Title I schools that serve a large population of low-income students often view families through the lens of an outdated paradigm of family engagement in education, assuming parents are mostly uneducated, ill informed, and much in need of training and support to be good parents. "Comunitario" projects in the Rio Grande Valley of south…

CADRE, an organization led by Maisie Chin, is a Human Right to Education Campaign. Between 2005 and 2013, CADRE played a lead role in using grassroots organizing and leadership development to create a seismic shift in public policy, debate, and narrative around school discipline, racial disparities, parents' roles, school climate, and closing the…

"Collective impact" is a new place-based model of educational and social intervention that aims to shift responsibility for improvement in outcomes from individual organizations to entire systems that affect the lives of people in a particular location. CCRC's "Corridors of College Success Series" provides insights into…

A change in political leadership typically signals a growth in organizing campaigns to find and endorse the candidate with ideas most similar to their own. However, what if instead of focusing on finding the best candidate, organizing groups decided to focus on the conversation? How would you then use an election to engage the members of the…

Lopez Island is located in the archipelago of San Juan Islands off the northwest coast of Washington State. Breathtaking mountain vistas, sparkling shorelines, forests, and pastoral landscapes filled with sheep and orchards attract many tourists to San Juan County each year. This isolated community can only be reached by traveling on ferries,…

It started with a dream: to create a national best practices teaching and learning center that would not only provide the best available care and education to children ages 0 to 5 years old, but would also serve as a model for adult learners and like-minded entities and individuals in the early education arena. Committed to elevating the quality…

4-H has long emphasized the importance of civic engagement and community service for positive youth development. One pathway to this ideal is youth action research and evaluation. This article demonstrates how participatory youth research and evaluation can lead to the successful implementation of community action projects. It describes the…

Collected in this working paper are summary descriptions of 17 innovative community action programs designed to prevent child abuse. These programs were developed by individuals, community groups, hospitals, and/or state chapters of the National Committee for Prevention of Child Abuse, as well as by other groups and organizations. Located in…

The Iowa Community Betterment (ICB) program provides support to communities attempting to maximize their own resources and create development. In two ICB projects, Edgewood citizens developed badly needed affordable housing and built a golf course, and Greene residents boosted tourism by building a paddlewheel riverboat and supporting local…

During the 1890s and the first three decades of the 20th century, social work in the United States developed a community-based direct practice approach to family assistance and social reform. The basis for this method was a situational view of social life that emphasized the use of interpersonal and transactional methods to achieve social and…

This paper describes a grassroots effort by one mid-sized midwestern community which led to the development of a voluntary cooperative network of community service providers offering court-referred divorce mediation services to highly conflicted divorcing families. Issues addressed in this paper are: (1) the difference between a court-referred…

By engaging students in community service projects, action learning uses resources of the real world to give students opportunities to participate in performing tasks and making decisions that confront societal problems. Such projects should be decided on after a study of the needs of the community. After a project is selected, all relevant…

The RSVP (Retired Senior Volunteer Program) in E. St. Louis is described. How the program got started, guidelines, funding information, and testimony from the volunteers themselves are included. (CT)

The author's experiences in community service at a Quaker summer work camp 30 years ago taught him more about himself than about the community in which he helped. National service needs to include an organizing orientation that allows the strengths of both participants and community members to flourish. (SLD)

Suggestions designed to help communities attain the fifth National Education Goal are offered in this document. The goal states that by the year 2000, every adult American will be literate and will possess the knowledge and skills necessary to compete in a global economy and exercise the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. Seven principles…