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)

Argues that small-group mutual aid organizations are successful voluntary associations that attract members even in our individualistic and commodity-driven culture because they provide valuable collective benefits that can only be enjoyed in common. Small groups as a source of social capital have implications for the study of helping…

If the neighborhoods' movement faces up to the implications of one of its important claims, namely, that by preserving communities, a city can promote better values than by destroying them, then it must determine how the process of political education and organizing can foster better attitudes throughout the community. (Author/EB)

A major problem with the proposed approaches to national service is that they may draw attention away from the real causes of and the feasible solutions to critical problems. Community action should involve young people in sustained, long-term empowering activities, not in one-time experiences or in work that does not challenge current power…

Articulates profitable routes to institutional reform for people dissatisfied with the quality of social service provided by the institution of which they are part. Argues that the creation of cultural and institutional democracy requires recognition of clients as constituents, and some elements of participatory decision making, community control,…

Discusses both ideological and managerial precepts that came into play in the school decentralization struggle that took place in New York City in the 1970s. Describes the impact of decentralization on one poor, predominantly Black district. (GC)

Argues that Neighborhood Development Organization (NDO) staffs and volunteers have a faulty understanding of the political economies of poor urban communities, and have adopted a free market orientation. Recommends an alternative "organizing-driven" model of community development. (FMW)

Discusses the barriers to effective parental participation in schools: (1) economic survival pressures; (2) control of participatory structures by school personnel; (3) cultural distance between school and community; (4) parental uncertainty about responsibility for failure; and (5) parental lack of clarity about improvement. Also discusses…