b'FEATURED ARTICLECarey maintains a close relationship with its alumni body through the Old Carey Grammarians Association - OCGA. The OCGA represents an engaged and diverse community of alumni, made up of over 18,000 members across Australia and the world. In addition to regular reunions and social events, Carey alumni also have the opportunity to connect and engage through a broad range of initiatives such as; business and career sessions, sporting and performing arts, giving back through social impact, key speaking events and lots more. Click on the image above to access the website.As the situation evolved, it became clear that the methodshave engaged with them for many years. For example, one weve always used to engage our community would nomay not have had contact with old school friends for some longer suffice, but we could use the opportunity to createtime, but there is comfort in the familiarity and feeling like something greater. we belong to something.Firstly, we would need to adapt our approach to engageWith this in mind, we reached out to our community to acommunitythatwouldbephysicallydistancedandprovide them with a comfortable space to connect and everyoneexperiencingtheirownstruggles.Secondly,find that renewed sense of belonging. The first step we ifweweretoengagethisnewtypeofcommunity,ittook was to ensure our Alumni knew where they could go meantwehadtodeeplyunderstandthecommunitysto engage and connect with old friends. This required a needs and expectations and offer programs and supportreview of the existing Old Carey Grammarian Association accordingly. website to ensure the tools for engaging and networking were highly visible, updated and functioning. We quickly communicated the ability to connect online to our Sociologists refer to communities as a group of peoplecommunity through newsletters and active social media. who interact within a bounded geographic territory; living,From there, we looked at what our Alumni needed, what working, studying and relating to one another through aevents we could plan for and how to offer programs and sense of belonging across space and time. When we loseactivities in an online space.the ability to engage physically and lose those communities easily accessible to us, as we are experiencing now through the pandemic, we know people will seek out alternative communities to regain that sense of belonging. We turn to groups that are familiar to us even though we may not OCTOBER 2020 25'