Librarians like to say their libraries are the heart of their communities, and in Cynthia Fuerst's case, it is a fact. For the Kankakee Public Library, this took long, hard effort by an inspired library director, the mayor, and a developer who wanted to revive business in an economically devastated downtown. When Fuerst became the library's…

Like all politics, adult and continuing education is local. Future directions for the field and its national associations should benefit local programs and the adult learners they serve. This column explores features of collaboration that could strengthen educational opportunities for economically disadvantaged adults. The foregoing ideas about…

Collaboratives are increasingly common forms of community participation in education. This article describes the Children Learning About Self and Science (CLASS) Program, a collaborative aimed at introducing and attracting children to science and scientific careers in the Cleveland School District. This project originated in the community and…

The purpose of this guidebook is to help community collaboratives gain a deeper awareness and understanding of the implications of diversity through their work. This includes designing service strategies, involving community residents in planning and governance, establishing outcomes and accountability systems, and developing financing systems.…

Designed to help communities in preliterate societies break the barrier of illiteracy, this book presents a simple basic foundation for literacy instruction that can be handled by local people with little experience. The book explains each step with great detail. The four chapters are as follows: (1) "Local Language Literacy and Developing…

Identifying local environmental problems and solutions is suggested as a way to integrate environmental studies into the social studies curriculum. (DE)

The author assesses F. Seidl's analysis (see EC 070 419) of the trend toward community oriented residential institutions as having positive implications for child care personnel. (GW)

Community education should help foment actions for extensive interagency cooperation. The major obstacles to such working partnerships are tradition, turf, lack of trust, lack of time, and the attitude that it's too much trouble. This type of thinking must be discarded if cooperative ventures are to flourish. A high level of interest exists in…

This booklet explains the concept of a community exchange system (CES), or barter system, for the exchange of goods and services and describes how to set one up. The booklet is concerned only with nonprofit, voluntary organizations. The booklet is organized in four sections. The first section introduces the community exchange systems idea and…

Suggestions for involving the National League of Nursing in community planning for health care are proposed. (AG)

These 15 conference papers discuss exemplary practices and key issues faced by local human services managers and elected officials. The issues include understanding the local government role in managing human services, coordinating human service delivery, non-service approaches to governing human services, public-private sector cooperation, and…