How Do Vital Communities Spell Success?
When the North Central Regional Center for Rural Development asked rural communities
to name the outcomes associated with their community activities that spell "success," the communities
consistently named five types of outcomes.
1. Increased use of the skills, knowledge and ability of local people.
2. Strengthened relationships and communication.
3. Improved community initiative, responsibility and adaptability.
4. Sustainable, healthy ecosystems with multiple community benefits.
5. Appropriately diverse and healthy economies.
The first three outcomes-increasing skills, strengthening relationships and improving initiative-relate to how
development happens. The first uses and enhances human capital. The next two enhance social capital. The last two
outcomes-sustainable, healthy ecosystems and appropriately diverse economies-relate to what happens when development
succeeds. Environmental, financial and constructed capital are conserved and improved. Taken together, these five
community outcomes define what a vital community in a healthy ecosystem looks like.
The Five Outcomes
1. Increased use of the skills, knowledge and ability of local people.
Local people are the basis for community success. At times, much of a community's existing human capacity is neither
recognized nor used in community efforts. At other times, a lack of skills or knowledge keeps community members
from making good decisions or achieving what they set out to do. Ongoing improvements in the knowledge and ability
of a community's residents help build rural community progress. Leadership skills can help mobilize people and
resources.
2. Strengthened relationships and communication.
Typically, a community is home to a wide variety of people with diverse backgrounds
and views. Community efforts benefit when everyone has a voice, when all voices are encouraged, and when residents
understand the means to express their views and contribute to the community. Respect, active outreach, and information-sharing
inside and outside the community-among individuals, organizations, businesses, and agencies-can lead to collaborative
ventures no one group could do alone. Relationships with the outside are strong in vital communities. There are
linkages with other communities and with organizations, enterprises and agencies outside the community.
3. Improved community initiative, responsibility and adaptability.
A community that is responsible for its own future shares a well-crafted and widely
considered vision for the future, turns it into reality through strategic local action, and makes changes when
conditions or assumptions change. A community that monitors and documents the results of its actions, and that
regularly reflects on its progress and barriers, learns from its experience. It becomes more resilient, more capable
of adapting to change, and better able to improve its efforts and sustain itself over time.
4. Sustainable, healthy ecosystems with multiple community benefits.
Human communities are part of natural ecosystems. The responsible stewardship of natural resources sustains businesses
and families in communities over the long term. Finding the common ground among people who have emotional, symbolic,
or economic identification with a place, whether or not they live there, is essential to making decisions about
development and resource use that will enable communities and their resource base to survive and thrive. Human
communities plan and act in concert with the natural systems in which they are located.
5. Appropriately diverse and healthy economies.
Vital economies deploy financial, natural and human resources to create, maintain and improve local livelihoods.
A diverse industry base helps maintain services, businesses and households when the economy fluctuates. In healthy
economies, community residents move toward self-sufficiency and prosperity, local businesses modernize and find
new markets, local ownership of homes and businesses increases, and local people and financial institutions invest
in the community.
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