| Community-based organizations (CBOs) play an essential role in the delivery of social services in the United States today. To their critics, CBOs further the goals of a neo-liberal agenda that seeks to make people self-governing and responsible for their own poverty and suffering while reproducing class relations—at a distance. For the untold numbers for whom neighborhood based services and programs provide the support structures that most of us take for granted they are beacons of hope in dreary, and often terrifying, urban landscapes. Yet, despite the important role and good intentions of these organizations, many fail in their mission. This dissertation presents a case study of a urban Los Angeles CBO exemplifying the embedded, complex, and flexible approach that practitioners and scholars cite as effective. I ask why this organization has been successful for twenty-five years, and in fact has become a model program.;Based on my ethnographic case study I argue that the remarkable success 1 of the organization, Center for Family Services (CFS)2, is the result of a community building process with its origin in a genuine collaboration between the four upper class white women that founded CFS and local Latina mothers. Together, starting with a parent-participation pre-school, they built a formal, comprehensive community institution grounded in local conditions and responsive to local needs, constructed an organizational model for practice that endures to this day, created social solidarity, and gained positive recognition, while maintaining their democratic structure. Each successive group or generation has built upon the wisdom, experience, and empowerment of the "founding mothers" to reproduce culture locally. CFS' continued efficacy, garnering of resources, and recognition of the organization as a model program resides in the adaptive resilience of the culture across gender and generation. My theory of their success is grounded in my fieldwork experience and cultural analysis, which includes a strong applied component, as well as the personal narratives of the participants. The case study substantiates and builds upon earlier theories of the outcomes of grassroots women's paid and unpaid community work while adding to the research on successful social interventions in inner-city neighborhoods.;1The success to which I refer is based on staff and participants perceptions rather than any particular criteria imposed from outside the organization. 2CFS is a pseudonym as are all the names of staff and participants. |
