The rural communities of the North American Great Plains are experiencing fundamental economic and social changes that threaten their very existence. While local projects offer hope for survival, many communities lack the knowledge needed to envision and evaluate their possible futures. As a consequence, communities may pursue survival strategies…

This paper provides first-time grant writers with suggestions on how to approach a private funding source. While intended for rural health care advocates, the remarks are equally applicable for educators and others. The rural crisis has produced many heart-rending stories about medically indigent people, but there is a lack of reliable statistics…

The major responsibility of this workshop on nonformal education is to establish some prototypes of community training activities which will coordinate with the agricultural and health components of Ethiopia's Fourth Five Year Plan for rural development and which can later be reproduced in the countryside. Linking education to overall development…

Notes changes in the social contract between society and land grant universities and resulting implications for rural sociology's research, teaching, and extension agenda. Traces the legislative, academic, and social contexts of these changes. Suggests new organizational and networking strategies for rural sociology that will foster new…

Rural economic development requires local consensus and a coordinated effort by community leaders and the public at large. In 12 rural Georgia counties, the University of Georgia is implementing a Rural Revitalization Initiative (RRI) that emphasizes collaboration of public officials and private individuals across disciplines, professions,…

Engelhard is a very isolated rural community in Hyde County, North Carolina, economically dependent on seafood, small scale agriculture, and logging. In the mid-1980s the agricultural crisis, the decline in seafood landings, and changes in timber industry technology contributed to rising unemployment. Several decades of declining population and…

Vocational and technical training programs for less developed countries offer little in the way of training the intermediate cadres, technicians, and village level workers necessary for modernizing the primary sector on which developing economies depend. Training is vital because it secures cost reduction and maximum use of organization, enables…

This paper reviews various studies of media development patterns, all pointing to mass media growth's association with urbanization. The development and use of mass media differs greatly among urban, suburban, and rural areas. However, media development patterns are similar among countries, differing in the stage but not the pattern of media…

In recent years, service programs targeted for Georgia's rural communities have decreased proportionately in relation to those intended for the state's rapidly expanding population centers. At the same time, erosion of traditional manufacturing industries and an adverse agricultural economy have decreased the ability of rural communities to…

Rural social work has its roots both in social movements and in personal social services. Social workers in rural areas need to be effective not only in individual change, but also in organizational or community change, defined as the process by which people attempt to promote the well-being of their community. Similarities exist between…

Rural economic development depends on implementation of strategies that capture the competitive edge of the total rural environment. It will not succeed by weak duplication of traditional urban development strategies. The historic dependence on the natural resource base that is the common denominator for rural areas must be regarded not as a…

Planning for viable rural communities must seek elements inherent in a well-kept American home: lights, water, telephone, employment of the household head, children in school, access to transportation, sufficient food, clothing, health care, recreation, etc. If a community falls short in these necessities, the "needs gap" is where…

Designed to help bridge the gap between selected Appalachian communities (17 control and 18 experimental Kentucky communities) and the more affluent U.S. society, the Appalachian Community Impact Project (ACIP) used indigenous paraprofessionals, backed by Extension personnel, to work at the community level. It was hypothesized that by using…

Emergence of a dual agricultural system, need for sophisticated knowledge and equipment, declining importance of labor, and geographic and organizational concentration of the production and processing of certain commodities are creating changes in rural communities. While some changes will have negative social/economic impacts, the importance of…

There was a notable transition in the nature, content, and administration of rural policies in many developed nations in the 1980s and 1990s. These changes concerned issues of governance and institutional framework, the definition of "development," and policy goals and content. A key question, however, concerns the extent to which shifts…