Nineteen Wisconsin counties were the site of the four-year Rural Development Demonstration Project, one of five such projects in the nation. Among the project's objectives were to accelerate sound economic, social, cultural and environmental development and to provide alternatives for living in non-metropolitan areas while providing greater…

The Social and Rehabilitation Service granted the Alaska Division of Public Welfare funds to train and employ qualified Native village people as paraprofessionals who could provide the social services needed while living right in the village. The Rural Areas Social Services Project (RASS), a demonstration and training project aimed at bringing…

The question of whether economic development programs can be evaluated seems simple, but the answer is not simple because of the nature of evaluation. Determining a program's effectiveness requires the evaluator to distinguish changes due to the program from changes due to nonprogram factors. The evaluator must focus on outcomes caused by the…

The Neighborhood Jobs Initiative (NJI) began in 1998 in five cities (Chicago, Fort Worth, Hartford, New York, and Washington, D.C.) in 1998. The NJI targets high-poverty urban neighborhoods, attempting to connect residents to employment opportunities nearby and in the urban periphery by providing training, supporting interpersonal networks, and…

Focusing on program development and evaluation, this document presents the summative evaluation of the community development component of the Mountain-Plains Career Education Model IV, a residential, family-based education program developed to improve the economic potential and lifestyle of selected student families in a six-state area. The report…