Why Join The Draconic Order?
May Your Path Be Clear and Your Skies Be Calm
Welcome
The Draconic Order brings together people of different ages, backgrounds, interests, talents, and experiences to form a community with one thing in common: a desire to be part of something worthwhile and make a difference.
There are countless ways to participate, plenty of room to grow, and no requirement that you already know where you fit. Here, you can discover and learn what you don't know, share what you do, and gain experience by actually doing.
The Draconic Order is a place to give back to your community, build friendships, step away from real-world responsibilities for a spell and have some fun along the way — all within a world where medieval history, fantasy, and imagingation come together.
Whatever brings you through the door, you may be surprised by what you find—and what you bring to it.
▾ Make a Difference in Your Community
The Draconic Order provides members with organized opportunities to contribute to their communities and participate in meaningful service.
Rather than simply wanting to help, members have opportunities to turn their good intentions into action through community service projects, events, partnerships, and other activities that address real needs in the communities where we live.
You don't have to change the world. Sometimes one little corner of it is enough.
What this could look like? →
- Give back to their communities through hands-on service.
- Help individuals and organizations in need.
- Support causes and projects they care about.
- Lend their talents, knowledge, abilities, and experience.
- Pitch in where they're needed.
- Work alongside others toward a common purpose.
- Help make something better—and see what they accomplished when the work is done.
- Experience the satisfaction that can come from doing something useful for someone else.
Serve simply because helping others and strengthening the community are worthwhile.
▾ Build Your Résumé While Building Your Skills
Get experience by actually doing.
Try something completely new, take on a leadership role, or put the skills you already have to work. Don't know how? Someone is always there to help you learn. Know how? Share what you know with someone else.
Through service, projects, activities, teaching, and leadership, you can gain real-world, hands-on experience that you can carry into school, work, your résumé, or whatever comes next.
What this could look like? →
There are plenty of opportunities to gain hands-on experience, including:
- Event planning and coordination
- Project management
- Fundraising and grant writing
- Budgeting and financial management
- Administration and recordkeeping
- Public speaking
- Teaching and instruction
- Communications
- Public relations and marketing
- Volunteer coordination
- Community outreach
- Leadership
- Teamwork and collaboration
- Problem-solving
- Decision-making
- Organization and planning
All of these are transferable to your resume.
Share What You Know
Every member arrives with knowledge, experience, interests, talents, and skills of their own. You might know woodworking, sewing, cooking, gardening, history, accounting, martial arts, art, photography, technology, event planning, writing, fundraising, public speaking—or something no one else has even considered yet.
Put those skills to use by teaching or mentoring others, demonstrating a craft or activity, contributing professional or life experience, or helping develop a new activity or program. Members have opportunities to share what they know while learning from the knowledge and experience of others.
Step Up and Lead
Leadership in The Draconic Order can take many forms. Members can lead a project, organize an event, coordinate volunteers, serve as a Person-In-Charge (PIC) or team lead (Kinbo), become an officer or deputy, participate on a committee, teach or mentor others, help develop programs and activities, participate in organizational decision-making, or take an idea from concept through completion.
Leadership doesn't have to mean holding an office. Taking responsibility for a project, teaching a class, organizing an activity, or helping other members succeed can provide valuable experience too.
Take It With You
The skills and experience gained through their time with The Draconic Order can become valuable additions to a résumé and carry forward into future opportunities for students, people entering the workforce, people changing careers, or anyone looking to broaden their horizons.
▾ Create Meaningful Connections
It's easier to get to know people when you're doing something together.
The Draconic Order brings people together through shared service, activities, projects, events, learning, and common interests. Work side-by-side on a service project. Spend a day at an event. Learn something together. Teach someone what you know. Take on a challenge as a team.
Every shared experience is an opportunity to create meaningful connections.
Come with friends or come without knowing anyone. Either works.
What this could look like? →
Doing things alongside others toward a common goal creates opportunities to:
- Meet people outside your normal social circles.
- Develop friendships and lasting relationships.
- Connect with people who share some of your interests and values.
- Work with people of different backgrounds, experiences, professions, and abilities.
- Build relationships with community organizations and the people they serve.
- Become part of a community rather than simply attending an activity.
- Develop a sense of belonging through shared experiences and accomplishments.
The connections develop naturally by doing things together.
▾ Broaden Your World
Broadening your world doesn't have to mean traveling somewhere new. Sometimes it means seeing more of the community already around you, discovering something you never thought to try, or stepping into a world you never imagined yourself being part of.
