Roving Leader Program Developed

It takes leadership to reach "hard-to-reach" youth, yet formal training in leadership is lacking in the education of neighborhood workers reported recreation specialists at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. A new program called the "Roving Leader Program" was developed by the U. of I. Office of Recreation and Park Resources. This has been designed to turn recreation workers, social workers and other neighborhood workers into "roving leaders", capable of guiding delinquent and disadvantaged youth into constructive recreation. This project is funded by the U.S. Office of Education under a contract with the National Recreation and Park Associations. The project concentrates on the means rather than the end and the emphasis is on leadership.

Phase I of the project is to produce a training guide for use by training officers from the nation's cities and this has been completed. "We prepared the guide to help the trainer train the roving leader," Joseph J. Bannon, head of the office of Recreation and Park Resources, said. "We want the roving leader to be able to do a better job and we feel some of these proven techniques will help accomplish this." Before preparing the guide, Bannon traveled to various large cities and found that none of them had a course of study. The Roving Leader Guide provides for a nine-unit training program for training officers, with 160 hours of instruction.

Phase II will be the holding of workshops for training officers in three cities. In November the first workshop was held in Washington, D.C., with workshops slated for Detroit and Los Angeles.

The Five goals of the workshops are to 1.) increase the training officer's sensitivity and self-awareness; 2.) increase his understanding of the target community and its resources; 3.) enable him to convey to his roving leaders and other aides the value of public and private agencies involved; 4.) teach him the basic skills of recruitment, employment and training of residents of the target community; and 5.) develop an effective model for the training of roving leaders that can be used throughout the nation.

Phase III is designed to test the effectiveness of the Roving Leader Program and is scheduled for Baltimore a year from now. The test will involve an evaluation of the success of two groups of neighborhood workers, one group with "roving leader" training and the other without such training.

Illinois Parks 52 March/ April 1970