Intended to help Future Farmers of America (FFA) members develop skills in improving their communities under the Building Our American Community Program, this publication provides guidance on how FFA chapter members can be active citizens and use democratic processes. Section I, Identifying and Analyzing Communities, consists of four chapters.…

Brooks Farm is an independent Black farming community unique in the Mississippi Delta. A community case study shows that, despite declining population and resources, Brooks Farm has drawn on the strength of its traditional institutions (family, churches, civic groups) to sustain community life and to continue to provide services to the elderly,…

AMERICAN SETTLEMENT HOUSES CAME INTO BEING AS AN EXPERIMENTAL EFFORT TO SOLVE THE SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL PROBLEMS IN A GREAT CITY. THEIR BROAD GOAL WAS TO BRIDGE THE CHASM OF MISUNDERSTANDING BETWEEN THE HAVES AND THE HAVE NOTS BY A 3-FOLD EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM -- (1) RESIDENTS OF THE SETTLEMENTS EDUCATED THEMSELVES ABOUT THE LIVES OF THE POOR BY…

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…

The evaluation of three Ford Foundation supported Community Development Corporation (CDC) programs with performance relative to output targets (milestones) that are both identifiable and quantifiable are presented in this paper. The milestone targets, developed in 1973 for the following year, are targets over which the CDC would legitimately be…

Community development depends on capable, visionary local leaders and on informed and active citizens. Thus, in the long run, education for all citizens may be the most critical ingredient to the success of rural community development programs. Schools can further contribute to the development of rural communities by providing an explicit…

For many years, developers have placed near total reliance on increased productivity in agriculture, greater exploitation of natural resources, and the addition of new manufacturing industries as strategies for community economic development in nonmetropolitan areas. The concentration on expanding goods producing industries is unnecessarily…

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…

The main purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which community consensus existed regarding a variety of major changes in Pittsburgh and the extent to which widely differing perspectives of community leaders might contribute to conflict, or at least significant difficulties, on these issues. A pragmatic secondary objective was to…

This book explores how community functions in "Bremer," a small rural town in eastern Washington. Human interactions in a variety of contexts are analyzed within a framework that posits three distinct eras of social and economic organization: community-control, mass-society, and information eras. Contexts examined are farming (the…

This report provides Canadian Aboriginal communities with information and resources for carrying out participatory action research and applying the results to community development. Presented in English and French, the report is based on a literature review and a 2-day focus group involving 14 community development experts, Aboriginal community…