Social Group
A social group that I was a part of was a wonderful group of military families I was stationed with in Landstuhl Germany. When my family and I were stationed there we were a part of a group of families that would get together every weekend and alternate what family was going to cook for the other families. One week dinner would be at our house, the next weekend it would be at the Fabian’s, then the following weekend at the Hogue’s, the week following that it would be at the Garcia’s, and so forth. The families that were not cooking on that particular weekend would plan the evening’s activities and bring some wonderful German beer and wine. On the week days our husbands worked together and the wives would be in contact through shopping trips, and play dates for our children. It was a wonderful social group to which I was blessed to be a part of.
Formal Organization
A formal organization I was a part of during my last several duty stations was the Family Readiness Group (better known in the military as the FRG.) This organization was put together to take care of families who’s sponsors were deployed with many things such as their children, emergences, keeping the family busy and their mind off their sponsor, holidays, fund raising for units, and other things like preparing care packages for deployed service members of the families.
The main differences in these groups are the difference in person interaction and the tasks at hand. In the social group there was a personal connection through in the relationships of the families involved. Activities were the same for all of the members in the social group and the communication was typically face to face. In the formal organization the relationship’s of the members involved was on somewhat of a personal level because we were all working towards the same goal for the betterment of the military members and their families (which most of us were.) The communication was mostly over...