Asset Based Community Development
Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) is based on extensive inquiry into the characteristics of successful community initiatives in North America and more recently around the world. In particular, we have explored marginalised and struggling communities who have successfully raised themselves out of the usual cycles of disadvantage.
We also inquired into successful efforts where groups of people who were on the edge of community have become strong contributing members to the success of the community.
ABCD is a way of counteracting the predominant needs-based approach to development and social inclusion. The needs-based approach, which utilised surveys, analysed problems, and identified solutions to meet those needs, inadvertently presented a one-sided negative view, which has often compromised, rather than contributed to, community capacity building and social inclusion.
If the needs-based approach is the only guide to assist communities and marginalised people, the consequences can be extremely negative. One of the main effects is leadership that denigrates the community. Leaders find that the best way to attract institutional resources is to play up the severity of problems. Local leadership is judged on how many resources are attracted to the community, not on how self-reliant the community has become.
Often people start to believe what their leaders are saying. They begin to see themselves as deficient and incapable of taking charge of their lives and of the community. Often people become to be seen as intractable problems. Not surprisingly some people disengage from community; or begin to act like "clients" or consumers of services rather than active, contributing members of their community.
Inevitably local organisations and leaders begin to deal more with external institutions than with groups in their own community. This reinforces the notion that "only outside experts can provide real help" and further weakens neighbour-to-neighbour links. Funding is made available on the basis of categories of needs rather than for integrated approaches, which leads to "the much lamented fragmentation of efforts to provide solutions. Such approaches deny the basic community wisdom and thought that community members are part of the solution. It does not recognise the fact that community issues are tightly intertwined, as symptoms in fact of the breakdown of the community's own problem solving capacities.
ABCD is an alternative answer to the usual problem-based approach.
The process of recognising these capacities begins with the construction of a new lens through which communities can begin to assemble their strengths into new combinations, new structures of opportunity, new sources of income and control, and new possibilities for production and new ways of including everyone in the community.
Communities around the world, including Australia communities have mobilised to take action for their economic and social development by employing the principles of ABCD..
Where agencies have ‘lead by stepping back’, communities and marginalised people shifted from being ‘consumers’ of services to ‘designers’ of community programs, and, finally ‘producers’ of community.
Communities that grow strong are internally focused and have built an inventory of their assets and have come to see value in resources that would otherwise have been ignored, unrealised, or dismissed.
Such unrealised resources include not only personal attributes and skills, but also the relationships among people through social, kinship, or associational networks. By mobilising these informal networks, formal institutional resources can be activated - such as local government, formal community-based organisations, and private enterprise. In fact, the key to ABCD is in the power of local associations to drive the community development process and to leverage additional support and entitlements. These associations are the vehicles through which all the community's assets can be identified and then connected to one another in ways that multiply their power and effectiveness.
Asset Based Community Development rests on the principle that the recognition of strengths, gifts, talents and assets of individuals and communities is more likely to inspire positive action for change than an exclusive focus on needs and problems. Seeing the glass half-full as well as half empty is not to deny the real problems that a community faces, but to focus energy on how each and every member has contributed, and can continue to contribute, in meaningful ways to community development. People are seen as engines of community action, and as a source of power and leadership, these are considered assets of the community.
Accompanying this approach is a set of methods that have been used to inspire a community to mobilise around a common vision or plan. ABCD's early phases include:
We also inquired into successful efforts where groups of people who were on the edge of community have become strong contributing members to the success of the community.
ABCD is a way of counteracting the predominant needs-based approach to development and social inclusion. The needs-based approach, which utilised surveys, analysed problems, and identified solutions to meet those needs, inadvertently presented a one-sided negative view, which has often compromised, rather than contributed to, community capacity building and social inclusion.
If the needs-based approach is the only guide to assist communities and marginalised people, the consequences can be extremely negative. One of the main effects is leadership that denigrates the community. Leaders find that the best way to attract institutional resources is to play up the severity of problems. Local leadership is judged on how many resources are attracted to the community, not on how self-reliant the community has become.
Often people start to believe what their leaders are saying. They begin to see themselves as deficient and incapable of taking charge of their lives and of the community. Often people become to be seen as intractable problems. Not surprisingly some people disengage from community; or begin to act like "clients" or consumers of services rather than active, contributing members of their community.
Inevitably local organisations and leaders begin to deal more with external institutions than with groups in their own community. This reinforces the notion that "only outside experts can provide real help" and further weakens neighbour-to-neighbour links. Funding is made available on the basis of categories of needs rather than for integrated approaches, which leads to "the much lamented fragmentation of efforts to provide solutions. Such approaches deny the basic community wisdom and thought that community members are part of the solution. It does not recognise the fact that community issues are tightly intertwined, as symptoms in fact of the breakdown of the community's own problem solving capacities.
ABCD is an alternative answer to the usual problem-based approach.
The process of recognising these capacities begins with the construction of a new lens through which communities can begin to assemble their strengths into new combinations, new structures of opportunity, new sources of income and control, and new possibilities for production and new ways of including everyone in the community.
Communities around the world, including Australia communities have mobilised to take action for their economic and social development by employing the principles of ABCD..
Where agencies have ‘lead by stepping back’, communities and marginalised people shifted from being ‘consumers’ of services to ‘designers’ of community programs, and, finally ‘producers’ of community.
Communities that grow strong are internally focused and have built an inventory of their assets and have come to see value in resources that would otherwise have been ignored, unrealised, or dismissed.
Such unrealised resources include not only personal attributes and skills, but also the relationships among people through social, kinship, or associational networks. By mobilising these informal networks, formal institutional resources can be activated - such as local government, formal community-based organisations, and private enterprise. In fact, the key to ABCD is in the power of local associations to drive the community development process and to leverage additional support and entitlements. These associations are the vehicles through which all the community's assets can be identified and then connected to one another in ways that multiply their power and effectiveness.
Asset Based Community Development rests on the principle that the recognition of strengths, gifts, talents and assets of individuals and communities is more likely to inspire positive action for change than an exclusive focus on needs and problems. Seeing the glass half-full as well as half empty is not to deny the real problems that a community faces, but to focus energy on how each and every member has contributed, and can continue to contribute, in meaningful ways to community development. People are seen as engines of community action, and as a source of power and leadership, these are considered assets of the community.
Accompanying this approach is a set of methods that have been used to inspire a community to mobilise around a common vision or plan. ABCD's early phases include:
- Collecting stories about community successes and identifying the capacities of communities that contributed to success.
- Organising a core group to carry the process forward.
- Mapping completely the capacities and assets of individuals, associations, and local institutions.
- Building relationships among local assets for mutually beneficial problem-solving within the community.
- Mobilising the community's assets fully for economic development and information sharing purposes.
- Convening as broadly representative a group as possible for the purposes of building a community vision and plan.
- Leveraging activities, investments and resources from outside the community to support asset-based, locally defined development.
"People really want to get involved. They really want to. They‛re looking for a way to turn their frustration, excitement, anxiety into action. The theme of my work in community for my entire life [is] that there are assets and gifts out there in communities, and that our job as good servants and as good leaders is not only just being humble, but it‛s having the ability to recognize those gifts in others, and help them put those gifts into action. Communities are filled with assets that we need to better recognize and mobilize if we‛re really going to make a difference."
-- First lady Michele Obama,
June 16, 2009, referring
to the ABCD Approach. "
