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The COVID-19 pandemic has been a major disruption in higher education, challenging universities to engage with community partners in unprecedented ways. Among them was an accelerated challenge to ways of engaging with surrounding communities and the resulting importance this holds for social change. A common approach has been for the university to offer mutually beneficial help to communities through top-down directives and strategies. Another approach prioritizes democratic engagement, including co-constructed knowledge generation and political action where the university is part of a larger ecosystem engaged in public problem solving and deeply sustained ways of collaborating. Moments of economic and social crises put into stark view higher education's intentions: are we playing at community involvement, or are we committed partners, leveraging our unique missions to join our communities in solving the problems facing us? This article discusses how a university's response to the pandemic illustrates democratic community engagement, including how the university partnered with community organizations to alleviate the dire impacts of the pandemic on peoples' basic needs and equity. Lessons learned for university-community engagement during normal times and times of crisis are shared, including ways to foster social change that addresses the inequities illuminated by the pandemic.

Cyberbullying is a growing problem for middle school students. Bystander interventions that train witnesses to positively intervene can prevent cyberbullying. Through six focus groups, we explored forty-six middle school students' experiences with cyberbullying and opportunities for school-based prevention programs to encourage positive bystander behavior. Focus groups were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using content analysis. Students viewed cyberbullying as an important problem with significant consequences. They noted hesitancy in reporting to parents and school personnel and felt more comfortable discussing cyberbullying with a near-peer (e.g. older sibling or friend). Students desired combining school-based and online programming with near-peer mentorship. This study suggests need for targeted prevention programs that center middle school students' lived experiences with cyberbullying and their preferences for learning and utilizing positive bystander strategies.

The article explores community organizing and its impact on social change through various interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches. Topics include collaborative strategies between social workers and urban planners, insights from a United Kingdom-based community organizing training program, and the effects of union organizing on low-wage workers' wages.

Background and Objectives Social isolation has been recognized as a social problem with negative health consequences. Using data from 3 waves of the Health and Retirement Study, this study aimed to examine the long-term impact of social isolation on loneliness and depressive symptoms and to explore the moderating effect of resilience. Research Design and Methods This study comprised 3,681 U.S. adults aged 60 and older at the baseline wave. Social isolation index was constructed using 5 indicators, including not married or cohabitating with a partner, no social participation, and less than monthly contacts with children, family members, or friends. Loneliness was measured by the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Loneliness Scale and depressive symptoms were measured by the Center for Epidemiological Studies—Depression scale. The moderator of resilience was assessed by the simplified resilience score. Latent growth curve models with robust standard errors were estimated. Results The results of latent growth curve models showed that social isolation was significantly associated with more initial loneliness and depressive symptoms. However, social isolation was associated with a slower increasing rate of loneliness, but no significant relationship with the change rate of depressive symptoms. Furthermore, resilience significantly buffered the negative effect of social isolation on the initial level of depressive symptoms. Discussion and Implications The findings underscore the importance of enacting strategies and interventions targeting resilience to address social isolation and its negative consequences among older adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on topics including community-engaged campaigns through sports, community leaders responses to environmental disruptions and safeguarding concerns in COVID-19 mutual aid groups.

Gentrification has been identified as a phenomenon that involves impacts on space and place. Particularly, gentrification's social and cultural impacts involve disrupted meanings residents associate with spaces. Although space and place dynamics of gentrification have been well-documented, gentrification research has primarily involved traditional quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods approaches. These traditional approaches have not fully captured the nuanced ways space and place dimensions of gentrification converge in their impacts on residents. Also, traditional approaches have limited most gentrification research to theory and descriptions, as opposed to action and practice. To this end, innovative, integrated methodologies are needed for a paradigm shift in how gentrification is examined and addressed. In this article, we illustrate the use of photovoice and Geographic Information Systems' Story Map as an integrated methodological approach to examining and fostering action against gentrification's space-place impacts. We provide strengths and challenges of this approach and recommendations for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A major resource of small voluntary neighborhood organizations is their members, who give their time and energy to the organization to improve their community. In recent years, there has been a revitalization of strategies that focus on engaging residents to volunteer for neighborhood-based organizations. The current study was guided by organizational empowerment theory and explored the relationship between resident members' perceptions of their neighborhood organization and their level of involvement and perceived personal and collective benefits from participation. The results demonstrated that members' perceptions of their neighborhood organizations' characteristics and effectiveness were more related to their perceived benefits from involvement than their level of participation. Members' perceptions of their neighborhood organizations' effectiveness, particularly the ability to make tangible community improvements, were the most related to their perceived benefits, including their ability to influence government policies, knowledge and skills in neighborhood and community development, and sense of community. Implications for research and practice are also discussed. (Contains 5 tables and 2 figures.)

