A community-centered recreational program that has served 12 mentally retarded young adults is described. Major features of the Rec Club include specific skill training activities and enhancement of independent recreational activities conducted in commercial community settings (e.g., bowling alley). Assistance is reduced as participants' skills…

The Indicators Project on Education Organizing was designed to examine the role of community organizing in school reform. For over 2 years, researchers documented the education organizing of five urban groups. This report presents an education organizing indicators framework that highlights strategies and accomplishments of education organizing.…

This report describes Austin, Texas' Austin Interfaith, which connects community institutions that can support families (e.g., schools, congregations, and civic organization) and builds the capacity of family members to participate fully in the economic system. Viewing schools as key neighborhood institutions, Austin Interfaith works directly with…

This report describes New York City's ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), which has a 20-year history of organizing in the City and emphasizes public education issues. ACORN works at both the neighborhood and policy level. It is one of five case studies in the Indicators Project on Education Organizing, which identified…

This report presents summaries of five case studies from the Indicators Project on Education Organizing, which was designed to examine the role of community organizing in school reform. For over 2 years, this action research project documented the education organizing of five urban groups. The research developed an Education Organizing Indicators…

This paper examines the role that colleges and universities play in the economy of rural northern New York. It is based on a 1992-93 survey of 20 of the 21 colleges and universities in the region. Parts of the survey were updated in 1997. The study found that the institutions played a vital role in assisting businesses and community organizations…

This report describes the general features of "online learning communities," community organizations that have constructed learning delivery systems that effectively combine elements of the distance learning and traditional models of instruction. It discusses the online learning community framework and explains the four features of these…

To make more valuable to the people those things from which the people are accustomed to derive value has been appropriately been said to be the prime business of legislators. That the schoolhouse, whose value to the people is already great, may become still more valuable to them, is the purpose of the community-organization movement which the…

Compares the state governance and power structures in early child education in Michigan, California, and New York. Focuses on the informal, dynamic networks of power and influence among public and private agencies and, in turn, between these agencies and clients attached to a variety of interest groups. (Author/GC)

Describes Catholic priest's founding and operation of Servol, grassroots community assistance and development center in Trinidad. Describes Servol's low-profile service-oriented approach to creating education and health services, programs, and facilities. Describes Servol's difficult transition from quixotic neighborhood project to national and…

Describes and analyzes the establishment of Chicano voluntary associations in California from 1910 to 1930. Refutes early research supporting prejudicial Hispanic stereotypes. Examines how political and social forces produced complex networks of voluntary organizations aiding ethnic consciousness and immigrant and migrant assimilation. Focuses on…

Proposes a new solution--creation of cosmopolitan civic universities to the Deweyan question of how to construct and maintain a radical new form of social organization (cosmopolitan neighborly communities based on enlightened, humanistic, universal values and relationships) in an age characterized by the information revolution and a global…

This article concerns eight decades (1920-2000) of community organization in the American Indian community in Chicago. While the trends discussed may be particular to that community or time frame, the authors expect that there are parallels in other urban Indian communities. The Chicago American Indian Center was the first urban Indian center in…

This article discusses how Native women in Thunder Bay, Ontario, organized services and programs to help women adapt to urban life in the 1970s and 1980s. It investigates the founding of Beendigen, an emergency hostel for Native women and their children. In 1978, Thunder Bay Anishinabequek, a chapter of the Ontario Native Women's Association…

In this article the author examines the multifaceted role of the Alaska Federation of Natives crafts fair in the lives of Alaska Native women who have left their home villages and moved into Anchorage, Alaska's largest city. At the same time, this discussion raises broader issues such as the evolving politicization of women traders and the growing…