With support from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Rich recently conducted a study of how families use their homes for productive, economic activities. Case studies focused on urban, Latino families, gardens in an African American neighborhood, home-based enterprises in a rural community, and productive enterprises in co-housing communities. That paper has been published for interested readers on the Casey Foundation's website. He carried out another phase of this research with Robert Giloth, Director of the Family Economic Success Unit at the Casey Foundation, that expanded the types of cases and place them in a broader, historical context.
Richard works as a member of the training team in a community development project in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Residents in the Gedam Sefer neighborhood have formed with Addis Ababa University and the University of Illinois at Chicago a university-community partnerships. Richard is assisting in the formulation of business plans and strategies for cooperative social enterprises. He is also going to provide community development training with colleagues, Alice Butterfield and Jim Scherrer at UIC. Supported by the Oak Foundation, Geneva, Switzerland, this team will train community development workers in child welfare and family-based community development practices aimed at preventing the abuse and abduction of children.
To the right: Richard with Prof. Alice Johnson, Jane Addams College of Social Work, UIC, doctoral students from Addis Ababa University, and community work group members from the Entoto community in Addis Ababa.
Community for Children: Productive Families Vitally Important
As Richard argues in his book, Restoring Power to Parents and Places: The Case for Family-Based Community Development, creating communities that are good settings in which to raise children will depend in part on strengthening families as productive institutions. Many forces work against the productive family, including growing cultural biases against marriage. A marriage on its own is no guarantee of a strong, productive family. However, two dedicated parents have more power than one. The leverage is needed to establish the habitat as a productive place, while also working and participating in the world outside of the home. Power and love are both needed to provide children the settings they need: in fact, power establishes the safe boundaries in which the love can occur.
To the left. This family in Addis Ababa makes injera, a traditional Ethiopian bread, and sells 500 units per day to local hotels. The family rearranged its small, 2-room home in order to make the most efficient use of its space.
Richard S. Kordesh, Ph.D.
Family-Based Community Development
The economic crisis is in part a family crisis: As families lose their homes, their jobs, and face crushing levels of consumer debt, community development approaches and policies that restore their productive capacities are needed more than ever.
A Challenge in the Economic Crisis: Recovering from Consumerism through Productive Family Life
The economic crisis in which families are mired is in important respects a result of over consumption that was financed by an unprecedented reliance on consumer debt. Moreover, the over valuing of housing led many families to cash out and spend home equity that turned out to not really be there. The result is that their mortgages are larger than the current value of their homes. For millions, this unsustainable approach has led to foreclosure.
Consumerism is inherently a way of life that fosters dependency, vulnerability, and the loss of control of a family's life decisions. The family as producer needs to be renewed. Consumption needs to be embedded within the the goal of restoring productive family life.
Public policies that aim to restore the economic vitality of families must foster and sustain the productive family. They can do so by:
stabilizing family farms
investing in family enterprises, including those that are based in or linked to homes
fostering sustainable home and habitat design that encourages productive uses
fostering local food production by families, and
investing in parents and other adult family members as co-producers of education.
These steps are essential components of famly-based community development.