"Citizen participation" is the active involvement of individuals in changing problematic conditions in communities and influencing policies and programs that affect the quality of their lives. Neighborhood organizations in poor communities often rely on volunteers to accomplish their goals. Therefore, social workers must understand how engaging residents in volunteer activities in their neighborhood benefits them individually and collectively. This study examined the relationship between resident involvement in neighborhood organizations and volunteers' self-efficacy, collective efficacy, and sense of community by surveying members and participants of four neighborhood organizations in poor communities in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Results demonstrated that volunteers involved in the organization's everyday activities and in decision making received the most benefits, including increased self-efficacy (leadership, policy control, neighborhood policy control, and knowledge and skills), organizational collective efficacy, and sense of community. Involvement in the everyday activities alone increased volunteers' self-efficacy and organizational collective efficacy. Implications for social work practice and strategies for developing the volunteer capacity of community-based organizations are discussed.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on topics including concept of social-ecological transition; relationship between community power building and civic engagement; and the importance of partnerships between universities and communities.

Collective efficacy describes residents' perceptions regarding their ability to work with their neighbors to intervene in neighborhood issues to maintain social control and solve problems. This study examines whether citizen [...]

Youth-adult partnerships in disadvantaged neighborhoods offer a promising approach for preventing community problems such as violence. While they differ slightly from traditional intergenerational programs that involve youth with older adults, they foster similar goals, including promoting relationships, mutual support, and community engagement. A social process called collective efficacy is developed when youth and adults trust one another and work together to solve problems. Research shows that collective efficacy is associated with lower levels of community crime and violence. This paper describes a community-based intervention for mobilizing and engaging residents to prevent violence by a facilitating youth-adult partnership to foster collective efficacy, including trusting relationships and the competencies needed to address neighborhood problems. This paper begins with a review of youth-adult partnerships and their successful characteristics, followed by how these partnerships influence the social processes important for developing collective efficacy and preventing violence. The characteristics of successful youth-adult partnerships are illustrated throughout the discussion of the community-based intervention. This paper demonstrates how to translate prior research on youth-adult partnerships and collective efficacy into actionable strategies that community practitioners and researchers can use to prevent community violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Gentrification is changing the landscape of many cities worldwide, exacerbating economic and racial inequality. Despite its relevance to social work, the field has been conspicuously absent from scholarship related to gentrification. This paper introduces the dominant view of gentrification (a political economic lens), highlighting its contributions and vulnerabilities, then introduces four case studies that illuminate the distinct contributions of social work to broaden the ways in which gentrification is theorized and responded to within communities. Findings: When gentrification is analyzed exclusively through a political economy lens, researchers, policy makers, and practitioners are likely to focus on changes in land and home values, reducing the adverse effects of gentrification to a loss of affordable housing. A singular focus on affordable housing risks paying insufficient attention to racial struggle, perpetuating damage-based views of poor people and neighborhoods, and obfuscating political, social, and cultural displacements. Social work practice—including social action group work, community organizing, community development, and participatory research and planning—offers a holistic approach to understanding, resisting, and responding to gentrification and advance equitable development in the city. Applications: By exploring social work practice that amplifies residents' and change makers' efforts, advances existing community organizing, produces new insights, builds inter-neighborhood and interdisciplinary collaborations, and facilitates social action and policy change, this paper helps community practitioners to reimagine the role of social work research and practice in gentrifying neighborhoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A study was conducted to provide an important step in exploring the development of social capital and informal social control in low-income neighborhoods. A pilot training program was developed to facilitate residents' ability to intervene in neighborhood problems in a low-income community in Atlanta, Georgia.

The income and security of middle class workers have declined in the last two decades, and the gap between the middle class and the wealthy has widened. A study was conducted to show the negative effects of this trend on democracy, the economy, and the aggregate health of the country. The importance of strengthening the middle class is also explained.

Participation in community gardens improves health and well-being; however, few studies examine how often individuals need to participate to achieve these outcomes. This study examined the relationship between levels of participation in community gardens and health behaviors, psychological well-being, and perceptions of the community by surveying regular, occasional, and noncommunity garden participants in a disadvantage neighborhood (N = 115). Regular and occasional participates reported better mental health; occasional participants reported more vegetable intake, and regular participants reported more sense of community. Therefore, community practitioners may need to consider level of participation in gardening activities for some outcomes and not others. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]