Introduces students to SEED-SCALE as the underlying theory and method of this Master’s degree. This process allows communities to evolve site-specific designs that grow change, use resources possessed by the community, and initiate action that emerges from the community’s current socio-economic reality.

Examines a persistent challenge in community development, namely how to support a success that was occurring in one community so as to go to scale. This course advances knowledge to improve participatory processes of research and action with communities and agencies that support them. Traditional and alternative approaches to scaling up are introduced for critical comparison. Students develop a grant proposal or case study for expanding impact through SEED-SCALE.

Engages students in approaches to sustainable livelihoods and healthy communities. Students examine the adoption of community-centered rather than technocratic approaches to development work. They chart how communities learn to build on their own research, resources, and assets for improving their quality of life.

Students learn to apply principles of entrepreneurship and innovation to empower change within communities to which they belong. They apply lessons in the place of work as well as the Scouts unit. The course will introduce SEED-SCALE, Future Generations University’s globally-tested community-based method.

Covers organizational skills and strategies for effective planning, funding, managing, leading, and partnering. Students gain an overview of financial management, grant writing, and reporting. They review effective methods to monitor and evaluate sustainable and scalable development projects.

Examines longitudinal societal, economic, geographic, natural resource, environmental, and political metrics and mapping for technical needs, natural resources, and effective intervention in communities and countries. Students learn mapping as a tool for narrating the change of communities – their assets, needs, boundaries, and trajectory.

Addresses the most frequently mentioned needs to growing an enterprising organization—community, society, and economics. Students will apply concepts to their own organization or an idea they wish to explore. Emphasis will be placed on strategy to bring clarity and focus in order to grow their organization’s effectiveness and impact. Special consideration will be given to key stakeholders, including volunteers (an underleveraged asset in most non-profit organizations.) This course presents specific strategies to motivate, recruit, track, and retain social engagement. Community labs will allow participants to plan and design analysis, social impact measurement, funding, as well as key issues identified by students in theclass.

Presents a conceptual framework and practical skills for conducting iterative critical examination of programs and projects in community development work. Students learn to use suitable metrics for indicators as scientific methods to simplify complex data collection and analyses.

FBC 604 – Vietnam: From War Victim, to Aid Recipient, to Development Model (Vietnam) (2-3 credits)
The future of Vietnam and the United States is promising despite a history of conflict. Rather than consign Vietnam to the annals of American warfare, this course considers two countries crafting development solutions to shared concerns. One that examines accommodation of climate change. One that embeds sustainable development in school systems. One that celebrates incisive second language and intercultural skills. One that cultivates a sense of we in lieu of they. Collaborative online study precedes field studies that stretch from Vietnam’s Mekong Delta and Ho Chi Minh City to the imperial throne of Hue and capital of Hanoi.

Mahatma Gandhi gave the world an important gift: a proven method for how to shape our lives. Students will embark on the experience of a lifetime to learn Gandhi’s methods where he taught them: his ashram in Sevagram, India. Students will eat as he did, study on the same mud floors where he taught, and leave with the skills to use words and his action models to improve their communities. This trip also includes field visits to other sites in India important to Gandhi’s life and teachings, as well as to NGOs that are embodying his method of change.

1995, Future Generations released a study of SEED-SCALE at the United Nations Social Summit in Copenhagen. For the past 25 years, this community-based methodology has had an impact in communities around the world. Students will celebrate 25 years of SEED-SCALE and explore ways in which SEED-SCALE is and can be implemented in rural Pendleton WV, urban Washington DC, and in their communities. They will talk with local people and community leaders, visit community institutions, and learn from each other and Future Generations faculty throughout the 13 days together.