The manual conceptualizes the community college mission as it is differentiated from that of the junior college, the trade institute, and the university. In a time when urbanization and industrialization have led to a loss of sense of community and when even education has become increasingly centralized and depersonalized, the community college has assumed responsibility for a symbiotic arrangement among various traditional community service functions and has matched them to specific community needs in a synergistic ecology. The author feels that the community college program, then, must center around the dialectic between the dichotomies of our social mores and the rights of the individual. Specifically, local opportunities and needs of St. Clair College in Windsor, Ontario are examined, with particular attention to a life skills course. Extensive addenda to the manual include: (1) other community programs; (2) data on the disadvantaged; (3) the instruction centres; (4) the public's view; (5) the community college curriculum; (6) admission procedures; (7) evaluation procedures; (8) problems being faced locally; and (9) a selected bibliography. Pertinent statistical data is provided. (SES)