Community Empowerment A New Approach for Rural Development

The 1993 legislation creating the Empowerment Zones and Enterprise Communities program represents a departure in Federal policy toward developing low-income rural and urban communities. By combining flexible, long-term financing with strategic planning and performance benchmarking, the program helps impoverished communities to address structural problems comprehensively, rather than applying “stovepipe” programs to isolated issues. Although the program is only 3 years into implementation, the results are already remarkable. Rising congressional interest in the program’s success points to an expansion of the empowerment approach in coming years.