This manual provides communities with a listing of resources designed to help communities plan and develop school-community partnerships and community-development projects and processes. The main purpose of the manual is to supply a "ready-made" listing and description of resources so that models and topics are easily located. The list of…

This booklet is one in a series of publications designed to support the efforts of community sustainability advocates. It describes five activities through which community members can work together to apply sustainability principles to community development initiatives. Guidelines are provided for organizing and conducting a 6-hour workshop for…

This workbook presents suggestions for people who yearn to build strong, active, involved communities. It discusses how organizers can conceptualize networks and the practices that will help to bring this about. The guide discusses issues that arise in the first stages of community development, beginning with basic questions about understanding…

Asset mapping--drawing a map of what is valuable in a community--is an exercise in community development. A process for determining assets in the individual and in the community is provided in this workbook. It begins by asking the reader to perform a self-assessment to determine personal assets. Knowledge of each asset enhances self-awareness,…

The paper addresses the importance of developing a rural community's commercial sector for economic development by providing some analytical tools. Procedures are outlined to estimate commercial sector activity in a community, to estimate commercial sector activity for various counties within a state (Nevada is used as an example), and to develop…

Developed as a result of the project, Strategies for Linking Vocational Education Programs to Tribal Economic Plans, the guide contains information obtained from 20 tribes who are currently providing vocational education programs under the One Percent Set-Aside Federal Vocational Education funding, a program that provides the opportunity for…

This guide presents basic information on searching the World Wide Web and lists selected Web sites and links to resources that contain information on rural development. The guide describes and differentiates among search engines, Web directories, metacrawlers, and mutations. Searching tips include: using quotation marks around phrases; using plus…

Every community has areas--public parks, schoolyards, sidewalks--that are neglected, vandalized, or just plain run down. Young people can help clean up those places by getting involved in a community cleanup project. As explained in this bulletin, a community cleanup is a project in which volunteers of all ages work together to spruce up a chosen…

When metropolitan universities refer to serving the entire metropolitan area, they often refer to rural fringes as well as concentrated urban populations. Working with rural communities requires somewhat different approaches to planning programs and understanding needs. Survey research helps the campus understand the perceptions and realities of…

Describes development of a new youth theater in an academic setting meeting the needs of urban youth, while satisfying the very different academic demands of an innovative educational theater teaching program. Describes genesis and development; pedagogical principles underpinning both programs; how this model fosters the growth of a community of…

This document describes REAL Enterprises, an economic education consortium working to assist young people to research, plan, set up, own, and operate economically viable small businesses in Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. The program was developed with the following goals: (1) to help rural schools become effective business incubators…

This manual is concerned with developing community-based work for persons with disabilities, particularly disabled workers in segregated settings and individuals who are considered not yet ready for or capable of work. The first part of the publication deals with the following topics: the concepts of community, work, and severe disabilities; the…

The purpose of this guidebook is to help elected leaders of small towns and communities stretch their investments when matching funds are required to compete for a grant or to pay for development costs above the grant award itself. The federal "small cities" Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) is used as an example throughout the…

Fiscal impact analysis is the study of the effect of development or policy alternatives on government expenditures and revenues and on taxes. There are numerous possible uses or objectives of fiscal impact studies; no one method of analysis is appropriate to all problems. Sensitivity analysis of critical assumptions is an important part of a…

Although useful for any community development planning team, this handbook is designed to assist Future Farmers of America chapter committees in coordinating Building Our American Communities (BOAC) projects. Ten steps for successful chapter participation in the BOAC program are outlined. These steps include selecting the BOAC committee and…