Promoting Community Change: Making It Happen In the Real World

by Mark S. Homan

Mark Homan's second edition of his practical--and often humorous--text is a must for any student studying human services. Homan addresses the real world experiences facing those in social work and human services who focus on communities and organizations, and who want to learn how to actually affect community changes, not simply discuss theory. Promoting Community Change: Making It Happen in the Real World, Second Edition doesn't simply describe issues related to change--it illustrates exactly how readers can personally become effective change agents.

Genres: Nonfiction, Social Change, Social Work

464 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

Reviews

[Aimee J Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was my required textbook for my 'Working with Communities' class. The book was fairly well written but was a bit of a challenge to get through. Although community change is important to me, it is not my focal area of study which made it a bit more of a challenge to get through but I managed to pull of an 'A.'

After each chapter, the reader gives the student both theoretical and practical strats of human services work. It is extremely helpful, even though it may not be your field of study, everyone would like to make some kind of difference in some way, in their community, promote change, have a voice, or whatever it may be. I would def suggest if you are interested in wondering how to start change in your community, where to begin, what tools to utilize, what stats to implement, how to go about it, how to follow-through, and ideas on how to 'get it done'.. then this is a GREAT book for you.

[Eve · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is yet another book from my university days as a social work student working towards her degree. I love, love, love community change, grass roots level work, the kind of work where you are working the front lines. This book gives the reader great ideas on how to accomplish more than just working one on one (which is great too) but how can you incorporate significant changes within a community from lobbying techniques to fundraising ideas to cultural awareness (which is crucial now more than ever!). I would recommend this book to any social work student or anyone who wants to work directly at bettering their own communities in some form or another.

[Melissa Lee-Tammeus · Rating 2 out of 5]

Forced to read, but wasn't too bad at all. Homan has some great quotable stuff in here and I was glad I had him to reference on occasion. Nothing mind splitting here, but it does have some great reminders regarding social change, advocacy theories, and leadership know hows. I suppose the best way to put it is, if you don't now the stuff in this book and you consider yourself a leader, you might want to check again.

[Crytle Creki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Changing communities isn't as easy as it looks