Community Development through Community Leadership Programs: Insights from a Statewide Community Leadership Initiative

Putting “development” back into community leadership (development) programs

“…Structured leadership activities designed to foster and enhance leadership skills are part of such leadership development (Brungardt, 1996). Recognizing this issue, the Kansas Community Leadership Initiative was created to provide CLP directors and board members with specific leadership training so that their programs could become more focused on leadership skills and concepts (Wituk et al, 2005).…”

“…Networking is inherently similar to leadership because it deals with people who have no direct control over one another (Grayson & Baldwin, 2007). The introduction of new program participants to other community leaders is done with the hope that upon completion of the program they will have the confidence, beliefs, and skills to address community problems (Wituk et al, 2005).…”

An analysis of the effects of community leadership education program content on six outcome indices of community leadership

“…Langone (1992) reports that leadership development programs have increased over time, and these emerging leaders are increasingly involved in local issues. Accordingly, leadership became an important topic in the community development literature in the latter part of the twentieth century, and remains so in this new century (see Kirk & Shutte, 2004;Langone & Rohs, 1995;Mills, 2005;Williams & Wade, 2002;Wituk, Easley, Clark, Heiny, & Meissen, 2005). Summers (1986, p. 360) reports that community development as planned intervention is supposed to stimulate social change and improve the quality of life, or well-being, of rural people.…”

InCommons: supporting community-based leadership

“…The initiative focuses on encouraging and supporting the courageous leadership necessary to engage communities and solve problems. Yet, like a few recent efforts (Wituk, Ealey, Clark, Heiny, & Meissen, 2005), InCommons focuses on nurturing community leadership at a statewide scale. To achieve this reach, each institutional partner commit sits own staff resources to help develop anew ''town square'' for community-based leaders (Public Strategies Group, 2009).…”

“…Often these programs operate by bringing diverse people together in a cohort over time to enable deeper learning. While scholars have studied the success of CLPs in meeting these goals, the generalizability of such examinations are usually limited to a small scale and the mechanisms of actual influence remain challenging to ascertain (Brown & Nylander, 1998;Wituk et al, 2005). However, it does seem that community characteristics and training practices can create social capital, build trust, bridge differences, and engage others (Chazdon & Lott, 2010;Mandell, 2010).…”