Worker Ownership and Participation Enhances Economic Development in Low-Opportunity Communities

This study empirically estimates that worker ownership and participation modestly but importantly enhances the ability of firms to create ''mainstream'' employment in low-opportunity communities, both urban and rural. It is also associated with community development benefits not commonly provided by conventionally organized firms. In such forms as employee-owned firms and marketing cooperatives, worker ownership and participation should be more widely utilized in community development.     

Adult Literacy Education and Community Development

SUMMARY

This article responds to the concern that low-literate community residents often are marginalized in community development processes. They are unable to give voice to their concerns, interests and their vision for their community. Perspectives and approaches in the fields of adult literacy education and community development are explored to determine how adult literacy education might be used to further the goals of community development. While there are parallels between these two disciplines, there are also barriers to overcome if an integrated approach to dealing with community issues is realized. This article reflects an interest in advancing a comprehensive approach to community development in communities with limited economic resources, low-level literacy and limited access. It seeks to address the issue of whether adult literacy education programs have a meaningful role to play in community development. The strengths of participatory approaches such as community-based literacy, and community development principles such as collective action, shared values, participation, social justice, political awareness and action, comprehensiveness, empowerment, and learning and reflection, facilitate an interdisciplinary approach.     

Development of a participatory monitoring and evaluation strategy

This paper describes the process of developing a participatory monitoring and evaluation strategy for a Kenyan youth-based NGO. The iterative nature of the study including the process of narrowing down indicators to measure and methods to monitor/evaluate these is well documented. A discussion on the extent to which the process achieved participation and was empowering for the participants reflects on existing power relationships and cultural context of Kenya and points to the need to create opportunities for youth where they engage with the broader community. Lessons that emerge out of the study focus on the importance of prioritizing monitoring and evaluation, the potential of youth to carry out effective monitoring and evaluation, and the need for researchers to engage respectfully with communities and participants.     

Family-Centered,Community-Based Asset Building: A Strategic Use of Individual Development Accounts

This research examines individual development account (IDA) programs as part of a broader community development strategy for low-income/low-wealth communities, particularly communities of color. Through a review of multiple literatures and detailed case studies, we explore the potential of explicitly creating a community-based, family-centered development account program as a step toward a comprehensive community asset building approach in low-income urban neighborhoods. From the perspective of IDA practitioners, such an approach provides program participants with local support networks and access to additional services. From the perspective of grassroots community organizers, such an approach provides tangible benefits to low-income residents of their neighborhoods. The likelihood of success may depend on the availability of local resources to build areas of strength and reduce vulnerabilities, but there are examples where a family-centered, community-based asset building approach seems to thrive.     

Low-Income Homeownership Policy as a Community Development Strategy

Summary

Homeownership for the poor increasingly is on the political agenda in the United States. This is due largely to the assumptions made by policy makers and citizens about the benefits of homeownership. Despite this emphasis in recent administrations, little theoretical literature has been developed that specifies the impact of homeownership on community development. This essay reviews relevant theoretical and empirical literature and suggests that homeownership affects communities through the promotion of increased wealth accumulation, improved property upkeep, decreased residential mobility, and increased community participation. This article addresses the special needs of poor communities and households, and the implications for low-income housing policy. Overall it is suggested that community economic development and low-income homeownership be pursued in tandem.     

Community Economic Development Strategies in Rural Washington: Toward a Synthesis of Natural and Social Capital*

Abstract Routes to economic development attract considerable attention in community and rural sociology. Social scientists draw increasingly on studies of social capital and environmental surroundings as they examine the factors that facilitate and inhibit economic development. However, few empirical analyses exist that analyze the impact of the combination of social infrastructure and natural capital on different forms of economic development such as on industrial recruitment and self‐development. Using data collected from six communities in Washington State, the interaction of a community's social infrastructure and natural capital on industrial recruitment and self‐development efforts is examined. Results suggest that while natural capital positively impacts a community's successful recruitment of outside industries, it is not significant for a community's level of self‐development. However, a community's social infrastructure, measured by the existence of active civic organizations, local businesses that support local community projects, community‐wide fund‐raising capacity, and extra‐local linkages to nearby communities, state, and national agencies, positively affects both industrial recruitment and self‐development. These findings illustrate the need for communities and local activists to carefully weigh their advantages and potential shortcomings when deciding on an economic development strategy.     

环首都环境友好型城镇社区的构建策略

通过揭示环境友好型城镇社区内涵、特征与类型,阐述了环首都环境友好型城镇社区的构成要件,提出了加强环首都环境友好型城镇社区管理体系建设、公众参与机制建设等环首都环境友好型社区的构建策略.     

