Bowling to Help Social Ills

It’s important that we’re kind to one another. At Aboriginal Community Housing Ltd, when it comes to community development, it’s useful to understand the need to bring communities together. One of the first activities was simply taking residents bowling. Why bowling? Well, it’s the remedy to many social ills.

An article written in 1995 by Harvard political scientist Robert Putman called ‘Bowling Alone’ argued that Americans were becoming separated, communities were being splintered. Bowling leagues were disappearing despite more people playing, reflecting a deep fracturing of American Society. Today when we look at social media combined with the worldwide pandemic it’s easy to see how a lot of people have been able to replace community interaction with their fellow human beings with less personal online communities. One of the great things about community development is that it’s aimed at building skills, connections and communities.

We really need to build/re-build communities, for instance if Australian First Nations Peoples have been living in sharing respectful communities and are now the most impoverished and incarcerated, how is a 60,000-year-old plus culture going to survive the 21st century. When we go bowling together, we build bonds, eventually and hopefully help create understanding and an awareness of one and other.