It’s Nearly Time to Go:
Asset Based Community Development with Transient Caravan Park Communities
By Graeme Stuart, Dee Brooks, Cherie Stephens,
Caravan Project, Family Action Centre, University of Newcastle.
in the Defence Community Organisation
In 2010, a training program was delivered by the Family Action Centre to 14 Defence Community Organisation offices throughout Australia.
This article discusses the capacity-building model used for creating a shared language and understanding for family workers in the Australian Defence Force, and how Appreciative Inquiry influenced the training agenda.
Appreciative Inquiry
By David L Cooperrider and Diana Whitney
Appreciative Inquiry (AI) begins an adventure. The urge and call to adventure has been sounded by many people and many organizations, and it will take many more to fully explore the vast vistas that are now appearing on the horizon. But even in the first steps, what is being sensed is an exciting direction in our language and theories of change—an invitation, as some have declared, to “a positive revolution”.
Continue reading →By Dan Duncan
Our UnitedWay system is embarking on a bold journey to transform communities across the country (and now the world) by setting goals that are focused on education, income and health; the building blocks of a good life. To be successful, this journey requires local UnitedWays to transform from primarily fundraising and allocating agencies to community building and engagement organizations, bringing the community together to act collectively for the common good,
Continue reading →How to Get Started
An Asset Based Community Development Tool Kit
Asset Based Community Development (ABCD), although relatively new in Australia, is a well developed concept and approach to community development that has been put into practice extensively in the UnitedStates.
Continue reading →Assets-Based Community Development in Practice
The enhancement of social capital through community building is a key ingredient in positive outcomes for individuals, families, neighbourhoods and local communities but what clues do we have to what works in practice?
Continue reading →This month, Michael takes his experiences and insights and defines the top 10 reasons rural community development is so difficult to accomplish.
Continue reading →Guide Book for using a Strength Based approach
The Guidebook was written by Christopher Dureau who facilitated the refresher training
workshop, with the support of Ms Avosa, the Director of Mother and Child Support Program
on the invitation and direction of Bryan Cussen (Uniting World, Australia) and Annabel
Dulhunty (Anglican Board of Mission, Australia).
A Manual for Village Organizers
This manual brings together an understanding of factors determining livelihood security with
a way of working with people at the village level. It relies on field workers who recognize the
assets, experience and knowledge of the most disadvantaged.
Developing grass-roots, community-based sport and physical activity.
Remember when kids seemed to naturally get exercise in a local park? With little more than a ball, some form of sport would ‘erupt’ and kids were kept busy, active and safe for hours.
Continue reading →Asset-Based Community Development in Myanmar: Theory, fit and practice
Effective community development empowers the marginalised, powerless and poor to achieve better life outcomes and a higher level of wellbeing for themselves. This requires imagining their world differently and taking action to change their circumstances,
The Carnegie Commission for Rural Community Development recognised that the old deficit models of rural development have failed: that forcing rural communities to denigrate their area in order to win essential funding is perverse. Carnegie believes that there is an alternative approach that builds upon the things that a community has – an asset- based approach to rural community development.
Continue reading →How do we build strong, resilient, sustainable communities? How can we make sure that the communities that we live in and work in are vibrant, innovative and full of life?
How can we ensure that our communities are just, fair, equitable and strong in the face of so much global change? Where do we start in our own communities to make a
difference, to make a change towards building the sorts of community we’d like to live in, raise our families in and grow old in?
The global housing crisis, especially in the developing world, is getting worse by the day making the right to adequate shelter a quest that is becoming more and more difficult to meet, despite the targets set by the Millennium Development Goals.
Continue reading →Volume 1
Asset Based Community Development
Traditional approaches to community development often involve top-down or outside in approaches. A consequence of using these approaches is the support of “needs-based” solutions to community problems that emphasize policies and programs that focus on the perceived deficiencies of residents and their families.
Continue reading →The Method of the Abundant Community Initiative in Edmonton, Canada
Inspired by the work of John McKnight and Peter Block, and motivated by their recent book, “The Abundant Community,” Howard Lawrence undertook a pilot project called the Abundant Community Initiative in Edmonton, Canada in January 2013.
Continue reading →The following list includes examples of the wide variety of ways—some quick and some more involved— you can use knowledge of a person’s core gift to help them build internal resilience and healthy participation in their community.
