The Community Capitals Framework (CCF) is widely used to describe how community assets are invested to generate new resources, yet practitioners often struggle to translate its concepts into coordinated action. Existing applications typically pair the CCF with established community development approaches, but these approaches were not designed to sustain capital awareness, account for interactions among capitals, or coordinate action across multiple settings. This article introduces the Community Capital Development Approach (CCDA), a practice‑oriented approach intentionally built around the CCF. Drawing on contributions from Appreciative Inquiry, Asset‑Based Community Development, the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach, and strategic planning, the CCDA integrates explicit conditions for action, guiding principles, and a seven‑convening process to operationalize capital stocks, flows, and setting linkages. The approach provides practitioners and development organizations with a structured yet adaptable roadmap for navigating complex community development contexts, including both general community systems and focused systems such as neighborhoods, downtowns, or entrepreneurial ecosystems. By embedding capital consciousness and setting awareness throughout diagnosis, strategizing, action, and learning, the CCDA clarifies how communities can move from describing their capitals to deliberately coordinating their mobilization over time.
Purdue University and community partners are navigating change through collaborative, data-driven land-use planning. This session highlights three initiatives that strengthen community resilience and inform local decisions. IN R-STEP, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, provides GIS tools and engagement strategies for renewable energy siting. The NSF-supported MARC program explores agrivoltaics, integrating solar energy with agriculture to enhance resilience and productivity. Purdue also partners with Indiana’s Lake Michigan Coastal Program to develop conservation plans using spatial analysis and community input. All efforts emphasize participatory design, equipping communities with practical tools to manage growth, preserve character, and address environmental challenges.
The current climate crisis (and the plethora of interwoven issues) has forced communities to come up with innovative solutions to address numerous challenges from poverty and hunger to building climate resilience, especially in urban settings. As communities rise to these challenges through building collaborative networks, deploying social capital, and brainstorming contextualized solutions, navigating and managing change has become an integral part of the community process. Using a community driven initiative to build an urban homesteading network in a historic district in Dayton, OH this presentation will discuss how the community navigates change and enacts innovative solutions that address community challenges.
This study examines the relationship between well-being and geographic context among informal child caregivers in the United States using 2022 North Central and Northeast Caregiving Survey data. We assess urban–rural differences in well-being and the role of caregiving-related life changes. Regression and Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition analyses show a statistically significant advantage in well-being for urban caregivers. About one-third of this gap is explained by observable factors, primarily income and employment status, while two-thirds remains unexplained. Employment changes related to caregiving are particularly detrimental to the well-being of rural caregivers compared with their urban counterparts.
This presentation examines uneven access to overnight respite care in Western NY through the lenses of geography, workforce, and system design. Using regional data, travel-time analysis, and workforce modeling, it reframes respite scarcity as a network problem rather than a site-level issue. The session explores how strategic siting, cross-county collaboration, and community college partnerships can transform a partially built system into a coherent regional infrastructure—improving equity, sustainability, and family trust while strengthening workforce pipelines critical to long-term community health.
The Civic Muscle Index (CMI) is a platform designed to measure, visualize, and strengthen the civic conditions that support thriving communities across diverse geographies. Combining research-based indicators with interactive data tools and narrative content, the CMI provides locally relevant insights for rural, suburban, and urban communities alike. This presentation will highlight the CMI’s development, methodological framework, and practical applications—showing how communities are using the tool to build shared power, collaboration, and belonging while bridging place-based differences.
The U.S. system of refugee resettlement was built for arrival, not for belonging. The long, complex work of helping refugees build new lives here requires a new framework -- one that approaches resettlement as community development and that brings local government and civil society together as genuine co-governance partners. With voices of lived experience, field-based practitioner insight, and theoretical grounding, the presenter is trying to build this new framework and apply his ideas with a newly-elected mayor and a well-established community-based organization. He will share a progress report and invite responders to comment and critique. Responders: Satoko Okano Todd Johnson
Effective infrastructure governance is essential for driving inclusive economic growth, particularly in rural and under-resourced regions. While global models increasingly embrace community-centred approaches to infrastructure planning, implementation, and oversight, many local development agencies in Africa continue to operate within centralised and technocratic frameworks that marginalise community voices. This desktop research paper explores how international best practices in infrastructure governance, drawing on experiences from Chile, the Netherlands, and South Korea - can inform locally responsive solutions in the Joe Gqabi District, Eastern Cape, South Africa. Using participatory governance theory, institutional theory, and public value theory as analytical lenses, the study examines how infrastructure systems can be reoriented to prioritise social inclusion, accountability, and sustainability. The findings highlight inclusive stakeholder engagement, decentralized decision-making, institutional coordination, and capacity development as critical enablers of effective community-centred infrastructure governance. The paper concludes by proposing a practical governance framework for municipalities and government agencies aimed at translating global insights into tangible local development outcomes.
