I thought: what makes a community strong?

The answer that likely comes to mind for most folks is: the people. And that’s true. The individual people in a community go a long way in making it strong. To me, however, that’s a little too simplistic of an answer because, ultimately, any answer you can think of can be tied back to people in one way or another.

There are a lot of things that make a community strong. Educational opportunities are certainly an important component and thankfully, our region is filled with several nationally recognized institutions of learning. Public parks, I believe, are vital to the strength of a community. Some of the best in the world are found in our area, including the dark sky destination of Staunton River State Park in Halifax County or the top-ranked mountain bike trail at Angler’s Ridge in Danville.

Economic growth and prosperity, without a doubt, goes a long way in making a community strong. In the last few years, our region has bounced back in a big way, with Danville now being hailed as the Comeback City, and our region as a whole being recognized for how to revive a local economy.

There are many other factors I could list, but as I mentioned in the beginning, it ultimately comes back to our people. And the people of southern VA are some of the hardest working, yet polite and courteous, people you will ever meet. We say, “Yes sir” and “No ma’am.” We hold the door open for strangers. We wave at passersby, even if we don’t have a clue who they are. Because that’s who we are, as a community. We are strong, and getting stronger every day.