Continue reading →Alison Mathie, Coady International Institute
Panel Discussion for the International Association of Community Development
CIVICUS conference, Glasgow, June 2006.
Kettering Foundation
The Kettering Foundation is an operating foundation rooted in the tradition of cooperative research. Kettering’s primary research question is, what does it take to make democracy work as it should? Established in 1927 by inventor Charles F. Kettering, the foundation is a 501(c)(3) organization that does not make grants but that engages in joint research with others.
Continue reading →Asset-Based Community Development as a strategy for Community Driven-Development
Continue reading →In many communities, social service organizations and governments tackle community change by asking what is wrong, what has to be fixed ABCD takes a totally different approach to community change. ABCD starts by looking at what a community has that it can give/contribute to desired change.
Continue reading →The materials that follow were developed cooperatively by The Woodlawn Organization, a Chicago neighbourhood organization, and the Asset Based Community Institute of Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois.
Continue reading →A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community’s Assets,” by John P. Kretzmann and John L. McKnight.
This is a guide about rebuilding troubled communities. It is meant to be simple, basic and usable. Whatever wisdom it contains flows directly out of the experience of courageous and creative neighborhood leaders from across the country.
Continue reading →Asset Based Community Development – Start Here
How you perceive the neighborhood that you live or work in is going to profoundly influence the way that you act. Typically a neighborhood is seen from the perspective of its largest defi cits. “That is a dangerous neighborhood”,
Continue reading →The Culture of Community
Every community creates its own culture – the way the community members learn, through time, how to survive and prosper in a particular place. Displaced people lose their culture. But it is also possible to lose a community culture even though you stay in a place. Many people have lost their culture, even though they live in a neighborhood.
Continue reading →A Guide to Implementing Neighboring and Its Asset-Based Community Development Principles
What we now know is that the most effective local communities are those where neighborhoods and citizens have reclaimed their traditional roles. The research on this point is decisive. Where there are “thick” community connections, there is positive child development. Health improves, the environment is sustained, and people are safer and have a better local economy. The social fabric of neighborhood and family is decisive.
Continue reading →In this lesson, you will learn how to recognize and use all of your available resources in the planning and development of your community garden. Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) is a framework for organizing of any kind – not just for gardens – that emphasizes the strengths and assets of a community and its members and makes the most of these assets for the particular development project.
Continue reading →Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) is a strategy for sustainable community-driven development. Beyond the mobilization of a particular community, ABCD is concerned with how to link micro-assets to the macro-environment. The appeal of ABCD lies in its premise that communities can drive the development process themselves by identifying and mobilizing existing, but often unrecognized assets, and thereby responding to and creating local economic opportunity.
Continue reading →How an asset approach can improve community health and well-being
The health of everyone is improving; but the health gap between socio economic groups remains. Improving health requires us to tackle this social injustice and close the gap in health inequalities. This includes the inequalities in life expectancy, in illness and in health and wellbeing. We now have a clearer understanding of the links between mental wellbeing and physical health and the contribution that social determinants make to our health.
Continue reading →Bringing new models of working to community settings poses unique challenges. Marc Mordey explains how everyone involved in the Vintage Communities project in Wandsworth is working towards success.
Continue reading →It is worth acknowledging, asset building occurs naturally in many of the poorest and most deprived communities – because it has to and without it communities cannot survive and thrive. This work builds upon, amongst others, the work of the likes of John McKnight and his peers at the asset based community development institute in Chicago, who took what they observed in these communities and formalised the approach.
Continue reading →A reflection piece exploring the spread of Asset based thinking across housing, health and adult social care
By William Lilley
Participants shared; their name, where they are from and then answered the following question:
What makes your heart sing?
Continue reading →In the community-‐building world, a significant number of local initiatives fail because the participants are not clear about the difference between the functions of associations and institutions. This failure most often occurs when institutions attempt to take on functions that are actually better performed by associations.
Continue reading →When you enter the storefront office of a neighborhood organization in Montreal, the first thing you see is a large sign:
Continue reading →INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS FOR COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT PRACTICE ADOPTED AT THE WCDC 2018
Continue reading →The primary goal of an Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) process is to enhance collective citizen visioning and production through a process that combines four essential
elements:
