Surveyed 134 small rural school administrators in New Mexico, west Texas, eastern Arizona, and southern California to determine their perception of education's role in economic development. Data suggest that most school districts place comparatively little emphasis on economic development. Offers strategies for communities to engage in active…

Describes the founding of the Chuyma Aru Association, an Oxfam America partner based in Peru, which is adapting and using traditional indigenous knowledge to stabilize new agrarian infrastructure in peasant communities. Describes the process of gathering statistics and understanding the Aymara campesino world view and crianza (caretaking)…

Proposes that Appalachia pursue an economic development strategy based on exporting knowledge and training. Partnerships between governments, private utilities, and institutions of higher learning could improve the telecommunications infrastructure, establish new learning products companies, instruct adults at their home and work places, expand…

Howard High School (South Dakota) is part of the Annenberg Rural Challenge, a privately funded national effort to strengthen rural schools and their communities. Rural Challenge schools create curricula specific to community history and resources, aiming to help students become active knowledgeable citizens. Student projects and the positive and…

Agricultural education institutions in developing countries must address immediate production needs as well as food security, sustainable agricultural, and rural development needs. This will mean moving to an interdisciplinary, systems approach that incorporates new topics. (Author/JOW)

Studies in four North Dakota communities that had suffered economic and population decline in the 1980s examined the economic and community impacts of new agricultural processing plants in the late 1990s, including effects on residents' incomes, total and school-age population, needs for day care and community services, housing needs, public…

Describes increases in federal aid that affect: (1) the rural telecommunications infrastructure, access to the Internet for rural schools and libraries, and distance learning and telemedicine programs; (2) nonmetropolitan airports and other transportation; and (3) water treatment and wastewater facilities in rural, American Indian, and Alaska…

Focusing on the concept of "commodity chains" within the food industry, this paper analyses the term's widespread and variable usage in both academic and policy-orientated work. Despite recent criticisms, the concept has retained its popular appeal alongside competing metaphors such as networks, circuits and assemblages. Examining the…

The direction, complexity and pace of rural change in affluent, western societies can be conceptualized as a multifunctional transition, in which a variable mix of consumption and protection values has emerged, contesting the former dominance of production values, and leading to greater complexity and heterogeneity in rural occupance at all…

The rural educational socium represents the foundation of individual and social educational resources. Among the key provisions of the strategy for modernizing the rural educational socium, the authors list the following: the creation of an integral system of continuous education in the immediate vicinity of the place where youngsters and adults…

Context is a key factor in designing and delivering adult learning programmes, and in multilingual environments the choice of language plays a decisive role. Four programmes, two in Asia (Bhutan Myanmar) and two in Africa (Ghana and Uganda), which focus on learning for development, integrate language considerations in different ways, related both…

The Rural Education Bureau of the New Mexico Public Education Department has established a program to address the special needs of schools and communities in the extensive rural areas of the state. High poverty rates, depopulation and a general lack of viable economic opportunity have marked rural New Mexico for decades. The program underway aims…

This handbook describes a set of tools small communities can use to reduce the cost of drinking water and wastewater projects. It is intended as a desktop reference for two primary audiences: (1) local residents (elected officials, plant operators, and concerned citizens) for whom the book provides detailed advice on how to do conduct a project at…

Community leaders and rural development specialists must decide which economic development strategies will provide the greatest benefit to the local labor force and the community. To aid in the evaluation of the small business approach to rural development, this report analyzes the effects of employer size on wages and employee benefits. A survey…

This directory is a compendium of over 600 scholars and educators in a range of disciplines throughout the United States who are actively involved in research or teaching of rural issues. It is intended as a resource for those individuals and for other professionals, providing access to one another and aiding a multi-disciplinary approach to rural…