The Community Change Coalition (CCC), composed of 20 U.S. university-based researchers and community development practitioners, has met for the past several years to explore better ways to help local leaders improve the quality of life in rural communities. The discussions have been lively and productive in exposing Coalition members to new approaches and ways to work with local leaders and bring about improvements in communities. As part of this effort, the CCC settled on researching three main community development issues: Community Readiness; Building Capacity, and Measurement of Outcome.

The CCC is hosting a pre-conference workshop immediately prior to the annual Community Development Society Conference in Cincinnati, OH. Program participants will explore new ideas and approaches as well as identify ways to advance the knowledge and practice of community development topics worldwide. Discussions will focus on Readiness, Capacity-Building, and Measure. A Strategic-Doing approach will be used to launch implementation strategies.

To prepare for this pre-conference event, the Heartland Center for Leadership Development and the Community Development Society hosted three webinars on June 14, 21, and 28. Recordings of the webinars are available at the following locations:      

Community Readiness

Community Capacity-building

Community Measurement

The presentations are excellent and the materials are worth reviewing by those working on community development issues and seeking an update on these topics for professional or educational uses.

The CCC is also compiling a special issue of Community Development that will include examples of cities and regions that have used innovative ways to measure and document community development changes. Special interest is in groups that link indicators with goals to bring changes to development policies and practices. Further information can be obtained from the CDS web site. Pass the information along to groups researching promising measurement practices.

The Annual Community Development Society International conference will be in Cincinnati, OH, on July 22 to 25. The program is extensive with Mobile Learning Workshops and involves many interesting and useful professional topics. It will attract speakers from many countries.

For more information, see:  http://www.comm-dev.org/index.php/conference-2012/2012-conference.