# Presentation: 768027

## Community Sustainability

- Holistic Approaches to Community Development

## Challenges Facing Communities

- Loss of traditional economic base and current economic slowdown
- Intense competition for service employment
- Flat tax revenues in the face of increasing local government costs
- Unplanned sprawl threatening municipal tax base and family farms

## Challenges Facing Communities

- Cuts in state and federal transfer payments due in part to events of 9.11.01
- Changing face of agriculture
- Increasing residential segregation
- Weakening of traditional community based organizations & decreased civic involvement

**Notes:**
Reference Putnam - “Bowling Alone”

Residential Segregation - resulting in increasing concentrations of poor families in declining family farm/agriculture market centers and distressed urban neighborhoods.

## Community Development

- Restoring balance, environmental health, quality of life, sense of community
- New Goals of for the 21st Century:
- 		High Quality of Life
- 		Social Cohesion
- 		Ecological Integrity
- 		Effective Decision making

**Notes:**
HOW DO WE ACCOMPLISH THIS?

## Terminology

- Community sustainability

- Community Wisdom

- Community as Place

- Community Capacity Building

**Notes:**
Land, work, people and community are all comprehended in the idea of culoture.  See standing by Words Essay.

Experience and research knowledge without a sense of community or partners has little value.  Experience and research knowledge put to work through community spirit and partnerships is invaluable and leads to results.  Alan Sorensen

Is it community sustainability or community abundance/ William McDonough – am I loving all the children of all the species all the time?  Lets start living as if there is a tomorrow

## Community Sustainability

- .. ability of a community to utilize its resources to ensure that all present and future members can attain a high degree of health and well-being, economic security, and a say in shaping their future while maintaining the integrity of the ecological systems on which all life and production depends.

**Notes:**
as well as those in adjacent communities

## Community Capacity Building

- The process of empowering people and organizations to realize their full potential and the achievement of some level of self sufficiency and self determination.

**Notes:**
Healthy tension between doing it for a community and getting them to take leadership, build skills, fain confidence

Getting people to the table : The role of the Extension Educator is to make room at the table for all ... and to provide an atmophere where different kinds of knowledge can be shared heard and integrated.  Role of interpreter.

Capacity building activities are designed to improve the ability of citizens and their organizations to solve immediate specific problems and also improve their ability to solve future community problems

Capacity building is process-oriented as well as product oriented.  In contrast to technical assistance activities which are product-oriented

Includes a focus on thoughts, beliefs, values, expectations and attitudes (hearts, minds and souls of the people we are working with)

## Community Wisdom

- We need to claim a place as home and possess “local knowledge,” which is not primarily the scholar’s knowledge, but the hard-won knowledge of men and women with long experience in a specific landscape.   - *Deborah Tall*

**Notes:**
It’s comprised of the characteristics, interactions, events, and stories that are passed on through family and community lore and that serve as a guide for how to live in a place successfully. 
Wisdom: understanding of what is true, right or lasting.  Common sense; good judgement.  Scholarly learning; knowledge.
Care must be taken in all the reconstructive work to see that local initiative is relied upon to the fullest extent, and that federal and even state agencies do not perform what might be done by the people in the communities. The centralized agencies should be stimulative and directive, rather than mandatory and formal. Every effort must be made to develop native resources, not only of material things, but of people.
Liberty Hyde Bailey, Report of the Commission on Country Life, 1909

The community component of this work is a much-needed antidote to the array of specialized problems and challenges leaving the campus, government agencies and private foundations in search of solutions. I think these external institutions, land-grants, etc. should be on tap, not on top, and for this to happen we need a relationship with communities in which we can help them articulate their concerns and mobilize actors and resources to address them. 
David Pelletier, Associate Professor of Nutrition, 2000

I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education.  Thomas Jefferson 

## Community as Place

- To decide to be someplace as members of a community demands that we become active placemakers again, that we participate with others in our communities in thoughtful, careful, responsible action.  ...... *Schneekloth and Shibley*

**Notes:**
To care enough about a place in order to work toward conserving it, we first of all need to belong to the place in a vital way 
Placemaking is the way all of us as human beings transform the places in which we find ourselves into places in which we live.  It includes building and tearing buildings down, cultivating the land and planting gardens, cleaning the kitchen and rearranging the office, making neighborhoods and mowing lawns, taking over buildings and understanding cities.  It is a fundamental human activity that is sometimes almost invisible and sometimes dramatic.  Placemaking consists both of daily acts of renovating, maintaining, and representing the places that sustain us, and of special, celebratory one-time events such as designing a new church building or moving into a new facility.  It can be done with the support of others or can be an act of defiance in the face of power.

