Rural leadership development: pathways to community change

Although leadership development programs are seen as key to equipping individuals with the tools to navigate the challenges facing their communities, there is relatively little evidence of their impact at the community level. In this paper, the evaluation findings of a rural leadership development program are situated within a framework of community change to illustrate the pathways of program impact. The analysis reveals that the program has increased the human capital and network resources of rural communities, and in most cases, this has resulted in increased community capacity. Some communities have gone on to experience additional environmental, social, and economic changes as a result of community processes that stemmed from the leadership program. The findings suggest that the evaluated leadership development program can serve as a model for efforts to build community capacity, but to realize more social, environmental, and economic changes, the scope of the program should do more to encourage residents to intentionally leverage their new capacity by engaging in processes to address community issues.