Four main resources for creating a sense of community are city government, media, schools, and civic infrastructure. A school that is itself a healthy community can make an important contribution to community building. (SK)

Discusses the history and problems of the Community Action Program and the War on Poverty from the 1960s-1980s, highlighting San Antonio, Texas, and the San Antonio Neighborhood Youth Organization. Suggests that the War on Poverty's historical significance was more political than economic, and it emerged as a program that Hispanic and Black San…

The Institute for Community Peace has conducted two demonstration projects to determine whether communities can be engaged to prevent violence as it is identified and defined locally and link primary prevention across multiple forms of violence. The projects present evidence that community engagement can effect primary violence prevention; the…

As knowledge of effective treatments for mental disorders has grown, so too has the field of mental health promotion and positive development. Studies completed during the last two decades have synthesized the state of mental health promotion and documented that universal mental health supports positively affect child and adolescent developmental…

Problem-Based Learning (PBL) forges effective communications between adult (communicational and pedagogical workers and parents) and at-risk youth (jeopardizing their present and future adjustments) to explore their engagements with community activism engaging in building their communities. PBL is vital for them to be engaged citizens, informed…

Researchers from the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University prepared a case study of CODES (Community Outreach and Development Efforts Save). CODES is a coalition of 35 people and organizations in northern Manhattan committed to promoting safe streets, parks and schools. The case study analyzed the factors that prompted CODES'…

This guide suggests that public awareness campaigns can be an important part of a community's strategy to fight substance abuse. They can call attention to problems, and they can be a mobilizing force to unite different groups. The numerous public awareness campaigns that other communities use can be models for local efforts. This Action Kit lists…

A case study of a voter's referendum on charter revision of the Hartford, Connecticut, City Council in 1972 is presented as a basis for analyzing forces operating in a community referendum as it relates to educational policy-making and to identify some effective strategies employed in the campaign. (EH)

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…

Reviews the activities of the National Campaign for Nursery Education designed to press for increased provision of educational and play facilities for children under five in England and Wales. (CS)

The need for personnel trained in understanding environmental impact statements has become apparent. In an attempt to fill this need, the University of California developed a program designed to produce a select number of graduates qualified to assess environmental impact statements. (MA)

After identifying the mosquito as the Venezuelan equine encephalitis vector, health officials worked with the community to eliminate mosquito breeding sites. By educating the public first, cooperation was received in opening drainage areas and stocking water collection areas with mosquito eating fish to interrupt the host-vector-recipient cycle.…

Healthy and successful cities are built out of blocks and neighborhoods. Cities are too large and varied to be regarded or run as uniform entities. Block associations are proposed to be one of the major tools that are available for stabilizing and maintaining urban neighborhoods in a fashion that is both inexpensive and responsive to the needs of…

There is a general agreement that participation in the political arena is not uniformly distributed across population groups. However, existing literature has failed to provide sufficient data on the efficacy of alternative models for predicting and explaining political participation among black citizens. Data reported in this study were obtained…