KU News Release

KU’s Community Tool Box a treasure chest for small towns, big cities across the globe

LAWRENCE — Members of a poor community in southern Mexico City knew many children were being injured by cars driving through the barrio. The solution to this serious problem came simply.

Neighbors started by consulting an online community-building guide called the Community Tool Box. The Web site was created by the Schiefelbusch Institute for Life Span Studies at the University of Kansas.

Using some of the sections that had been translated into Spanish, the group was able to identify the cause: speeding cars on the narrow roads.

Their simple answer was to build a speed bump.

“Then, they looked at whether it made a difference,” said Stephen Fawcett, distinguished professor of applied behavioral science and director of the KU Work Group for Community Health and Development, one of the Community Tool Box’s founders. “It reduced the injuries on the barrio’s roads.”

Fawcett said that is his favorite story about the Community Tool Box because the community identified and solved the problem on its own.

“They didn’t rely on public officials, this was local people who created a change in their place,” he said.

The Community Tool Box has been online since 1995. It provides a comprehensive set of chapters to guide anyone through the process of solving a community problem, step-by-step.

For example, the neighbors in Mexico City used translated chapters on “Listening to the Community,” “How to Lead a Meeting” and “Recording a Meeting,” Fawcett said.

The Community Tool Box Web site has an average of 3,315 visitors per day, with an anticipated 150,000 unique users during 2006.

Those users range from the grassroots community level to nonprofits, professional and governmental organizations.

Their work efforts can include preventing tobacco use and chronic disease, neighborhood development in the urban core or promoting physical activity across the community, said Jerry Schultz, associate director of the KU Work Group, which built and maintains the Community Tool Box.

“What I really appreciate is that it’s free,” said Jerry Jost, Heartland Sustainable Ag Network coordinator for the Kansas Rural Center, based in Whiting. “It’s very comprehensive, it’s a one-stop shop.”

Jost said he uses the site to help Kansas’ farming families and farmer’s markets identify their visions, missions, objectives and courses of action.

“It’s important to their bottom line to improve profitability. It’s important that they also gain a competitive edge within their industry to be more profitable,” he said.

The Community Tool Box is laced with examples to help users relate to certain community problems or to see how a plan was set in motion. Those examples relate to communities that are urban or rural, economically depressed, majority migrant or minority.

The site is translated into different languages for use in other countries, such as those in Central and South America and the Middle East, and examples are culturally adapted. What is best about the Community Tool Box, Fawcett said, is that anyone can use it, not just those who have had training or schooling for it.

“There’s a social justice root to this,” Fawcett said. “The core idea is that conditions aren’t good enough for people, and working together we can build healthier communities for all of us — locally and globally.”

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