Community Action

Although support continued for selected community programs to overcome social and economic deprivation, the Foundation turned mainly this year to national efforts to train community workers, without whom the most ambitious government and private programs can bog down at poverty's door.

For partial aid in preparing 1,000 neighborhood leaders, the Citizens' Crusade Against Poverty (C.C.A.P.) received a $375,000 grant. C.C.A.P. is a private organization representing more than 100 religious, civil rights, labor, academic, student, and farm groups. At East and West coast centers, it plans to equip men and women—mainly from poor neighborhoods—with practical knowledge of community resources, agencies, and legislation involved in the war on poverty.

To help enlist more of the nation's Negro women for volunteer and paid community service, the National Council of Negro Women was assisted. Already active in recruiting women for a range of programs from Job Corps training and migrant health services to voter registration and job counseling, the organization will use a $300,000 grant to prepare ninety Negro women to train some 6,000 women in thirty-six states.

For the training of antipoverty officials and board members as well as front-line workers, the National Association for Community Development was assisted. The association, composed of officials of antipoverty agencies, will also use the funds to maintain reference and personnel services. Like the C.C.A.P. effort, it seeks to upgrade nonprofessionals as a means of giving more tangible meaning to the ideal of "maximum feasible participation of the poor" in antipoverty programs.

In New York City, where an array of antipoverty and urban redevelopment efforts have suffered for lack of coordination, the Foundation financed two studies at the Institute of Public Administration aimed at reorganizing the municipal machinery. A study of city agencies dealing with housing and slums was directed by Edward