Measuring Wellness Through Interdisciplinary Community Development

SUMMARY

The aim of this study is to answer the question: Is there evidence that the quality of life of residents in a community that has had community development intervention is different as compared to the quality of life of residents in a nearby community that did not have community development initiatives? This was done by administering community development initiatives in a local area and comparing it to a similar community that did not receive this intervention. The residents of these communities rated the quality of their lives and communities in two purposively selected suburbs in Perth, Western Australia using the Australian Unity Wellbeing Index to measure individual and neighbourhood well-being. The quality of life of residents in both communities is then compared to national averages for quality of life or well-being. Answering this question provides empirical evidence of variation between ratings of quality of life of residents in different communities and highlights the utility of the Wellbeing Index for the evaluation of interdisciplinary community development.     

Trust,Social Capital,and the Coordination of Relationships Between the Members of Cooperatives: A Comparison Between Member-Focused Cooperatives and Third-Party-Focused Cooperatives

In recent years, nonprofit scholars have increasingly studied the phenomenon of social enterprises which has become a generic term describing a wider reorientation among third sector organizations. The emergence of social enterprises has also led to a dynamic of hybridization and broadening in the cooperative sector, similar to an earlier dynamic of “economization”, but this time on the other end of the organizational spectrum. This paper aims at developing a fine-grained conceptual understanding of how this organizational dynamic is shaped in terms of member coordination, thus contributing to a more comprehensive theoretical understanding of different organizational forms of cooperatives. Specifically, to highlight the difference to traditional member-focused cooperatives, the paper introduces the term third-party-focused cooperatives for those social enterprises which emphasize economic goals as well as control and ownership by a particular community (typically place-based). The key result of the paper is that with the shift from member- to community-focus in cooperatives, the main coordination mechanism becomes one of norm-based trust on the basis of generalized reciprocity. In contrast to traditional maxim-based trust member coordination on the basis of relation-specific reciprocity, this enables third-party-focused cooperatives to mobilize bridging and linking social capital, facilitating collective action aimed towards the community interest. The findings suggest that this identity shift requires a mutual re-positioning between the cooperative and the nonprofit sector, in terms of umbrellas as well as regulatory and legislative bodies.     

Social Capital and Participation in Community Improvement Activities by Elderly Residents in Small Towns and Rural Communities*

Abstract This study critically reviews theoretical concepts and measurements of social capital and tests hypotheses that elaborate how four dimensions of social capital (informal social ties, formal social ties, trust, and norms of collective action) and sense of community are related to participation in community improvement activities for elderly residents in small towns and rural communities. Mail surveys of 2,802 elders in 99 small towns and rural communities in Iowa reveal that many elders are actively involved in their community. Social capital and sense of community are very important in predicting elderly participation in community improvement activities, but they relate differently to elderly community involvement. Formal ties and sense of community have much stronger relationships with community involvement than informal ties and norms of collective action. Generalized trust is not significantly related to elderly community involvement.     

Making Sense of Community Action and Voluntary Participation—A Multilevel Test of Multilevel Hypotheses: Do Communities Act?

To what extent does community context influence individuals’ proclivity to participate in community‐oriented activities and projects? In this article we utilize survey data from residents of 99 Iowa communities to conduct a multilevel analysis of voluntary participation and community action, simultaneously addressing voluntary participation at the individual level and “community action” at the community level. Additionally, we test the suggestion that community attachment may constitute a unique form of social capital. The robustness of these data allows us to overcome the obstacles that have led to the conflation of individual‐ and community‐level attributes in many community studies. We show that community attachment and community‐oriented action are determined almost entirely by individuals’ characteristics rather than by the characteristics of communities, and thus do not constitute community‐level phenomena, calling into question the assumptions on which certain theoretical approaches to community are based.     

Community Development with Emerging Ethic Communities

With the approach of the twenty-first century, community professionals will find minority communities an emerging phenomenon of increasing importance. Professionals need to relate to these communities in new and creative ways. This paper builds on the analysis of Rivera and Erlich (1984), describing a number of recent events and changing conditions significant to minority communities. The importance of ethnic competence is discussed in terms of community practice. Finally, a proposal for a national and local strategy to improve practice and professional education is described.     