Without our attention, our places are endangered.  And when our places are endangered, as revealed in the current ruins of our inner cities, our poisoned rivers, our inhospitable offices, and our dilapidated houses, we are at risk.  
Placemaking – The Art and Practice of Building Communities – Lynda Schneekloth and Robert Shibley (SUNY, Buffalo)

Workshop participants will be asked to consider a series of questions as we collectively explore the relationship between, extension work, place-based community development, and community abundance.  A focus on “place” invites us to explore the interrelationships of the natural, built and cultural environments.
often it means staying where we are with the people of our communities and attending to our places through placemaking activities

## Community Development

- What is it that we are all working toward?

**Notes:**
Building Strong and Vibrant Communities
Providing more choices for communities...... Empowering them at the grassroots level by giving them the tools and resources they need to create the communities they want

Communities that have a vision of where they want to go and have the capacity to move toward that vision (and implementation)

## Sustainable Communities

- How do YOU view a sustainable community?

- What is YOUR philosophy?

- Group Exercise

## Community and Economic Vitality Principles

- _We work toward the long term sustainability and well being of communities by:_
- Encouraging strategic planning and vision development
- Identifying assets and building from local resources and skills
- meeting local needs with local sources
- Developing the local workforce
- Considering quality of life issues for all age groups
- Protecting working landscapes

## Key Characteristics of Community Based Planning

- Resident-driven
- Participatory decision-making
- Action-oriented
- Asset-based
- Sustainability-striving

- Start small & build on success
- Organizational capacity-focused
- Emphasizes learning
- Organic

## TOTAL DEVELOPMENT PARADIGM

- (Layer Cake Model)

- Human Infrastructure /
-  Leadership Infrastructure

- Support Infrastructure / Quality of Life

- Physical Infrastructure

- Economic Base

## CD Process

**Identify**
**Needs**

**Assess**
**Assets**

**Establish**
**Goals & Objectives**

**Seek Potential**
**Funding**

**Continuous**
**Evaluation**

**Implement**
**Projects & Plans**

**Formulate **
**Action Plan**

**Notes:**
NEED TO FLESH THIS OUT MORE

## Long-term Process of Capacity Building

**Process**

**Next Process**

**Next Process**

**Next Process**

**Next Process**

- TIME

- COMPLEXITY COST

**On Going Processes**

**Notes:**
NEEDS EXPLANATION

## CD CHALLENGES & RESOURCE CONSTRAINTS

- _Challenges_

- _Resources_

**Search **
**Conference**

**Visioning**
**Process**

**Strategies**

**Neighborhood**
**Plan**

**Community**
**Comprehensive **
**Plan**

**Notes:**
NEEDS EXPLANATION

## Wendell Berry’s set of rules

- Always ask of any proposed change or innovation:  what will this do to our community
- Always include local nature – the land, the water, the air, the native creatures
- Always ask how local needs might be supplied from local sources

**Notes:**
How many of you are familiar with Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry is a conservationist, farmer, essayist, novelist, professor of English and poet.  He was born August 5, 1934 in Henry County, KY where he now lives on a farm.  The NY Times has called Berry the “prophet of rural America.”

## Measuring Community Success

- Increased us of the skills, knowledge and ability of local people
- Strengthened relationships and communication
- Improved community initiative, responsibility and adaptability
- Sustainable, healthy ecosystems with multiple community benefits
- Appropriate and diverse healthy economies

**Notes:**
Outcomes:
Diverse and inclusive citizen participation
Expanding leadership base
Shared vision
Progress toward goals
More effective community organizations and institutions
Better resource utilization by the community

## Constituents

- Residents, Neighborhood Groups, Community Leaders
- Under represented groups:     		youth/senior/immigrant populations
- Area Businesses
- Government & elected officials
- Agencies and organizations
- State & Federal agencies

## Commonalities of Successful Communities

- 1)   Well articulated vision
- 2)   Looks for Opportunities
- 3)   Risk Taking
- 4)   Holistic Perspective
- 5)   A Belief in “Doing”
- 6)   Find Ways for ALL to Participate
- 7)   Develop PEOPLE first
- 8)   Builds upon Community Resources
- 9)   Nothings Succeeds like Success
- 10) Good Use of Knowledge
- 11) Trust

**Notes:**
What makes a “healthy & vital”  community ?

DON”T JUST READ !!!!!!!

## Community Development

- Restoring balance, environmental health, quality of life, joy, sense of community
- New Goals of for the 21st Century:
- 	High Quality of Life
- 	Social Cohesion
- 	Ecological Integrity
- 	Effective Decision making

**Notes:**
HOW DO WE ACCOMPLISH THIS?