Background and Rationale
What is family-centered community building, and how does it differ from traditional community development approaches? Traditional community development approaches have placed a relatively greater emphasis on building community infrastructure: building, business and other determinants of economic productivity. These are critically important but not sufficient components of a comprehensive community building effort. They do not directly address the important family and human development issues.

FCCB is broader and more integrated. It considers strategies that invest in the human and social capital of a community as well as its productive capacity. These include a range of different strategies that enhance services that support families, child development and family education, and parenting and skill building activities. FCCB also considers how communities create the environmental, social, educational conditions to enhance individual relationships within families and family relationships within the community.

The course starts with the basic premise that families and communities are complex and dynamic systems. To understand the relationships of families and communities, one needs to understand how family relationships develop and change, as well as understanding over time how relationships within a community develop and change over time, and the mutual interdependence that exists between families and communities.

The course also utilizes a systems building approach. Since families and communities are complex systems, community building must focus on how these complex systems can be built and/or changed. System change and system transformation demands a comprehensive, integrative and strategic approach. Efforts taken to change families will impact the community and, simultaneously, community changes will influence children and families. Systems change also means that we consider how strategic partnerships are formed, how we communicate our messages, how new leadership is developed, how our resources are deployed, and a range of other system building techniques that have shown to be important when real and sustained change is brought to a scale for improving our civil society. Finally, the course discusses the sort of evaluation evidence needed to demonstrate the effectiveness of programs of family-centered community building and to bring to scale and to sustain such systems change. There needs to be particular attention paid to leadership development of key community members, so that the work that is done is with community and not for the community. In building capacity of the community for sustainable change that enhances the opportunities for all families, leadership is key, collaboration is essential, and long-term relationships between community-based organizations, public and private sectors are important. The approach that we are developing in this course also recognizes that for community building efforts to be successful the community must own them, and efforts to assist communities with this mission must be done with the community and not for the community.

Course Readings
Readings have been selected for each session to provide background on the subject matter for that particular class session, and to connect concepts across sessions. I have attempted to keep the required readings to 50 pages per session, and have also suggested addition readings for some sessions – for those who are particularly interested in exploring a topic in greater detail.

Course Requirements
In addition to attending and participating in the sessions and completing the readings, each student is expected to complete the following three Family Centered Community Building (FCCB) course activities:

1. Attend and participate in two Leadership Symposia (see class schedule)
2. Select, investigate and prepare a report on a community project directed toward FCCB
3. Design a family centered project to meet an identified need in a community you select

Goals:
This series of activities offers the students an opportunity to reflect upon the content of the course in the context of the community in which they reside. The activities require community assessment and an opportunity to reflect upon the work being done in community-based organizations. Students will integrate what they have learned with concepts about service, social change, citizenship, and leadership needed to support strong families. Students will identify both individual and systemic issues related to being a part of a community and explore how those who are committed to the common good of supporting strong families are informed and sustained.

Objectives

• The forming of ethical and civic values
• Identification of and engagement in Family Centered Community Building Based Projects
• Strengthening community-campus partnerships
• Development of a reflective-generative thinker

Requirements

1. Punctually attend each session
2. Participate in the discussions following the presentations
3. Write one reflection paper covering the six presentations covered in the Leadership Symposia that identifies the following
• Best practices
• Common threads
• Disparities
• Worst practices
• How do each of these projects contribute or support the development of strong families
4. Using the methods identified by Dr. Kick, select a community project (with approval of instructor).

• Make contact with the project/agency and collect data through written information and interviewing
• Prepare a written report on the agency or project to include

• Setting: identify and describe
• Identify the target audience. What problem or issues was the program developed to address.
• Describe the interview process and the interview you competed
• Identify the key voices in the project
• Diagram a network of the key players and the key organizations involved in the project
• What are the short term and long term impact on the families serves

• Sketch or design a program specific to your community needed to address a specific issue affecting families in your community

September 19
FCCB Leadership Symposia I

Rutherford County Primary Care and Hope Clinic
Recycle Rutherford
Children and Family Court Support Services

October 17
FCCB Leadership Symposia II

TBA

©2001-02 Middle Tennessee State University
Murfreesboro, TN 37132
famcom@mtsu.edu