Southern Rural Development Center Update

Southern Community Development Institute

Organizations interested in expanding the pool of people who can carry out sound community development work and want to gain high quality education resources that can be used to deliver an introductory program on community development may attend this year’s Southern Region Community Development Institute (CDI). MDC is interested in attracting state teams to this year’s Institute. These teams will then deliver the Institute curricula to interested educators and other agency/organization representatives in their own states. The move to a train-the-trainer format is a direct result of the strong interest shown in having the Institute’s curricula delivered in a systematic fashion to a broader audience of people in various states in the South. Details are available at http://srdc.msstate.edu/02cdi/confmain.htm.

Strengthening and Building Partnerships for Workforce Development

A National Conference sponsored by a variety of organizations is being planned for March 2-5, 2003, in Orlando, Florida. A call for conference presentations has been issued. Details are available at http://srdc.msstate.edu/workforce/index.html.

Mapping the Assets of Your Community: A Key Component for Building Local Capacity
June 2002

Bo Beaulieu has developed a procedure for mapping the assets of rural communities. These materials have been used extensively during the past few years in many settings throughout the Southern region and they are now available on the SRDC Web site. A description document, various inventories, powerpoint presentation, and other items are available at http://srdc.msstate.edu/publications/227/227_asset_mapping.pdf.

Mississippi: A Sense of Urgency, Rural responses to the new economy MDC and SRDC
April 2002

The purpose of this report is to convey the findings and the feelings of the three rural forums to the state’s opinion leaders and decision-makers. Most of the findings are familiar to the state’s agenda-setters, but they bear repeating as a prelude to action. Data to support this report can be also be accessed from http://srdc.msstate.edu/hot/hot.htm.