NACDEP
Welcome to the National Association of Community Development Extension Professionals (NACDEP). NACDEP is an organization dedicated to improving the visibility, coordination, professional status and resource base of community and economic development Extension programs and professionals.
We encourage you to share this site with your colleagues, become involved in one of our many activities, and give us your thoughts about how NACDEP can be useful to you and your colleagues. NACDEP makes no effort to prescribe what state or regional community resource and economic development programming and research look like, but rather is designed to assist those of us who deliver programming and do research under this broad umbrella to acquire and maintain the financial, political, technical and organizational resources we need to meet our objectives.
Purpose of NACDEP
It is widely recognized and documented (in among other places, Strengthening Communities: Strategic Directions for Community and Resources Economic Development Programs) that ensuring the viability of Extension's CRED research and programming efforts will depend upon our increasing ability to strengthen and coordinate the delivery of community and economic development programs and the resources necessary to develop them. As such, our future fiscal, political, and organizational viability is directly linked to our ability to enhance our visibility, and broaden our partnerships as a programming and research area within the national Cooperative Extension System, USDA, and CSREES. More specifically, recently adopted bylaws outline several primary roles NACDEP can and should play.
- To bring community and economic development extension professionals together to discuss issues, needs, and opportunities of mutual interest; and to facilitate information sharing.
- To promote cooperation on community development issues and educational and training efforts between the various states and regions, as well as between governmental agencies, private community development groups, related organizations and other community development professionals.
- To discuss, develop, sponsor, and promote educational and training programs and activities that advance sound community development practices.
- To provide support and promote activities and programs at the national level that advance community and economic development, education, training, and diversity in the workforce.
- To advance the professional status of community and economic development extension professionals by encouraging professional self-improvement.
- To strengthen communication with Extension Administration.
- To see expanded investments in applied social science research that is critical to the generation of knowledge needed to undergird the development of timely, high priority Extension community development education programs.
- To promote the importance of community and economic development through education, advocacy, and coordination within the land grant system
The consensus that has emerged is that no other organizational framework provides us with these opportunities and fulfills these critical mandates. View the full document at: http://srdc.msstate.edu/cred/bylaws.pdf
Thus, NACDEP is intended primarily as the organizational vehicle by which we in Extension can strengthen the community and economic development program. Accordingly, it is not intended to prescribe what is "community development" program is but merely assist those of us who deliver and do research in these areas to acquire and maintain the financial, political, technical and organizational resources we need to meet our collective objectives.