Also this month:* Agriculture an Important Part of Black History* 1862, 1890 Land-Grant Institutions, What's the Deal? * Early Black Agricultural Educators Overcame Adversity * NC A&T School of Agriculture Addresses Unique Careers for Minorities
Other News Links:Press Release ArchiveCooperative Extension Press Releases Agricultural Research Press Releases
General Links:NC A&T School of Agriculture |
Greensboro, NC: "I don't know how to solve problems
in the community" and "Let someone else take care of it" are common utterances
by many who are unsatisfied with their community's conditions. A leadership
development program, coordinated by the North Carolina A&T State University
Cooperative Extension Program, seeks to reverse those statements.
"Change is possible and probable if people tap into their potential and work with each other," says Dr. Claudette Smith, an NC A&T Cooperative Extension Program specialist who provides leadership to the Community Voices program. Community Voices nurtures grassroot leadership and empowers people with the knowledge and skills they need to become active in community affairs. "The program operates under the belief that many people in both rural and urban communities have the potential to solve the problems of their communities, and that a little assistance will help them do that," said Smith. Since Community Voices began in 1990, the program has helped small, rural communities achieve many of their goals, from establishing child care programs to planting community gardens. Examples of the impact that participants in the Community Voices program have in their communities are evident across the state. From Brunswick County, where citizens of Northwest organized themselves in a successful lobby for a fire station, to Catawba County, where the Western Catawba County Development Committee established a community center which houses child care facilities and a community garden, Community Voices is helping citizens improve their communities. The program is generally initiated through contact between community members and their local Cooperative Extension office. When county Extension representatives and community members show interest in the program, a Community Voices orientation is scheduled to introduce prospective participants to the program. Should residents of the community decide that they want to participate in the program, the local Cooperative Extension office works with the NC A&T Cooperative Extension Program to provide a series of interactive sessions focused on community improvement. Among these sessions are: Creating a Shared Vision of Our Community's Future, Communicating as a Group to Reach Our Vision, Learning to Solve Our Community Problems Step by Step, and Determining Solutions to Our Problems. "The overall goal of Community Voices is to help people work together to solve community problems," said Smith. "The program's sessions are designed around this goal, and develop upon such key concepts as listening, locating resources in the community and developing action plans." According to Smith, the structural design of Community Voices resulted from years of intense pilot testing. "Before we officially started the program, we tested a number of ideas to see what worked and to find ways to ensure the effectiveness of the group," said Smith. "In the end, we designed a program to give people what they asked for." For more information, please contact your local Cooperative Extension Center, or Dr. Claudette Smith, (336) 334-7956. Community Voices is funded by a grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and implemented through North Carolina Cooperative Extension Centers. |