Deadline dates for future Vanguard editions:

1 May 2005
1 August 2005
1 November 2005

Please send submissions via email to srlease@ftnetwork.com, via fax to +1 (770) 775-3118, or via postal mail to:

Steven Lease, AICP - Director
Community Development Dept.
Butts County
431 E. College Street
Jackson, Georgia 30233-2009
USA

Community Progress Initiative – Rebuilding a Community in “Rapid” Time

A Model of Community Engagement to Create Vibrant Communities

Many communities across America are losing thousands of good paying manufacturing jobs through plant closures, global competition, layoffs and buyouts. People are struggling with ways to face this issue and the Community Progress Initiative is being recognized as a best practice model of rapid recovery programming for rebuilding communities in our new economy.

The Community Progress Initiative, a collaborative response to address community need promotes responsible, collaborative, and visionary citizenship to transform outdated attitudes and invigorate the economy at the local level and beyond. It offers an intense, holistic system of integrated programs that any community in the country, large or small, can use to engage residents from all walks of life, community leaders, entrepreneurs, business owners, and elected officials in creating unique and exciting plans for their shared future. (Continued)

Collaborative Planning in Wisconsin's Northwoods

By Anna Haines, Chin-Chun Tang, Lynn Markham , and Kate Demorest

How often does collaborative planning occur because an outside organization unwittingly helped others to connect the dots? In this case, the Center for Land Use Education located in central Wisconsin was a catalyst for a joint planning workshop that solicited input from community members for three different planning processes.

The Center for Land Use Education (CLUE) is part of Cooperative Extension and the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point and the College of Natural Resources . As an Extension unit, the staff regularly works with county-based extension agents. The map shows various locations within the state in which CLUE staff worked on local comprehensive planning projects with extension agents. In this case, CLUE was working with an extension agent from Ashland County and the planning consultant on that county's comprehensive planning process of which one element focused on natural resources, in addition to agricultural and cultural resources. (Continued)

“Let's Talk About It” - Young People Growing Their Community Through Performance

By Esther Farmer

When visitors walk in Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn New York, they are immediately led through a metal detector and then searched before being allowed on the floor. The security guards are no-nonsense and gruff. It's an intimidating experience. You feel like you are in a war zone instead of a place of learning. You are directed to the Teen Clinic which is two doors away from the metal detector and as soon as you open the unlocked door, you are faced with a radically different world. Students, peer counselors and staff are casually engaged in conversation, people are happy to see each other, they hug or smile, there is lots of energy and friendliness. Welcome to "Let's Talk About It" the School Based Mental Health component of the Erasmus High School Teen Health Clinic. (Continued)