Community Development Approach to Local Economic Development
The Community Development approach to local economic development involves the empowerment of people, especially those who are faced with barriers of race and class. It usually takes the form of group based efforts sometimes formed around existing organizations like schools and churches. It seeks to build up the community infrastructure and encourages people to take back their city and live with pride in it, caring for it and working together to build a strong and healthy context in which to live and work.
The dispersal perspective hits this community approach the hardest, both because it targets individuals (usually the cream of the crop) and it seeks to disperse the concentration of minorities, particularly if they are visible. About a 20% minority concentration is the critical mass for a minority population to become a "phenomenon " in the consciousness of a majority, so pressure to disperse them mounts rapidly after that point. In the light of this the fact that Saskatchewan's First Nations population in schools was to reach 50% of the school population in the year 2000, is of interest. Community development efforts in the Westman First nations is often centered in Friendship Centers, and assorted First Nations organizations, where they have increasing amounts of self determination as to the direction of that development.
Some related sites are listed below.
Further Enrichment Sites
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