An Adult Education Model of Resident Participation: Building Community Capacity and Strengthening Neighborhood-Based Activities in a Comprehensive Community Initiative (CCI).

Abstract

Comprehensive Community Initiatives (CCIs) are of growing interest to social work and the social services field as they are an effort to move away from remediation of individual problems within neighborhoods to a comprehensive change effort that builds resident and institutional capacity for long term sustainability of healthy communities. Built on ongoing lessons learned from the community development field, CCIs are largely foundation supported projects that engage low-income neighborhood residents in a holistic change effort. However, based on what is known about community organizing, CCIs will likely face challenges as long as they involve a top-down approach with an outside funder entering a community to make change. This manuscript frames an adult education model of resident participation that can be used in CCIs and provides a case example illustrating the model in action. A discussion of how the model can be an effective means for communities to take advantage of outside resources while maintaining their power and voice for change is offered in conclusion.