Over the past twenty years, youth organizing has grown across the country. Through organizing, young people identify issues of concern and mobilize their peers to build action campaigns to achieve their objectives. Youth organizing has been appreciated for its contributions to youth and community development. The authors use two case studies to…

Raymond J. Young (1923-2007) played a key role in the post-World War II development of community colleges in Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and elsewhere. This article describes his scholarly and professional contributions in developing "bottom-up," grassroots citizen's participatory studies that led to the establishment of 60 community…

Argues that those activities variously called community development, organization, action, or education involve the imposition of the values and beliefs of community workers or agencies upon their clientele and that community work has a strong, albeit unintentional, manipulative or exploitative aspect. (SK)

This paper describes an education project to train religious leaders in Cleveland's inner city to become community advocates and change agents. Includes results of a followup survey of participants indicating how their acquired skills are benefitting the community. (SK)

The article focuses on the change agent's possible interventions in efforts to ameliorate conditions in poverty-stricken communities, discussing his power role in three different models of social intervention: the service model, the community organization model, and the training model. The agent is urged to examine his own motives constantly. (AJ)

Maxine Waller describes how concern for the children of Ivanhoe (Virginia) led her to become president of the Civic League. The Civic League has mobilized the town to renovate buildings and create a riverside park, promoted business ventures, and sponsored adult education classes and an oral history project. (SV)

A new county extension agent, having community development responsibilities, will be concerned with identifying projects, organizing for action, identifying key people for the projects, and identifying the resources needed to undertake new initiatives. Three methods of community action planning are discussed step by step. The social action process…

This document is composed of two parts: a bibliography of community organizing and support materials and a directory of community organizing resource centers. The 25 bibliographic entries are grouped according to subject, and include author, title, publication date, publisher, number of pages, annotation, and ordering information. Subjects…

Effective rural education depends on active community involvement. This ethnographic case study examines three models of community organization as an explanation of how community action occurs. The three models are: (1) individuals interacting in formal and informal groups; (2) networks of "weak ties" effective for diffusing information and…

Analyzes role of "familiar outsider," the "transplant" reformer who rejects personal power while aiding community. Focuses on four outsiders assisting Virginia town's developing commission. Details relationship and leadership problems among commission, technical assistant, and community leaders during development of sewing…

Purposes of this guide for change agents are to (1) present four methods for identifying community power actors (community leaders), (2) provide a description of how change agents might use each of the four methods, (3) compare the four methods, (4) suggest ways to use a combination of methods or combine elements from various methods, and (5)…

Over the last decade, there have been rapid developments in field methodologies within participatory approaches to rural and agricultural development. At the same time, the use of "soft systems" methodologies for bringing potentially conflictual or disparate actors together for action has spread from the business world to other applications. These…

The purpose of this bibliography has been to develop an operational resource to persons wanting to become effective community change agents. It is used in conjunction with the community-training activities of the University of Cincinnati's Community Human Resources Training (CHART) Program, described in the introduction to the bibliography. The…

A Vermont project, the Environmental Programs/Partnerships in Communities (EPIC) project provides a transferable model for rural development. The program is sensitive to people and environmental needs, and emphasizes long-term functioning of the entire community system, not just specific outcomes. EPIC has supported leadership training, local…

Many small, inland, and remote Australian rural communities continue to lose population and businesses, a trend that has intensified over the last 2 decades. Mean age continues to rise, while the 15-24 age group contracts dramatically. Such declining demographics are caused by the stress and uncertainty of volatile world commodity markets, as well…