Be honest , i don't know much about polish community. however, I have worked with my polish classmates as a group. i can say that it really depends, some of them are active , some are not. they can be active or passive in different situation. Accord to the artical, I think that what a good leader should do to increase citizens involvement are making influence, fulfilling the need and sharing emotions.

influence: I think than the influence is a kind of pression given by the group leader to force people working

fulfillment of need: I think the fulfillment of need is the same as reward which increases the activity of participanting

share emotions : share happiness of success, sadness of fail and so on to increase collectivisim in order to enhance the willing of taking responsibility.

Which community? Nowadays we have lots of different communities, that simply ignore existence of other groups. Participation in one community usually prevents a person from belonging to other community.

People seek companions in groups they are similar to. So we can observe that a given person willingly participate in community of football fans, but at the same time he has no idea what kind of people surround him at his living place.

To be honest, I don't even know my neighbors. There are twelve apartments in my flat, and after a year one of my neighbors noticed, that I have moved in. And she thought it happened recently. There is simply no community at all.

We don't know our neighbors, we have nothing in common with them, there is no social life whatsoever, although we share common interest.

Instead we form groups based on appearance, fashion style, interests, hobby and so on. We feel stronger affiliation with someone who listens to the same music, than with people we have lived next to for several years.

The question is - what community is more important? Where do you go, when your basement is being flooded? To your boy-scout companions? No. You should go to the group that has the same problem - to your neighbors. But you don't know your neighbors. There is simply no community.

How to solve it?

First of all - nowadays everyone can participate in any given group, and that leads to being excluded from other groups. The more specific are rules of participation and behavior patterns, the more alienated the group becomes. And what is most important - almost everyone can start a new group. We have tools of mass communication, which allow to communicate with people who would otherwise be never met. There is no control over this at all.

Recently I saw a documentary about teenagers who formed a kind of werewolf-vampire clan/group. They wear lenses distorting retina shape, fake fangs, even puffy tails. They wear collars and leashes. Fine with me, but this is not the point. By being so extreme, by discarding social rules, they become excluded, and can no longer participate in any other community. What is more important - existence of this group can be seen by anyone all over the world, deepening chasm between other social groups.

For instance - older generations judge all teenagers by this one information, thinking that they all gone insane.

It's extremely difficult to create one 40 million community. But smaller communities can be made, oriented around a place of inhabitancy. Although I think that this is not a vocation or avocation for our so-called leaders (simply because you can't really be a leader when, in fact, minority chose you - another flaw of democracy).

I believe we lack rituals in our society (apart from weekly "synchronic kneeling club", what is actually not built for bonding people with any particular group, but confusing and robbing them - it's just another, or first, commercial ruse. "Be a part of some anti-flatulence yoghurt (I'd rather avoid using specific brand names)!" is the same as "Be a part of Catholic Church!"). Even neighbors don't acknowledge our existence. A single person is not seen by the group, so how can he participate in it?

How much would be changed if only a simple rituals would exist. Like saying "welcome" to a new neighbor.

Once I lived in a neighborhood that didn't actually find me fit in. There were a few blokes who would drink their days away, sit all day on a bench adjacent to my our flat, and occasionally make fun of people. I didn't play along, so it ended in a cold-war fashion, where only weapon was a look that could kill.

One day something happened. They thought I could be confused by an invitation for their "party". One of them, sitting on that bench, asked if I would join in. I didn't reply, they started laughing. But what the hell, I thought. A few minutes later all the tension was gone, and from that day on my "lovely" neighbors started to shake hands with me.

Beer drinking was a kind of ritual, that surprisingly dragged me into their small "club". But this was kind of forced. It should exist on a daily basis - I mean not necessarily beer-drinking.

There should be room for a coexistence. If one gets married, neighbors shouldn't gossip around, but should be simply notified. Such acts, how small and insignificant they occur to be, could really change the way that people coexist. Make your neighbors think you care for them, and they would care for you back. 

