Community Engagement in Southern Communities

Southern communities have their share of problems.

A persistent lack of economic diversity and insular strategic planning throughout the rural and urban South has created an intersection of negative social and economic factors such as higher poverty, unemployment rates, lower educational attainment and lack of industry (Foulkes & Schafft, 2010; Lichter, Parisi & Taquino, 2012; Reichert, Cromartie & Arthun, 2012; Sirota, 2012; Swanson, Harris, Skees & Williamson, 1994). Consequently, this setting has exacerbated the plight of regions with assiduously low or negative net migration. Of these Southern communities those with the highest percentages of African Americans per county, i.e. the Black Belt region, have the most extreme negative social and economic indicators (Sirota, 2012). Thusly, these counties are at the greatest risk of chronically losing population (Ambinakudige, Parisi & Grice, 2012; Sirota, 2012).

Counties such as Halifax, Northampton, Robeson and Cumberland host some of the most deleterious variety of negative features. Robeson County from 2008-2011 had an uninsured rate of 24.3 percent, and Columbus County has a life expectancy of 72.8 years compared to the state average of 77.3 (Sirota, 2012). Unemployment in 2011 in Halifax County was 12.9 percent and Northampton County only boasts 2.3 primary care physicians for every 10,000 residents (Sirota, 2012). 

Instead however of depending on external forces and resources to improve the outcomes of communities White (2009) argues that there is emerging a general agreement that citizens should be able to act on their own behalf and have the power and right to participate in decisions that impact their quality of life. Not only do I agree I think it is imperative that scholarship be devoted to determining how best to do it.