PENDLETON — Bill Young hopes the simple idea of a wave can help bring the community closer together.

Young is a member of the Baha’i faith in Pendleton, the group behind the daily “Community Wave” that began last Thursday. The idea is simple. Young and other members of the Baha’i faith have been scattering throughout the community each night around 6 p.m. and waving to neighbors and asking how they are.

“I was reading about studies on how when people feel like they’re a part of the community, their immune systems improve,” Young aid. “I’m a Baha’i, so we believe in building communities and the two seem to go together.”

Young said coping with measures designed to slow the pandemic is stressing for many in the community, especially following so closely on the destructive February floods.

“Visits to the elderly and disabled are harder to manage as travel is made more difficult,” he said. “A wave from a neighbor can be both reassuring and an important welfare check as we encounter the predicted spike of infections during the next several weeks, and our communities will be stronger when the restrictions are lifted.”

Young said the concept remains fluid and he’s open to suggestions to make a more meaningful connection between people. One change, he said, might be to make some noise while waving.

“One of the things we’ve found in the community around the Baha’i Center is that there’s a lot of shut-ins in Pendleton,” he said. “People who can’t make it to the door, and it might be good if they could hear that the neighbors are out there, that things are OK.”

The group is also working on spreading the word about the wave. In addition to social media, in areas of Pendleton, residents might start noticing sidewalk chalk art promoting the Community Wave in that area of town.

Young said overall feedback to the idea has been positive.

“They don’t have a reaction the first time I mention it and by the second or third time, I think people warm up to the idea,” he said. “It’s an idea where the logic of this is a time when all of us are in and it’s good to check on each other. We’ve been through the floods and so people are already feeling bruised.”

Ideally, Young said he’d like to see the idea spread to other Umatilla County communities.

“Hopefully, we’ll build this up over time,” he said. “We’re going to be reaching out to people in Hermiston as well.”