City Hall And Neighborhood Residents

The Neighborhood Preservation Initiative, a comprehensive community building program in ten neighborhoods from nine mostly mid-sized cities, is examined in It Takes a Neighborhood. Wright shows what was learned through NPI about the value of focusing on working-class neighborhoods, as well as how to think about and structure community building efforts generally. The lessons gained from NPI about engaging established, networked community organizations in deliberate action-oriented strategies, fueled by flexible funding, and linked to systems of local support, are shown to be applicable to a wide spectrum of community building initiatives. The Pew Charitable Trusts created the NPI, targeting it toward working-class neighborhoods threatened but not yet affected deeply by decline, a significant departure from previous community development efforts. The neighborhoods possessed important assets such as strong community organizations, talented volunteers, and neighborhood strategies that could be capitalized upon, neighborhood strengths that could be reinforced through relatively small investments as a way to prevent decline. Along with generating attention to working-class neighborhoods and public policy on their behalf, the goal of NPI was to help residents to improve their quality of life and learn how to sustain long-term community stability and vitality.

Discover how to better help those in your community in need of services Community Action Research comprehensively explores models for community action research, incorporating quantitative and qualitative research to highlight the advantages to community members as well as the volunteers/paraprofessionals who implement the services. Respected experts present the latest research on the fulfillment of the needs of community members as well as the benefits to the volunteers and paraprofessionals, including psychological empowerment, psychological sense of community, and other facets of personal development. Community Action Research is helpfully organized into two sections. The first section presents a sample of empirical studies that examines whether community action research demonstrated benefits for community members. The second section provides empirical studies that show the positive impact of community action research on the personal development of volunteers and paraprofessionals who provided the research-related services. This detailed text is carefully referenced and uses several tables to enhance understanding of research data. Community Action Research discusses: the Adolescent Diversion Project as an alternative to juvenile court home-based behavior modification programs for autistic children the People Awakening Project and the role paraprofessionals played in Alaska Native sobriety a crime prevention project launched by a residential neighborhood association the Actual Community Empowerment Reading Program which utilized community members as literacy tutors the Community Service Self-Efficacy Scale’s reliability and validity the Hawaiian Studies Program’s weekly participation in community service-learning exercises and more! Community Action Research is insightful reading for psychologists, sociologists, social workers, criminal justice researchers and professionals, community counselors, practitioners and researchers in community prevention and intervention, clinical supervisors, service learning specialists, educators, students, and mental health and human services program administrators, planners, or evaluators.

A fascinating history of how average citizens banded together to cope and rebuild in the wake of the 1948 War. When the 1948 Israeli War of Independence broke out, population centers were rocked by sniper fire, bombings, and roadside ambushes. As the fighting moved out of the cities into desert areas, private citizens and community organizations left behind organized to revitalize and restore life in their devastated communities. In Israeli Community Action, Paula Kabalo presents a vivid portrait of these civilians who strove to help each other cope with the realities of war. Kabalo explores how civilian militias were recruited, how neighborhoods were protected, how older populations were enlisted into the war effort, and how women were organized to provide medical aid or establish refugee centers. She demonstrates that each phase of the war brought along new challenges to the population of the young state of Israel, but she also illuminates how the engagement of Israelis in community efforts brought them together and shored them up to face the future in their new country.