Community development process

The idea that men might lift themselves into a good society takes on new life. Hopeful attitudes grow, in part, out of well-financed programs to eliminate ignorance, poverty, bad health, bad housing, and other social evils. But many of these proposals have a dis couragingly familiar ring. Reformers have tried before to purchase a way into utopia. Hopefulness arises more out of the possibility that people can be encouraged to help create a better social order.

This book attempts to open a door upon the enormously diffi cult possibility that men may improve themselves. There is no cer tainty that this possibility is realizable. But there are hopeful leads to be followed. One of these grows out of experience with planned economic and social development in recent years. A second lead is found in new knowledge of human potentials for improvement coming from the social and especially the behavioral sciences. The two leads can be combined in a practical yet theoretical disciplin ing of the much discussed and much misunderstood field of com munity development.

For multitudes of citizens, a hope of self and social improve ment seems unrealistic amid the fears, frustrations, and apathy of a disruptive age. Will the hope prevail or the apathy?

Governmental and private programs of improvement are launched, which depend for their implementation upon local committees that are assumed to exist or that will be created by proclamation. Certain writers and orators vaguely approve grass roots participative organizations. Others more specifically endorse community development as the sine qua non of social progress.