Serving Your Passion Community
What lights you up?
Seriously. What gets you fired up to get out of bed and make the most of your day? Are you an avid walker? Do you LOVE to cook? Are you so into programming computer applications, that you can’t think of a better thing to do with your free time?
Passion is an intense desire or enthusiasm for something. It’s the part of your life where working towards something doesn’t feel like “work,” it feels more like you are getting to use your skills in a way that makes you feel good and goes beyond just getting the job done.
Your passion community is a community that you feel an intense desire to support and help flourish. This is a community that you participate in and feel strongly about, and is a community that you want to work for, serve and use your talents in whatever field you are in, to help the community thrive.
One of the major differences between Passion and Professional communities is the “service” component of our participation. Professional communities tend to center around our work and our relationship based on the work that we do. Our passion community may overlap with our professional community, but the focus on passion community is the service that we are doing for the community – the way we are enhancing the community for the benefit of the community.
My passion community is women in technology. I am a woman in technology and I am very dedicated to supporting other women in technology in a variety of ways. I pivoted my business in order to create services for women in technology. My services are designed around providing personal and professional development training and opportunities for women in tech. I also serve on several boards and committees dedicated to lifting up and supporting women and other people who are underrepresented in technology. My service to my passion community is a mixture of paid and unpaid work – all of it to make my community accessible and uplifting for all members and allies
I tell many of my clients, to identify their passion community as they being to look for a (new) job. My two comments after that statement are:
Yes, you can make a living serving your passion community.
No, you don’t have to support your passion community solely through volunteer work.
Your service can be one or the other, or a mix of paid and unpaid work. It is the intention that matters.
What are you doing to support your passion community? How are you helping?