Books by Melvin (Professor of Social Work

Needs assessments identify the needs for services, answering questions about who needs these services and in what priority. Asset assessments focuses on existing resources; combing both needs and asset assesments helps find the gaps in these services and is useful to organizations and communities.

Youth-led organizing, a burgeoning movement that empowers young people while simultaneously enabling them to make substantive contributions to their communities, is increasingly receiving attention from scholars, activists, and the media. Melvin Delgado and Lee Staples, recognized leaders in social work macro practice and community organization, have produced the first comprehensive study of this dynamic field. Their well-organized book takes an important step towardbridging the gap between academic knowledge and community practice in this growing area. The authors social justice-rooted perspective on the fields conceptual and practical foundations is an effective basis for analyzing youth-led community organizing, but they also offer glimpses of successfulgroups in action and helpful insight into how fledgling organizations can become stronger. These groups and their young participants represent the politics and activism of the future, and Delgado and Staples have produced a lucid, thoughtful guide to their key aspects and recent developments that students and researchers of community organization, not to mention the organizers and their facilitators themselves, are sure to find both inspiring and useful.