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David Cameron has announced plans to recruit a "neighbourhood army" of 5,000 community organisers in a British version of the scheme which saw Barack Obama begin his career working with some of the poorest communities of Chicago.
The Tory leader said the professional organisers would work in communities across the UK, supporting active citizens to work together to improve their areas and "banging heads together" to make officials help them.
The network would form part of a drive to create a "Big Society" to "restore hope in our future" and solve the problems of what Conservatives term "broken Britain", like crime, drug and alcohol abuse, poverty, incivility and family breakdown.
A wide-ranging programme to revive individual citizens' involvement in social action would also include grants for the UK's poorest areas to establish neighbourhood groups, a Big Society Bank to provide finance for social enterprise projects and a Big Society Day to celebrate the unsung heroes who work to make their areas better, said the Tory leader.
Mr Cameron said his aim was to devolve decision-making powers in many areas from official agencies to voluntary organisations, private companies, citizens and communities.
But he said the state would not simply hand over power to local people and stand back to leave the work to them. A Conservative government would "use the state to help remake society".
A Big Society Bank would use unclaimed assets in dormant accounts to provide start-up funding for social enterprises. Community organisers would be funded in the poorest areas by funds redirected from the Cabinet Office FutureBuilders scheme. And a Big Society Network would be a national campaign for social change, independent of government.
At a conference to launch the Big Society Network in London, Mr Cameron quoted the words of US President John Kennedy in his inauguration address in 1961: "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."
And he said: "The vision we've been setting out here is unashamedly optimistic and unapologetically ambitious. But I didn't come into politics to do small things. I don't aspire to run this country to manage Britain's decline.
"I'm here because I want to bring change to this country and I believe we can change this country."
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