Professionalised deficit based service providers have made clients of the poor. People are distanced from the support of their neighbours, who now think that they are too removed and unqualified to help. This leads to isolation of the individuals. When in difficulty people are pressured to identify themselves by their special needs that can only be validated and serviced by outside agency. But within the ABCD process this can be changed through the process of recognising community assets and changing assumptions and intent accordingly.
Changing community through increased services | Changing community through citizen involvement | |
Institutional reform | Citizen-centred production | |
Leaders are professional staff, accountable to institutional stakeholders. | Leaders area widening circles of volunteer citizens. Accountable to the community. | |
Assets are system inputs. Asset mapping is data collection. | Assets are relationships to be discovered and connected. Asset mapping is self-realization and leadership development. | |
Money is the key resource. Falls apart without money. | Relationships are the key resource. Falls apart when money becomes the focus. | |
How do we get citizens involved? | How do we channel and build on all this citizen participation? | |
Tends to spread itself thinner over time. | Tends to snowball over time. | |
Success is service outcomes, measured mostly by institutional stakeholders. | Success is capacity, measured mostly by relationships. | |
Deficit Based Process vs Sustainable Community Development Asset Based Approach |
The second key method of Asset Based Community Development is that action is realised through the local associations who should drive the community development process and leverage additional support and entitlements.
Power by consent | Directors following policy | |
Choice of members | Managing executives | |
By members for themselves | To meet production demands | |
Members | Contractors | |
Member volunteers | Employees | |
Members | Contractor, employees, directors and consumers | |
To do more together | To do more for less | |
Capacity of members | Drive to meet contractual obligations | |
Voluntary agreement | Tight hierarchical control | |
Fun, creative and adaptable | Reliable repetitive production | |
Associations vs Institutions |
These associations are the vehicles through which all of a community’s assets can be identified and connected to one another in ways that multiply their power and effectiveness. Users of the ABCD approach are deliberate in their intentions to lead by stepping back. Existing associations and networks (whether formal or informal) are assumed to be the source of constructive energy in the community. Community-driven development is done rather than development driven by external agencies that divide their capacity and expertise between service provision and the priorities of their continuing existence.
ABCD draws out strengths and successes in a community’s shared history as its starting point for change. Among all the assets that exist in the community, ABCD pays particular attention to the assets inherent in social relationships, as evident in formal and informal associations and networks.
ABCD’s community-driven approach is in keeping with the principles and practice of participatory approaches development, where active participation and empowerment (and the prevention of disempowerment) are the basis of practice. It is a strategy directed towards sustainable, economic and social development that is community-driven.
Most communities address social and economic problems with only a small amount of their total capacity. A large amount of the community capacity is often diverted into meeting the service and eligibility requirements of external deficit focused provision. This capacity is needed internally by the community as it reacts to challenges and seeks to lead its own development. This is the challenge and opportunity of community engagement.
With rare exception; people can contribute and want to contribute. Everyone in a community has something to offer. There is no one who is not needed. Gifts must be discovered.
See them, make them, and utilize them. An intentional effort to build and nourish relationships is the core of ABCD and of all community building.
It is essential to engage the wider community as actors (citizens) not just as recipients of services (clients).
Leaders from the wider community of voluntary associations, congregations, neighbourhoods, and local business, can engage others from their sector. This form of leadership utilises relationships, inclusion, showing and sharing to lead involvement based on trust.
Agencies and neighbourhood groups often feel trapped by perceived apathetic responses. Apathy is a sign of bad listening. People in communities are motivated to act. The challenge is to discover what their motivation is.
People act on certain themes they feel strongly about, such as; concerns to address, dreams to realize, and personal talents to contribute. Every community is filled with invisible “motivation for action” that must be identified. Listen for it.
One-on-one dialogue or small group conversations are ways of discovering motivation and invite participation. Forms, surveys and asset maps can be useful to guide intentional listening and relationship building but cannot fill the void left by its absence.
Asking and inviting are key community-building actions. It is integral to showing that people have been listened to and their gifts are recognised. “Join us. We need you.” This is the song of community.
People in communities are usually asked to follow an outside expert’s answers for their community problems. A more powerful way to engage people is to invite communities to address ‘questions’ and lead finding their own answer, changing the role of agencies to following up with help.
A “citizen-centred” organization is one where local people control the organization and set the organization’s agenda.
All institutions such as government, not-for-profits, and businesses are stretched thin in their ability to solve community problems. They can not be successful without engaging the rest of the community in solutions.
