Building Connections: Community Leadership Program

Program Curriculum

The purpose of this training is to review fourteen community leadership lessons so that participants can return to their states and utilize the curriculum as a part of community leadership programs.

Planning and implementing programs associated with adult leadership continues to increase in Cooperative Extension. This includes programs specific to leadership development and programs that have leadership as a lesson within existing programs. Example target audiences include: teen agriculture leaders, youth livestock project participants, 4-H club managers, Master Gardeners, 4-H youth ambassadors, home buyers, adult volunteers, county advisory groups, and Master Naturalists. In addition, 35 rural counties identified leadership as a major issue in Texas' last long term strategic planning process. However, there was not a curriculum focused on adult or rural community leadership development.

As a result, Building Connections: Community Leadership Curriculum was developed by several collaborators in Texas Cooperative Extension to assist local educators in implement leadership programming. The curriculum contains fourteen educational lessons that illustrate community leadership. Each lesson includes objectives, background information, an interest approach, a step by step guide through the lesson, an application section, and a reference section. In addition, each lesson has a built in power point presentation, abstract of the subject matter, and individual lesson evaluations.

The overall objectives of Building Connections: Community Leadership are:

• Determine individual leadership traits
• Understand group leadership styles and theories
• Develop strategies to effectively lead organizations
• Reveal leadership opportunities in community
• Apply these tools in leadership positions