In my opinion polish people are engagement in community. We can see it in everyday life. When I come to my grandmothers home (she lives in flat) I can see kinship between all of the residents of the blocks of flats. They know a lot of each other. They help to each other. They are one united community which you can trust. In Poland it is normal that You can pop to your neighbors and have cup of tee. Maybe this tradition disappears in new big blocks of flats in big cities, but the reason is that young people which works a lot buy flats and only sleep in them.   I would like to compare Polish people with the Germans. I have an aunt in Stuttgart. She has been living in the same block of flats for ages. She knows only one neighbor. People in there want to unite only in cases of formal things.  

I have another arguments for the theory that polish people are united. We should take into consideration church and "church communities". A lot of  old people but also a young one would like to be part of a church and have one community which pray together.

That's why in my opinion polish people are united in one community.

All in all I would like to express my opinion about what community leaders should do to increase citizens. I think he should promise some profits. He should make people curious and happy that they are part of something very important. 

From my observations, the Polish community is a pretty distrusful one. I think the nation's history, in addition to the fact that life can be very diffcult financially for most of the population in this country, cause this distrust. People in Poland are very nice to one another once they know each other. When they first meet someone, however, there is a certain coldness to their approach. 
Obviously, this is a very big obstacle in creating a sense of community. Furthermore, becasue the average Pole makes less than they should on a monthly basis (and life in a city like Warsaw isn't cheap!), it is hard to think about what others need and how one could help them, when everyones worried about their own ability to pay rent, live a decent life, etc...
Getting the community to work together can be achieved in a lot of different ways. For example, community gardens. This is something that can bring a whole area of people invoived in creating something beautiful together. this is especially useful in cities. When there is some free space in a city, a group of people living in the vicinity can get together, and once organizing it legally, and create a community park together. They can collect volunteers from the neighborhood by posting advertising for it, and work together to create a nice park area for all neighbors to share (with some plants, benches, flowers, etc..) I've seen this done in NYC and it works wonders! (Of course it should be gated and closed for the night so that it isn't used for a grafitti breeding ground, or drinking center).

Universities can also play a big role in connecting students with the local community. By offering students lots of volunteer opportunites and maybe even offering a couple of credits for some number of volunteer hours, students could get invloved in local homeless shelters, schools, animal shelters, parks, etc...

In my opinion Poland does have a sense of community in Poland, if even just within individual groups; and this goes hand in hand with citizen engagement.

 Perhaps not all people identify themselves with the Catholic Church, and in such cases I simple feel those people form another community which I guess we could identify as the non catholic. Nonetheless, both communities exist and engage and have very strong impact on the this nation itself and its culture.

The reason I think there is a level of engagement here within the Polish societyis because there is the obvious  sense of community and I think I've observed all the elements outlined but McMillan & Chavi in regards to the Catholic Community. Firstly the membership, in regards to this specific boundaries are set as how people of these communities differentiate themselves from others. Also people are quite verbal as to what group they belong to so they identification themselves with a their group and they freely reveal what they feel about particular different issues or situations; for instance afew months ago when there was the 'cross fighting' in front of the governer's (I presume) house; there were people surely for it and others against it. People are also quite defensive of their intimate social connections and this shows that they are protecting their boundaries.

The other element is influence, people in Poland exhibit their role to influence their group by protecting and upholding the things they conside valuable. For instance, in the Catholic Church, people of this community are encouraged to marry within the community, which would strengthen the group. Hence the order and authority allows for the exchange of power between leaders and members.

The last two things that create the sense of community are: Sharing emotional connetions; observed mainly in religious festive eevents like easter or Christmas (in the catholic community). This encourages the group because the more interactions the increase likelihood that people will become closer. The final point is the intergration and fulfillment of needs; this may just be the membership status or help received from other members of the faith.

The government could try to promote more activities that are not completely religiously focused, that would attract a wider scale of people not only those from the catholic or traditionalist background, but even those from other groups. For instance, local activities such as(environmental) recycling programs or charity concerts or so forth; just to give people of all backgrounds the chance to mingle and interact. This could go a far way in creating one large Polish community.

