Category Archives: Community Development

WoWe Blog Post for Farm to School Month

Head over to the Working on Wellness Environments (WoWe) blog to learn more about getting involved in Farm to School Month: Football, Fall, and Farm to School  

What is Community Development? – Revised Publication

Back in January, I discussed definitions of community development under the banner What is Community Development?  That post actually followed one on how Community Development Precedes Economic Development. If you still have questions about what Extension Community Development looks like, Greg Taylor, Craig Carpenter, Jamie Rae Walker, and I have updated the What is Community Development? Extension fact sheet, available at here, at https://communities.tamu.edu/selected-publications/,  or at the AgriLife Bookstore. The publication primarily targets Extension faculty and presents how various aspects of community development overlap with other traditional areas… Read More →

Economics of Healthy Concession Choices

Last night was my family’s first Little League game of the year. Yay! Last year was a little weird, and it’s exciting to be back in the stands—and the concession stands. In fact, I’ll be working the concession stand tonight. Concessions stands don’t usually pride themselves on serving the world’s healthiest foods. Last night, I had a healthy salad for dinner so I could enjoy my favorite baseball “sometimes food” at the game — my first jalapeno nachos of the season. Balance, right? But, in our Working on… Read More →

Revisiting the Ten Commandments of Community Leadership

The Ten Commandments of Community Leadership are usually on the final slide of my in-person presentations. I actually got to be with a community in person last week, and someone tried to search for the book online. I found a PDF from the Association of Washington Cities,  and it’s totally worth the short read. Almost a decade ago, I was offered some items from a retired colleague’s files and stumbled upon The Ten Commandments of Community Leadership, a great little book by Maury Forman and Michelle Harvey published… Read More →

What is Community Development?

Last week, I blogged, “Community development precedes economic development.” Thanks for the positive feedback on that idea. But that sentence raises another question for some of you: What is community development? There really isn’t an easy answer to that question. There are many definitions of community development (CD). The United Nationals has offered a succinct, practical definition. It lacks the nuance of other definitions but gets to the heart of the matter: A process where community members come together to take collective action and generate solutions to common… Read More →