“Whole Community Organizing” for the 21^StCentury

The resilience of the settlement-house tradition in community development: a study of neighborhood centers in San Francisco

“…The experience of the eight NCs in this study indicates that they have stayed active in community development by using the traditional comprehensive community development approachi.e., integrating service delivery and community organizing-despite tremendous resource constraints. Aigner et al (2002) suggest that community development in the twenty-first century needs a ''whole community organizing'' approach, which, as McKnight argues, requires the creation of ''a situation where everyone belongs and everyone gives their gifts'' (McKnight 2001quoted in Aigner, et al, 2002. Judging from the history of settlement houses and the findings of this study, we argue that these eight San Francisco NCs, inherited from the settlement house tradition, provide and create institutional, programmatic, and natural situations for the residents to belong and contribute to the community.…”

“…To maintain this balance, NCs choose to foster functional horizontal ties with residents and groups of the community so as to resist the many possible attempts of cooptation from its vertical ties with institutional stakeholders who control the external resources. Such a balance Community Development 121 is important to community development in the twenty-first century in light of the increasing importance of external resources (Aigner et al, 2002). One of the major obstacles for NCs in San Francisco, and perhaps for the Settlement House Movement at large, is their lack of visibility in the public discourse on community revitalization.…”

“…As a practice model, community development has traditionally been associated with the locality development model proposed by Rothman (Aigner, et al, 2002;Rothman, 1970;Weil, 1996), although in practice, as Rothman (1970) has always reminded us, the locality development practice model is mixed and blended with two modelssocial action and social planning. Of the many and varied forms of localitybased community development practice, the settlement houses have been recognized as a pioneer (Fisher, 2005;Vidal & Keating, 2004).…”

“…In other words, settlement houses have traditionally been an organization for nurturing functional social networks and relationships among residents. Third, from a ''whole community organizing'' perspective (Aigner et al, 2002), settlement houses mobilized people to participate in service delivery, not only as service recipients but also as volunteers.…”

“…Many community practitioners have argued that community development is a promising tool to answer the call for community revitalization in the global era (Aigner, Raymond, & Smidt, 2002;Bhattacharyya, 2004;Campfens, 1997;McNeely, 1999). Community development is, however, ever-evolving both in concept and in practice (Campfens, 1997).…”