Action For Neighbourhood Change Begins

Action for Neighbourhood Change (ANC) is a 14-month strategic research and learning project that will assess how locally-driven revitalization strategies can help citizens build strong, sustainable neighbourhoods. The project got under way in Febuary 2005. It will operate until March 2006 in selected neighbourhoods within the cities of Surrey, Regina, Thunder Bay, Toronto and Halifax.

Discover a powerful methodology for bringing communities together to uncover hidden assets and transform deep-rooted challenges. Veteran community organizer Paul Born's work has contributed to lowering cancer rates in Maine, improving mental health for young people in Florida, and reducing poverty rates in Canada by 20 percent. In this much-needed new book, he shares stories of how he was able to catalyze local communities and guide them to make significant progress on seemingly intractable community problems. Born has found that the secret to success is to organize and unite around a common agenda. This is not a list of topics, like a meeting agenda, nor a strategic plan. He offers a process for bringing leaders from businesses, human service organizations, and governments together with people who have a lived experience of a specific community problem. A common agenda is a statement of shared aspirations, a map of the assets in the community, and a road map for how to work together to make those aspirations a reality. Part I of this book describes how to identify your community's readiness for change; form leadership, action, and strategy teams; create a common agenda; and establish plans for community engagement. Part II presents the approaches and skill sets needed to do the work described in part I. Remarkably, enormous systemic problems such as climate change, poverty, disease, racism, housing, and many more issues can be best addressed at the local level. Communities can develop solutions tailored to their unique circumstances and can collaborate at a magnitude that can result in a truly transformative impact. This book shows how to make change happen.

A theory of change statement is a brief description of the context in which the initiative is taking place, the goals and targets it is pursuing and the strategies it has adopted. [...] For each initiative, the author worked with site managers, project directors or residents to prepare a two-page summary of the challenge the initiative is designed to address, the strategy employed and the outcomes achieved. [...] Centre The Spryfield Business The Spryfield and District Business Commission establish a business directory Directory to entice residents to shop locally and to encourage business owners to get more involved in the commission. [...] Unfortunately, members of the business commission - a voluntary organization - did not have the time to create a directory themselves, nor the funds to hire staff to do the job. [...] Key parents and the community animators secured the names of more than 100 children interested in a program at Cedar Drive, presented the list to the school and contacted the school board's language program coordinator.

Give your students a text that will help them improve the lives of not only individual clients, but of entire communities, with Promoting Community Change. This text addresses the real world issues facing Canadian social work, human services, and community health professionals who want to take the theoretical discussion of community forward and realize tangible community changes. Students will learn to identify the issues related to change and discover exactly how they can become effective agents of change. The author team emphasizes the role a strengthened community can play in preventing and solving the problems that individuals and families commonly experience. Promoting Community Change teaches students how to organize empowering local actions bringing clients, families, and other community members into an active role in building a healthier community for themselves, their families, and their neighbours.

The new trend in problem-solving courts—specialized courts utilized to address crimes not adequately addressed by the standard criminal justice system—is examined in this thorough and insight-filled book. At least since the late 1980s, with the development of the first drug court in Dade County, Florida, the justice system has undergone what some believe is a revolution—the movement toward problem-solving courts. Problem-Solving Courts: Justice for the Twenty-First Century? provides a concise, thorough, well-documented, and balanced foundation for anyone interested in understanding this phenomenon. Detailing the "promise and potential perils" of problem-solving courts, the authors represented here examine the development of the problem-solving court movement, the rationale for the courts, the approaches they take, and their anticipated benefits and potential pitfalls. Using case examples and looking at various types of problem-solving courts, the book offers "foundational" information about the specific types of problem-solving courts, their goals and philosophies, their organization and operation, their variation in structure and procedures, and the extensiveness of the court. It draws conclusions about the relative merits or disadvantages of such courts and considers prospects for the future.

This book is an examination of neighborhood mobilization and engagement from the perspective of several disciplines: psychology, social work, political science, planning, and education. The essays included in the work examine both internal and external factors related to the ability of neighborhoods to meet the human needs of their residents. They address the constraints put on neighborhood mobilization by the local and international political economy, but they also show how those constraints can, in a number of cases, be overcome by effective action. They treat neighborhood engagement as an educational process through which residents enhance their skills and knowledge as they participate. Taken together, these essays provide a comprehensive and multi-faceted view of the issues facing contemporary urban neighborhoods.

Every community has issues or opportunities that need to be addressed. The expert knowledge of community members could be the key to creating lasting change. By making community members into facilitators, Making Change: Facilitating Community Action suggests they can guide community members through the process of making change and to help them determine their goals and methods. The aim of this book is to enable facilitators to identify concerns and address, enable and foster change at the local level through effective facilitation. This book follows a six-stage model for creating change. Beginning with issue awareness, it continues through getting to know the team they are working with, seeking information on the issue and community, through facilitating the planning and community development through evaluation. This book focuses on the human side of the change process while also teaching the practical skills necessary for individuals to reach their goal. Making Change is for people interested in making change to improve their community, including students, community activists, local government and educational leaders.