Community organization

Do you have your community organization? We call it JICHIKAI.
I live in a town, and though I don't know the exact figure of group number, they are divided into some groups. And there are about 240 households in our group. And the group is also divided into some small groups. Our house is belong to 14 group and there are 17 households. This year our house is sub-leader of this group.
becoming a leader and a sub-leader is operated by a rota system. This year our neighbour on our right is is a leader. So next year, we are leader, and our neighbor on our left is a sub-leader.

My friend asked.
Where does the organization come from?  The city government?
It's not a rule. It's a kind of habitual system. So it's free whether to become a member or not. Anyway all our neighbors are belong to JICHIKAI.
 Who runs the meetings? 
Every year the leaders and sub-leaders have a meeting and select board members. Of course they are voluntary.
And this is an important question.
What would happen if your 17 homes decided they didn't want to be a group?

Yes, it is a big problem, but not a big problem.
because nothing will happen.
So though our group is still managed by many residents without any problems, but these days the number of people who are not belong to JICHIKAI is increasing.
Because there are not so big benefit. On the contrary we should pay some money.
(Though the cost is depends on the group, in our case we have to pay 400 yen a month, and now we are planing to build our community house, so we also pay more 400 yen a month.)

What JICHIKAI can do?
Though JICHIKAI we order some things to make our area better.
To put security lights.
To plant some flowers along the street.

And we do some voluntary work by ourselves to live easily.
To clean the garbage station.
To watch children at crossroads when they go to school and come back home.

And  it is getting the most important thing these days.
To visit senior people who live alone, or live with two.
This visiting avoid to let senior people alone.

Every thing is a voluntary work. And who can do these things? Young or middle aged people too busy to do that. So mainly semi-senior people, or housewives do that.

Do you have a community organization?