Besides this community of people there isn't much engagement of the wider society. People are pretty 'ingroup' oriented and they don't show much interest in out groups and others. 

I have been thinking of sense of community among Poles for a couple of hours and there are various reflections about the topic that stuck in my minds.

First of all, I think that Poles still have a sense of community and they are engaged in their communities comparing to western cultures/countries. Unfortunately I have noticed that this sense of community has been strongly decreasing since the last couple of years.

Let me remind the times of my childhood. At the beginning I lived with my parents and grandparents together and we shared the same house. There were other housing estates in the neighborhood and we all knew each other. The kids were playing together and our parents we spending time together. We visited each other every weekend or even couple of times a week. We attended Sunday masses in our church together, and after the mass we were going to get some ice creams, have a walk or simply play in the garden. I remember I was always busy with my neighbors. So did my parents and grandparents. My grandparents were very religious so we were also involved in church community. To say in simple words - we all knew each other and we felt responsible for each other - we always felt free to ask somebody from the community for a favor.

When I was 6, I moved in with my parents to the downtown of Warsaw. Although there were people from different environments who did not know each other, we quickly started to form our new society. I knew everybody from my flat, and similarly to the previous situation, we spent a lot of time together. With some of them we were also going for holidays or inviting for family events.

Nowadays it is not the case anymore. I have a feeling that people started to alienate from each others. They have created boundaries, invisible "walls" which prevent from socialization and making friends. The definition of "sense of community" mentioned in the article by McMillan & Chavis is not that valid anymore as it used to be 10-15 years ago. I do not know if it is because our pace of life is changing (=speeding up) and we do not have that much time for communities anymore or our society has started to become more individualistic rather than collectivistic.

I do not want to say that the sense of community and citizens involvement do not happen anymore. There are still people who are involved in  some communities. But I think these are not "numerous" communities, including not that many members. At the moment I can only think of church communities and small neighbor communities, which consist of several dozen of people.

One of the things that may positively influence citizens' engagement in their communities is that the speed of life should slow down. But I don't think it's possible to change. Consequently, the community leaders should look for other solutions. First of all, the communities, especially the local ones should advertise themselves and encourage people to join them. Secondly, the communities should be oriented and adjusted to the needs of their members. And they should give their members something in return, something the members can benefit from. The most important thing is that the members of a given community should feel comfortable with being there - maybe people do not engage themselves in communities because they are afraid of rejection, gossips, bullying. Nowadays people tend to judge others without considering that it may hurt others. 

From my point of view, polish people have sense of community. We can observe it in everyday life, people who live in small village or on the estate have bond with each other. Community have been defined as a group of interacting people and nowadays we can observe it. When you meeting people on the street, people from school, church, neighborhood or village, you talk to each other, exchange a smile even though you know them only by sight.

People form the groups based on physical appearance, interests, common fashion style, intellectual level, faith or culture.

The things that create sense of community are: sharing emotional connections
(people have one goal), membership (the basketball team are people from one district or village), influence (people spending time together),  integration and fulfillment of needs (for example: belonging to a sports group).

In my opinion, belonging to a group gives people a sense of security today, and it becomes something very important in their lives.

I would agree with statements of students who wrote before me. People like to belong to a group, because it is saftier, friendlier. We always can say that we have friends, the group has a goal. People are proud when they say that they are a member of a group.

But it is not easy to belong somewhere. people should engage in what they are doing, be involved and not only be. The first thing which comes into my mind as an example is a charity group in which i am a member. Few weekes ago we were organizing a konference as a group, but finally i would say i was making it alone. When i asked for something no one could help me, no one had time.

What i should do as a leader in that time?? I couln't promise any profits, because our organization is non profit and each of us is there because he wants to be there. This is a good question it was hard for me. Today i also do not have answer i do not know what i could do, how to talk with them.

In my opinion Poles are lazy, not all, but most of us, and we prefer that someone will do it, we will do it when someone ask us for it. But we never suggest it alone.

That was mentioned earlier but i think it also very important is emotional egagement. Emotions are something what provokes us to work, to act, to help. We need them in a group.