Community Watch Meeting / GCW / Failure

by Ryan Shell on May 18, 2009

I’m headed to the Citizen Advisory meeting for the Greensboro Police Department’s (GPD) Central Division this evening. These are really great meetings because they allow folks to have direct interaction with the GPD and to also share ideas and concerns with each other. I have a two part role at tonight’s meeting: 

  • Act as the community watch liaison for Southside and report any concerns, if any, the neighborhood may be experiencing
  • Promote the Greensboro Community Watch (GCW) and get others to join

If you aren’t familiar with the GCW, it’s a group I founded about three months ago in an effort to unite the various community watches around Greensboro and to create an information portal that never before existed.

To date, I believe Greensboro has just under 140 community watches and the last time I checked the GCW had 126 members (HOA heads or community watch leaders), representing just over 100 different community watches. That is fantastic! What’s great is that after the GCW received its initial media exposure, new membership has been driven by word of mouth. Check out the GCW site to find out a little more about how the process works.

When I was dreaming up the idea of the GCW I couldn’t help but have the little thought of “What if it doesn’t work” in the back of my mind. At the end of the day I really believed in the idea and felt that it was something that Greensboro needed so I moved forward and the response has been terrific. People have simply appreciated that a proactive communication channel for community watches has been created.

Lastly, when I was having those “What if …” thoughts, I simply reminded myself that the only thing worse than failing is not having the guts to give something a shot.

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