You might discover something you love. You might discover something you're surprisingly good at. You might just have a really good time trying.
What this could look like? →
There are plenty of ways to broaden your world without going very far from home.
Serving Your Community
Community service often begins with recognizing a need. Getting involved gives you the chance to understand that need more fully—what caused it, what it takes to address it, what challenges stand in the way, and how your contribution can become part of the solution.
- Helping a senior reclaim an overgrown yard.
- Pitching in when a community event needs extra hands.
- Collecting things people need through efforts such as toy drives, giving trees, coat drives, or school-supply collections.
- Tackling a project that simply wouldn't get done without volunteers, such as cleaning up a neglected public space, preparing a community garden, clearing debris, or restoring something for community use.
Sometimes you arrive knowing exactly what needs to be done. Other times you figure it out as you go. Either way, you leave knowing a little more about your community, the challenges within it, and what can happen when people decide to do something about them.
Dare to Get Lost in the Realm
There is plenty to explore for anyone curious about the history, arts, sciences, crafts, and imagination behind the Realm.
- Dive into medieval history and learn calligraphy, illumination, or garb crafting.
- Try your hand at leatherwork, stone carving, armoring, or bladesmithing.
- Discover how terrible historical recipes really were—and then make them better.
- Study the science behind siege engines, weapons, and fighting styles.
- Learn an old game or dance, explore herbalism, or discover some other nearly forgotten skill.
- Dig into dragon lore across cultures and centuries or explore folklore and mythology.
- Rediscover how people once made and did things we rarely think about today.
Some members will come already knowing a great deal about one of these things and may want to share it. Others may know absolutely nothing about it and simply think it sounds interesting. And some things we may decide to do just because they sound like fun in a Realm where dragons are real, titles have meaning, and playing make-believe is still allowed.
Step Into Our World
Medieval history meets d&d, meets Middle-earth, with a healthy dose of imagination. Arts, crafts, traditions, and our own dragon-inspired culture just add to the mix.
Together, they create the Realm—a place with its own traditions, terminology, activities, and recognitions. There is room to serve, create, learn, teach, lead, play, and belong. If that's your jam, bring it.
But when we enter the Realm, even if only for a spell, we do ask that you leave the problems, concerns, biases, and politics of the real world behind. They have no place here.
It's something a little different: a place where serving your community in the real world and playing in a fantasy one don't have to be mutually exclusive.
▾ Choose Your Own Path
There isn't just one way to be part of The Draconic Order.
You may be drawn exclusively to community service with no interest in participating in the Realm. Others may only wish to delve into the Realm and put their energy into everything it has to offer. There is no right or wrong way to participate. You can find the parts of the Order that interest you and decide how you want to participate.
We hope you'll explore both sides of what we do, but your path through the Order is yours to make.
What this could look like? →
Make Your Mark
The Draconic Order isn't intended to remain exactly as it was when you joined it. As the organization grows and evolves, its members can help determine what comes next.
- Have an idea for something we aren't doing? Bring it forward.
- See an opportunity we've overlooked? Point it out.
- Think something could be done differently or better? Get involved.
New projects, activities, events, classes, recognitions, and traditions don't all have to originate with the people already in charge. Members can bring their own interests, knowledge, creativity, and experience into the Order and help turn new ideas into something others can participate in too.
If there's something you'd like to see, you can help make it happen.
Leave Your Mark
What you contribute doesn't simply disappear when the project ends, the event is over, or your term in an office is complete.
The Draconic Order has systems designed to recognize and record participation, service, leadership, teaching, and accomplishment.
Recognition isn't the reason for serving, but it gives the Order a way to acknowledge and remember what its members have contributed.
Over time, those recognitions become a visible history of the path you took and the mark you left along the way.
▾ More Than Just Membership
How you spend your time matters.
The Draconic Order gives members opportunities to put their time, talents, interests, and experience toward something that is meaningful to them.
What that means will be different for everyone. It might be helping someone who needs it, learning or teaching something, creating something you're proud of, building friendships, taking on a challenge, or simply finding a place where you enjoy spending your time.
At the end of the day, know that your time mattered. →
- You helped someone.
- You learned something.
- You taught something.
- You made a friend.
- You tried something new.
- You stepped forward when something needed to be done.
- You helped create something other people enjoyed.
- You left something a little better than you found it.