Promoting Community and Economic Development

Abstract

The previous five chapters describe major program components of Children’s Aid Society (CAS) community schools, all designed to contribute to the learning and healthy development of individual children and their families. This chapter describes a different kind of programmatic focus—one that moves beyond individual child and family well-being to influence the health and welfare of the entire community. The central questions to be addressed in this chapter are: How do community schools contribute to community and economic development? How is the community schools strategy both intentional and responsive in making these broader kinds of contributions? How has CAS’s community and economic development work evolved over the past decade in response to changing needs and opportunities? According to John P. Kretzmann, a leading scholar and advocate of community development, schools are ideal partners for community development because they have tremendous assets. They have facilities for meetings and neighborhood celebrations and space for incubating small businesses; they have materials and equipment, purchasing power, the ability to raise funds, employment power, learning opportunities, skilled staff, energetic young people with ideas, and the capacity to attract adult involvement. This analysis is consistent with CAS’s original vision about the potential of community schools to achieve broader outcomes and also consistent with our experience over the past decade in implementing a wide variety of community and economic development strategies, first in the Washington Heights area and more recently in the South Bronx. The central idea of contributing to community and economic development in specific neighborhoods requires a long-term vision and commitment. Just as the early Progressive Era reformers understood the importance of “settling” into neighborhoods to achieve maximum impact, CAS’s leadership perceived the value of committing the organization’s resources to specific neighborhoods over a long term. In another similarity to the Progressive Era, CAS understood the importance of working on several levels or dimensions of activity at the same time. It is true that the original vision of community schools focused on improving outcomes for children and youth by addressing non-academic needs in the context of schools, families, and communities.