"Grow Your Own Teachers" describes the evolution of a local school reform movement in Chicago that now serves as a model for change in schools and teacher preparation programs across the country. Grounded in the grassroots organizing tradition, the Grow Your Own (GYO) teacher initiative involves collaboration between community-based…

This article discusses the Women Making a Difference programme that has provided hundreds of women in Wales the skills they need to become decision-makers in their communities. The project is all about tapping into women's desire to make a difference in their communities, and getting women who, in most cases, are already active at grassroots level…

Scholars, practitioners, and proponents of community-university engagement insist that reciprocity, mutual benefit, and peer relationships are essential to creating truly democratic partnerships between campus and community leaders. These same principles are seen as important to creating environments where university students learn democratic…

Although research has identified numerous neighborhood mechanisms influencing urban adolescent risk behaviors, less is known about how community contexts influence rural adolescents. This study explores perceived controls against adolescent drinking (i.e., tolerance of community adolescent alcohol use), adolescent perceptions of community…

In 2007, committees of key stakeholders in the five cities of Chesapeake, Norfolk, Suffolk, Portsmouth, and Virginia Beach developed Collaborative Action Plans focused on key strategies to ensure that children in each city "arrive at kindergarten healthy and ready to succeed in school, and in life." With leadership from Smart Beginnings…

This brief provides policymakers, stakeholders, community leaders, and program developers working in or with community-based youth programs with a basic understanding of how the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) is structured, how community-based youth programs fit into CDBG purposes and activities, and how communities nationwide are using…

This research examines women's narratives regarding the experiences that lead to becoming, sustaining, and challenging active community leaders. Seventeen women neighborhood leaders, age 28 to 73 years, completed in-depth interviews. Qualitative thematic content analyses identified prominent themes in participants' responses that were subsequently…

A qualitative research highlights how parent driven "communities of support" create lasting change in schools and communities, through the unique blend of the two methodologies, oral history and educational criticism and connoisseurship. In recent years, schools and communities are unusually impacted by an escalating wave in the diagnosis and…

This article presents the case of community leaders who used the charter school policy as a way to effect district change for the benefit of a neighborhood in need. The case represents the potential of charter school policy to reshape the political and institutional arrangements of urban school districts, and it reengages the idea of what makes…

Latino gay men face multiple barriers to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevention, in particular a lack of intervention programs that integrate prevention messages with cultural norms and address issues of social marginalization from multiple communities (gay community and Latino community), homophobia and racism. In order to address these…

Leaders emerge from some very unlikely situations. They come in all ages, sizes, shapes, and from both genders. In this paper we discuss the relationship between the theoretic and practical applications evidenced by the Institute for Community Leadership's (ICL) efforts to prepare people for civic leadership. We present background information…

The purpose of this mixed method study was to determine the positional leadership of North Dakota 4-H and FFA leadership alumni. This study determined the influence of youth development programs on statewide leadership alumni (those who served from 1970 to 2000) and community leadership roles as adults. Former North Dakota 4-H Ambassador Alumni…

In September 1939, Amy (Brown) Dauphinee took up her first teaching appointment at Tate Creek, British Columbia where 518 refugees had recently settled after fleeing Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland. Amy--an avowed Social Democrat and member of the Young Socialist League--quickly embraced the refugees who were largely trade union activists and Social…

"Mamow-Sha-way-gi-kay-win": North-South Partnership for Children represents a coalition of individuals and organizations from southern Ontario who have partnered with First Nations Chiefs, community leaders, Elders, youth and community members from 30 remote northern communities. The collective goal of the Partnership is to learn from…

In 1998, Indonesia embarked on a journey to democracy. This journey involved the decentralization of education from 2002. The new school-based management (SBM) system required greater community and parental participation in schools--thereby, it was hoped, contributing to a deepening of democracy. Islamic schools ("madrasah") also adopted…