ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a Renewing Hope within Neighborhoods of Despair: The Community-Based Development Model, and make a case for the importance of such a text in urban education circles. Both poor urban schools and Community Based Development Organizations (CBDOs) have to struggle to obtain and to retain the limited resources they have. Many poor urban schools, like CBDOs, are local organizations that stand between the communities in poverty they serve and the economic and political communities that attempt to shape their work. The strategies enable CBDOs to resist outside pressure to alter their commitments to the communities they serve. Niche organizations exist in the middle of counter pressures from the service providers and their clients and from larger, more powerful funding organizations. The strength of niche organizations is that they emerge from, and are responsive to, distinct environments and cultures.
