You can tell how charitable a community is by the way its residents help others, even those they don’t know.

A good example of that was Friday night at the Knights of Columbus Hall when local residents turned out for a pancake dinner to help Mia Calnan, a 7-year-old who has been diagnosed with leukemia for the second time in her life. Mia lives in Chesapeake, Va., with her parents and little brother. Her aunt Heather and grandparents Lt. Col. Mike and Karen Calnan live in Vicksburg and attend St. Michael’s Catholic Church.

While some of the diners knew her aunt and grandparents from church or work, it’s a good bet many of the people who went to the KC Hall Friday night probably never met Mia or her aunt or her grandparents. They probably didn’t know who Mia was until they saw an ad about the dinner or someone told them. They came out to help a family in need get over a rough area in their life.

It’s that kind of generosity that makes Vicksburg a great community in which to live. We contribute annually to the United Way. Many residents participated in the United Way of West Central Mississippi’s recent annual “Day of Caring,” where they donated their time to helping the agencies served by United Way.

After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, local agencies and residents helped storm evacuees from the Mississippi Gulf Coast who came here to flee the storm and had to stay for days, weeks or months before they could return home. Some Coast residents were impressed enough by the hospitality to stay here as permanent residents.

Neighbor helping neighbor is a common custom, not only in Vicksburg, but across the South, which is known for its generosity when it comes to helping others.

But generosity toward your neighbor in one form or another is something we tend to expect at the local level.

Helping someone you don’t know is something that is not always expected, and that’s what makes gestures like helping storm victims and children in distress like Mia so special.

And our ability to turn out to help someone we don’t know is what sets Vicksburg apart from many other communities.