Public parks play a crucial role in community building by strengthening neighborhoods and fostering positive change. The National Park Service’s Accessibility Task Force introduced inclusivity strategies in 2012, followed by state-level policies supporting park accessibility. This research develops a taxonomy of these policies based on measurable characteristics and their alignment with the ADA Outdoor Guidelines. It further expands on this taxonomy by conducting a comparative case study on policy implementation in rural and urban parks, addressing the gap in rural park research (Veitch et al., 2013). Findings aim to guide community development practitioners in advancing inclusive, accessible strategies.
This session presents how SDSU Extension designed, implemented, and analyzed the South Dakota Newcomers Survey, a statewide effort to understand the needs, motivations, and experiences of recent movers. By outlining the survey’s methodology, outreach strategy, analytical approach, and reporting process, the session highlights why newcomers are an essential population for community planning. Participants will learn key findings, how demographic and cultural preferences shape newcomer decisions, and how communities can use these insights to strengthen attraction and retention strategies. The session also demonstrates how states or individual communities can replicate the process to generate locally relevant data.
This leadership program, a collaboration between the University Department of Community Development and ___ University in Kenya, strengthened both human capital (skills and knowledge) and social capital (relationships and connections) for trainers in both countries and the rural leaders who participated in the program. The process involved adapting and co-designing leadership curricula, learning with a core team of faculty, staff and volunteer trainers, and implementing a train-the-trainer model for the Kenyan team as they trained the first cohort of community members. Through peer-learning, trainers and participants strengthened their skills, networks and confidence to harness collaborative energy to navigate challenges and opportunities together.
Lankes stated, “Bad libraries build collections, good libraries build services, great libraries build communities.” Libraries are valued as “third places” (Cabello & Butler, 2017) and community hubs (Putnam, 2004; Kyle, 2015; Settle, 2016) as they are well-positioned to serve community needs. However, capacity is a central consideration in program decisions. Drawing on published cases, longitudinal data from the Public Library Survey, and web analysis to summarize modern library programming initiatives, the authors undertook surveys and interviews with librarians to improve understanding of library involvement in placemaking and how geography of libraries shapes placemaking involvement and practices.
Background The application of various martial arts programs can greatly contribute to improving physical, mental and emotional development of young Hazara girls. The aim of this pilot project is to determine the effects that Karate sports intervention on Girl’s physical, psycho-social and identity development, which also includes motor skills, the aerobic and anaerobic abilities of playing girls. Method Total 04 Girls’ karate events organized in which total 70 young female (10-28 age group) players actively participated in each event. During the whole tournament series, total 280 young girls directly benefited from this polite project. It was the US Mission Pakistan, Exchange Alumni and Pakistan U.S Alumni Network funded project in partnership with Japan Karate Association, Pakistan for the indigenous minority “the Hazara Girls” under the human rights theme “Girls’ Karate series” followed by psycho-social sessions from April 2023 to September 2023 implemented in Quetta, Pakistan.
SWEEP chapters in higher education institutions serve as convergence points where academic knowledge, lived experience, community resources and cross-sector partnerships meet. This facilitates women students in co-creating development pathways beyond their campuses. The paper examines the role of Student Women Economic Empowerment Programme (SWEEP) chapters in South African higher institutions of learning as platforms for community-engaged entrepreneurship, leadership and local economic development. The paper addresses two key questions: (1) To what extent do SWEEP chapters position young women as active facilitators of community development rather than mere beneficiaries? (2) How does SWEEP foster intergenerational learning and leadership within higher education? To achieve the study's aim, a document analysis is conducted to examine how empowerment, leadership, and community development are formally conceptualized and operationalized. The analysis will review the constitutions, reports, training materials, and published success stories of SWEEP members across various institutions of learning. Through the lens of feminist development theory, SWEEP is analyzed not just as a skills development programme but as a transformative sisterhood space that repositions young women from marginalized participants to active agents of community development. Thus, the study creates a pathway to view young women students as capable navigators of gendered and institutional dynamics, employing entrepreneurship training, mentorship and peer learning to foster local economic and social change.
This paper describes an experiential learning class involving students engaging with a client community, employing economic concepts and analysis tools to develop a comprehensive community revitalization plan, and demonstrating how students and the community they served can benefit from their work together. Students visited the community to learn about their assets and challenges and used their new skills to develop recommendations. Using Ripple Effect Mapping, we learned that the project gave the students the confidence to return home and use their skills to make a difference. The community reported that the project gave valuable information to move the community forward.