Repositioning culture for development: women and development in a Nigerian rural community

Most studies on women have ignored women's view of themselves in relation to their roles in community development. This study uses interview and ethnographic data from Nigeria to investigate women's narratives of themselves concerning their position in a rural cultural space in relation to community development. It explores ways of repositioning patriarchal or gender unresponsive cultures for eliciting women's potentials in community development. It emphasises how women's cultural constrains in a patriarchal community have led to a rare survival strategy – that is, the evolution of an invisible matriarchy. As a recommendation, it presents a framework for culture repositioning and a map of actors' responsibilities for its achievement. It contributes to ongoing debates on women in rural community development. It raises conceptual questions about customary practices that affect women's values in communities in Nigeria's rural areas. Finally, it presents three main lessons that can be drawn by women (and men) in traditional communities in non-Western societies.     

Building the Sustainable Community: Is Social Capital the Answer?

Over the past decade, environmental sustainability has emerged as a prominent theme in the community development literature. In fact, the concept has become a standard feature of most economic and social development plans. Most models of sustainable community development stress the importance of widespread participation in the decision-making process. Unfortunately, community studies document numerous barriers to broad involvement and the high level of activeness envisioned by proponents of sustainable community development. In searching for ways to overcome these barriers, scholars and policymakers have embraced the idea that we can enhance efforts to create more sustainable communities by increasing the local stock of social capital. We examine this line of reasoning in light of what we view as the most important conceptual issues surrounding the relationship between social capital and sustainable community development. We conclude that before social capital is endorsed as a central component of public policy, much work remains to be done in terms of developing a more precise definition of the concept, situating it within extant theories of community, constructing better measures of social capital, documenting the activities and networks most important in building social capital, and gaining a better understanding of the forms of social capital that are most important in developing sustainable communities.     

Being involved in the country: Productive ageing in different types of rural communities

Productive ageing recognises the contribution of older people to economic, social and cultural growth and helps build a sustainable community. Being involved in community life is good for individuals and good for society. However, we know very little about the participation of and contribution by people aged 50 and over in rural communities. This research aimed to develop a better understanding of productive ageing in different types of communities in rural Victoria, Australia. An anonymous self-complete postal questionnaire was distributed to a sample of households in twenty rural communities using the Australia Post Unaddressed Select Service. Those householders 50 years of age and older were invited to complete the survey. Data collected allowed examination of social and civic engagement, familiarity with community, the value placed on social relations by people aged 50 years and over, and how community involvement was linked to community sustainability. In particular it attempts to address the question ‘Does social and civic engagement differ across declining, stable and growing rural communities?’ Despite differences among rural communities, this study showed that older people develop and maintain strong community connections and well-functioning social capital and that participation in social activities was associated with feelings of being connected with community. It also identified health issues and lack of options as the main constraints on participation. A key message for policy makers is that older people play an important role in the sustainability of rural communities. There is much to be gained from actively supporting their participation in activities that are connected to ageing well.     

Local Support Organisations: An Exit Strategy for Rural Development NGOs

Rural development NGOs are often trapped into indefinite support for the grassroots organisations they help to create. This article explores an exit strategy whereby such NGOs help to establish multi‐tier apex organisations of, rather than for, the people, that are able to replace them. This enables them to move on to other communities or to address their resource constraints as donor funding becomes tighter. Drawing on fieldwork, it argues that a gradual withdrawal and building on community social capital are more likely to lead to the success of such a strategy.     

Women's participation in self-help community development projects in Ndokwa agricultural zone of Delta State, Nigeria

The study was designed to assess women's participation in self-helpcommunity development projects in the Ndokwa agricultural zoneof Delta State, Nigeria. A total of thirty communities wereinvolved in the study. From the thirty communities, sixty-oneproject leaders were purposively selected. A total of thirtypurposively selected non-participant women were also interviewed.Semi-structured interview schedules were developed and usedin gathering information. Data were described through the useof frequency and percentage. The findings indicated that thewomen actually embarked on many self-help development projectsand the most common (19.6%) one was the cooperative society.A greater proportion (93.5%) of the identified projects hadbeen completed and they were functioning.     

TANF Participation Rates: Do Community Conditions Matter?*

Abstract A general criticism of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act is that it is primarily the result of an urban political agenda, and it may hurt rather than help the rural poor. Under the new welfare system, the rural poor that are most likely to be affected are those who live in socially, economically, and spatially disadvantaged communities. More residents in these communities are likely to need TANF, clients in these communities are least likely to leave TANF by finding employment, and community organizations are likely to have more limited resources to help TANF recipients. The objective of this study is to examine the extent to which variations in community conditions account for differences in TANF participation rates. Using 1997 TANF data from the Mississippi Department of Human Services, we estimated OLS regression models of local TANF participation rates across 100 communities in nonmetro counties. The results indicate that TANF participation rates tend to be higher in communities with high concentrations of African Americans, less faith‐based activeness, more employment in retail trade, spatial concentration of the poor, and located in the Delta.