2010
begins a series of community training opportunities for citizens
wishing to improve their community. The Community Development
Academy is a participant-centered workshop that engages
volunteer teams in the development of community improvement
strategies.
No
prior planning or community development experience is required, just
the willingness to invest in community betterment. Interested
participants are asked to put together a cohort of people (a team of
5 is ideal) from their community to participate in the workshop.
During the training, teams will meet one to two days per week over a
three week period. Between sessions, they will be given homework.
During this three week experience, community teams will be guided
through a process that asks them to:
Assess their
community assets
Devise a
public engagement plan
Make initial
contacts for a community-wide effort
Devise a draft
community development process plan
Identify
needed resources
Meet resource
providers
Upon completion of the
workshop, the community team will have a characterization of their
community, will have identified community involvement plans, and will
have identified possible resources to help them in the process of
reaching their goals.
Why is this important?
Often, community
conversations revolve around what is wrong with the world. It isn’t
until someone takes the initiative to begin the conversation about
where the community is, where the community wants to be, and what can
be done – that positive change can happen. By involving a
leadership team from your community, and by working with the people,
skills, resources and information provided through this Academy, your
community will be on the right track for planning for a better future.
Not only is this important for positive change, it also is imperative
to funding agencies to know that your community has organized,
assessed, planned, and acted collectively to craft your future.
Registrationfor the three academy sessions is
available online. This is an excellent opportunity for PRIDE
communities to organize for broad community assessment and project
planning! For more information, visit:
www.ksu.edu/cecd/cda.
The
Academy is hosted by a collaborative of resource providers including:
Kansas Department of Commerce, USDA Rural Development, the Federal
Home Loan Bank of Topeka, the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural
Development, K-State Research and Extension, PRIDE, and the KSU Center
for Engagement and Community Development.
Please
take a minute to view this video that highlights three Kansas PRIDE
Communities: Kinsley, Courtland, Melvern and includes photos from Park
City and Wilson.
As we approach our 40th year of
community improvement work in Kansas, we want to tell your story, the
PRIDE story. When PRIDE is working, community members are pulling in
the same direction. What communities choose to do is as unique as the
community itself. Over the past 40 years, communities have organized
to support local schools, supported area museums, hosted medical
clinics, built fire stations, managed food pantries, established
libraries - in fact, if there is something to be done in rural
communities, there is a good chance that a PRIDE group has done it!
What all of these projects have in common is that each community
builds on the assets or strengths of their people, local history,
resources, or culture to create projects that are valuable and
important to their quality of life.
The Kansas
PRIDE Program...
Building Better Communities
The Kansas PRIDE Program is a
partnership of K-State Research and Extension, the Kansas
Department of Commerce, and Kansas PRIDE, Inc.
PRIDE is dedicated to serving communities across the state to
encourage and assist local government and volunteers in making
their community a better place to live and work.
Through the PRIDE program, local communities identify what they
would like to preserve, create, or improve for their future. Then,
working with the resources of K-State Research & Extension and the
Kansas Department of Commerce, community volunteers pull together
to create their ideal community future. To learn more about the
Kansas PRIDE Program, we invite you to look through the resources
and links available at this website, or
contact the PRIDE
staff.