Voting for this year's book will begin the first week of January. You do not need to be an OCDCA member to participate in the book club.
Program Information
Over a 15-week period each spring, our Book Club reads and discusses books connected to core community development topics, including housing, food access, financial empowerment, economic development, and community engagement. Selections also explore place-based, urban and rural, and neighborhood-level issues, as well as empathy, leadership, and other professional development skills useful to community development practitioners. Past reads include Climate Resilience by Kylie Flanagan, Just Action by Leah Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein, and Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance by Edgar Villanueva. In 2023, OCDCA’s Annual Conference featured Richard Rothstein, author of The Color of Law, as the keynote speaker following the book’s selection for Book Club. That momentum continued in 2024 with Just Action, co-authored by Leah Rothstein and Richard Rothstein. Leah Rothstein and other featured speakers joined Book Club meetings to expand on the book’s themes, stories, and real-world applications in the community development field. In 2025, Book Club featured Climate Resilience by Kylie Flanagan, with four speakers from within our membership sharing how their organizations’ work connects to resiliency.
In 2026, Book Club will continue to support literacy and foundation-building within the community development field.
