The reader is provided with an overview of the limited amount of literature dealing with the topic of community development, showing how as the community development sector has evolved over time, increasing its impact, funding and professionalism, so too have the institutions of that sector abandoned their missions and gone from institutions bound and accountable to the people they serve to institutions that are bound and accountable to outside funding sources. In essence, the institutions of the community development sector, the so-called “Community Development Corporations,” or “CDCs” have gone from responding to crises as vehicles of community empowerment to being paid for “managing the crisis” and in the process accepting funds from private and public sources of support to manage the very people they were set up to serve.

pp. 20

€ 5.00 Buy PDF

€ 6.00 Add to custom-made book

Too often, community organizing is undertaken in a way that uses local residents to advocate for an outcome that, though mostly in their collective interest, is defined by those who “know better.” When such is the format for organizing efforts, the organizing must be continual, with the needs, rationales and targets for organizing constantly reinforced and adapted. In other words, organizing, though often necessary to avert a local crisis, is no substitute for “community organizing” that has as its core goal the development of transformed social, economic, and political structures that change power sharing arrangements and are sustained by local institutional frameworks that are responsive and accountable to local residents. This chapter explores groups best known for their organizing prowess, their successes, and their shortcomings.

pp. 18

€ 5.00 Buy PDF

€ 6.00 Add to custom-made book