Chair’s Message – August 2025

It was nice to see many of you in Geneva. I thought it was an excellent conference. Kudos to Craig Talmage and his team in New York for hosting such a nice event and to Neil Linscheid and Sarah Hultine Massengale and their team for putting such an excellent program together.  We had 201 conference participants join us in New York for some excellent sessions and opportunities to engage with others around issues in community development and we learned a lot about community development in the finger lakes region of New York. I found it energizing. I look forward to our meeting next summer in Savannah, Georgia! If you are interested in getting involved in working on the program for the conference next year the program committee could use more involvement from the membership. It is fun and rewarding work, especially when you see it all come together during the conference.

During the board meeting at conference CDS decided to host a program called Coming Together for Racial Understanding. It is a curriculum/program that has been offered nationally through the Regional Centers for Rural Development. They are no longer able to host that program and CDS agreed to host the materials and work with some of the educators involved in the program to see how we can effectively serve as the host for this program. We do not know what this will look like, but we hope to work this out over the next few months. If you are interested in getting involved in this effort, it will be a project of the webinars and educational training subcommittee led by Tanner Knorr.

I think it’s an exciting and challenging time for those of us who work in community development. CDS is working to effectively provide a network and support system that can lift us all up as we facilitate the work of community development. If you would like to be part of one of the projects I just mentioned or offer your support in other ways please contact Tammy Baxter, director@cdsociety.org. She can help you connect to a project or committee that can use your talents.