The principles and practice of community development offer a means of bridging the gap between agencies, planners, researchers, and communities. Community development involves an educational strategy of raising the levels of local awareness and increases the confidence and ability of community groups to identify and solve their own problems.…

The initiative for the Future of Rural Oklahoma was implemented as a pilot program in thirteen sites in Oklahoma to support rural communities that faced challenges on several fronts. The initiative emphasized engagement through local partnerships between a land-grant university and concerned community citizens. Additionally, the initiative…

Engelhard is a very isolated rural community in Hyde County, North Carolina, economically dependent on seafood, small scale agriculture, and logging. In the mid-1980s the agricultural crisis, the decline in seafood landings, and changes in timber industry technology contributed to rising unemployment. Several decades of declining population and…

This booklet contains summaries of workshop presentations at the conference on community development. This conference brought local community officials and leaders together with interested citizens to learn about successful rural community development activities occurring in Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota. Sessions covered four main…

Many small towns are considering community-based start-up funds (SUF) to foster development and retention of small businesses. But whether a community is large or small, a group must be well-organized before it begins to make decisions concerning the design and purpose of a small-business SUF. This primer highlights some main points a community…

This document presents one module in a set of training resources for trainers to use with parents and/or professionals serving children with disabilities; focus is on effective community advisory committees (CACs). The modules stress content and activities that build skills and offer resources to promote parent-professional collaboration. Each…

This document describes REAL Enterprises, an economic education consortium working to assist young people to research, plan, set up, own, and operate economically viable small businesses in Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. The program was developed with the following goals: (1) to help rural schools become effective business incubators…

This manual is concerned with developing community-based work for persons with disabilities, particularly disabled workers in segregated settings and individuals who are considered not yet ready for or capable of work. The first part of the publication deals with the following topics: the concepts of community, work, and severe disabilities; the…

Whether large-scale or small farms dominate, a county's farm structure is influenced not only by changes within farming but also by key factors such as nonfarm economic activity, geography, and population growth. Large-farm counties where agriculture dominates the economy are concentrated in the Plains, Midwest, and Mississippi Delta. Small-farm…

Vocational and technical training programs for less developed countries offer little in the way of training the intermediate cadres, technicians, and village level workers necessary for modernizing the primary sector on which developing economies depend. Training is vital because it secures cost reduction and maximum use of organization, enables…

The purpose of this guidebook is to help elected leaders of small towns and communities stretch their investments when matching funds are required to compete for a grant or to pay for development costs above the grant award itself. The federal "small cities" Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) is used as an example throughout the…

Fiscal impact analysis is the study of the effect of development or policy alternatives on government expenditures and revenues and on taxes. There are numerous possible uses or objectives of fiscal impact studies; no one method of analysis is appropriate to all problems. Sensitivity analysis of critical assumptions is an important part of a…

Achievements of the Building Our American Communities Program (BOAC), initiated in 1971 to provide a vehicle for Future Farmers of America members to make direct contributions to their communities and to practice good citizenship and develop leadership skills, are summarized in this 1985 annual report. the report begins with messages from…

Although useful for any community development planning team, this handbook is designed to assist Future Farmers of America chapter committees in coordinating Building Our American Communities (BOAC) projects. Ten steps for successful chapter participation in the BOAC program are outlined. These steps include selecting the BOAC committee and…

Part of the Small Town Strategy series, this publication presents some of the more common techniques for identifying problems and setting objectives. A problem-solving process which can be used in many different situtations is presented. The process includes the following sequence: problem statement, goal statement; objectives, strategies,…