This paper looks systematically at the experiences of two demonstration projects, Plain Talk and Community Change for Youth Development (CCYD), and discusses their attempts to implement resident involvement strategies. Chapter 1 is an introduction. Chapter 2 provides a brief overview of the two demonstration projects that indicates all sites in both projects experienced similar developmental phases in relation to resident involvement as they moved from planning to start-up to fuller implementation, although the projects differ in their goals and scope. Chapter 3 examines the following: the roles residents played during the planning phase and their relationships with site staff; how and why these roles and relationships changed and became a great deal more challenging and uncertain during initial program implementation; the strategies that sites used to overcome these challenges; and the range of roles that residents adopted as implementation progressed. The last chapter offers lessons from the Plain Talk and CCYD experiences and explores implications of these lessons for practitioners, program designers, and policymakers. (YLB)