Over the past three years a re-emergence of interest in the community development movement in the developing world of the 1950's and early 1960's has occurred, due primarily to the current interest in rural development as an approach to improve the well-being of the world's rural poor. It is unusual in current rural development conferences of scholars, researchers, or practitioners not to hear frequent reference to the failures or successes of the earlier community development programs. In general, the community development approach was directed at the promotion of better living for the whole community, with the active participation and, if possible, the initiative of the community. However, if this initiative was not forthcoming spontaneously, techniques for arousing and stimulating community initiatives were to be employed by trained community development personnel. The purpose of this paper is to examine the community development movement from a historical perspective in an effort to enhance our understanding of that earlier movement and draw from this experience some implications of usefulness in the formulation of current and future rural development strategies, policies, programs and projects.