PRESIDENT'S PERSPECTIVE

John Bloch is a semi-retired community development professional with over 25 years of experience in the not-for-profit and public sectors and maintains a consulting business. He can be reached at john@bugleg.com

The times through which we are passing contain many challenges and changes for each of us as well as those institutions in which we work and live. In pursuing efforts that will maintain the Society in a state of vigor it may be necessarily for all of us and those of us in leadership positions particularly, to reexamining how we go about our day-to-day business.

We have for many years comforted ourselves with the notion that we, CDS, were the vanguard of community development efforts. That we mainly had the fix on what ought to be the guiding principals regarding Community Development.

We looked askance at others who did not embrace our coda.

I recently returned from a meeting that included a number of folks from various universities and other organizations who are concerned about the state of community in the Gulf region that has, as you know, suffered a deep destruction on its communities as a result of hurricane Katrina.

During the two days of the meeting that concerned itself with how to approach these battered communities, it became very clear that there are a large number of people and institutions that are deeply concerned with healthy communities and in offering assistance to those in need along the Gulf Coast in rebuilding their respective communities.

What flashed in my mind was that we, within CDS, might want revisit our outreach to others who do similar work as we do though it may be by another name or configuring ion.

We need to ally ourselves with such groups. For example we might consider holding our annual conference every two years and hold mini regional conference on a range of concerns in collaboration with other organizations say two or three times between the general conferences. Or we might want to be a sponsor with other organizations who are working in the field of community development in a general conference.

We might want to explore joint membership arrangements, and exchange newsletters.

For with the change that has occurred in both funding and communication, we may well want to reconfigure ourselves in combination with others to realize our long term goals of developing and maintaining effective sustainable communities in not only this hemisphere but around the world.

Let us at least open for discussion, what new approaches would be in order for the continued growth and diversity of CDS.

John Bloch