Local people are better than outside programs in engaging the wider community. Leaders in institutions have an essential role in community-building as they lead by “stepping back,” creating opportunities for citizenship, letting people show they care, and engaging in real democracy.
ABCD is an approach built on tried and tested methods from sustainable community development practice. It is not a set formula that can be prescribed in a one size fits all manner. Here are basic common steps reflecting the experience and principles of applying an asset based approach.
Stories are collections of the cultural capital of a community. The listening conversation can engage people’s experience of successful activities that will help to uncover the gifts, skills, talents and assets within the community. From the stories, what people care about and their motivations to act can be discovered. Importantly this form of inquiry does not diminish but reinforces citizens as the centre of their community.
From the stories, people will emerge who have shown commitment and leadership in the past or who are currently taking a leadership role. Next bring together a group of these committed individuals who are interested in exploring the community’s assets, identifying opportunities and leading developmental action. Engaged and motivated to act on what they care about, using their strengths and gifts, these individuals will open networks of relationships inside the community.
Citizens and their associations do the asset mapping so that they build new relationships, learn more about the contributions and talents of community members, identify connections that open opportunities and enable change. The objectives are:
A list of associations can then be clustered by type and those associations most likely to participate in working together for a common purpose can be identified. In the process of identifying associations, the list of leaders in the community also expands.
The focus is to show people that their abilities and contributions are appreciated. A capacity inventory will be developed listing these capacities in categories such as community-building, enterprise, teaching, artistic or other skills. The categories should reflect the self identified strengths of the community, and not an external requirements list.
This includes government services, non-government service providers and private sector businesses. These assets could be the services they provide, meeting places, the equipment and other supplies they can make available, communications links and staff who can envision the wider benefits for the whole community of stronger relationships.
This is a list of the potentials of a place, in which new ideas and re-imaginings can emerge. It is not a dry list for valuations, but revealing and understanding of the foundations on which development can be built. Because access and use has different conditions those which are communally owned and managed should be identified separately from those which are individually owned and managed.
Provision of services has led to a distancing of community understanding from how their needs can be met. This process returns knowledge to people in the community of how the local economy works. With this people can see how well local resources are maximised for local economic benefit, and evaluate plans for economic development that can enhance local provision for externally provided services that drain resource away from the local economy.
Lasting change comes from within the community and local people know what needs to change. Possibly the most vital step of Asset Based Community Development is encouraging the building of new relationships and strengthening and expanding existing ones. This is the heart of community building, and will lead to the immeasurable benefit that communities protect and support what they create.
Asset Based Community Development’s core idea is that communities can drive the development process themselves by identifying and mobilizing existing, but often unrecognised assets . This requires a strong commitment to community driven efforts through active citizenship and participatory democratic methods. The community can meet the challenge to match assets with opportunities and decide their organising theme. A concrete, achievable and understood activity should be selected within that organising theme to begin working on right away.
When people know what to do to succeed, know what success looks like, can see where to start and that it can be achieved within available resources, the chosen activity will have have a unifying and strengthening outcome. This creates the self-mobilisation as an ongoing process. Associations lead transformative efforts for local social and economic development. This leads to information sharing and realisation of what can further be achieved through new connections and association. From this emerges larger community-wide connected associations with common purpose.
Institutions lead by “stepping back” into a supporting and helping role, leaving decision-making to associational leaders to facilitate within the community. Achieving a community vision begins with people that realise the power of their associations and accepting the challenge of making things happen. External resources are not sought until local resources have been utilised and clear understanding of what is needed is known. This crucially changes the dynamic of community interaction with institutions, from the community being under pressure to shape themselves to the externally provided services being offered to now utilising resource and investment that creates sustainable community development.
In this section
Ward, Sarah (2019) How can Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) contribute to community health and wellbeing? PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.
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Assets approaches have become a popular policy tool for addressing disadvantage and poor health in recent years. Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) proposes that disadvantaged communities can develop autonomy and build a local vision for change, regaining control over local activity. In spite of their popularity, there remains little empirical evidence of how assets approaches function to address disadvantage. This study aims to address the evidence gap by co-producing an evaluation framework for ABCD. By defining the concept of wellbeing according to a Capabilities Approach, it explores whether the social justice potential of ABCD can be extended by building links between internal social networks and external change. Drawing on Theory of Change and Realist Evaluation methods, the research surfaces the broad hypothetical changes promised by ABCD and examines specific Context Mechanism-Outcome (CMO) configurations to identify their causal mechanisms. The study then produces a framework of wellbeing goals to evaluate ABCD. The case studies demonstrated evidence of early-cycle ABCD outcomes of social networks and new activity but no attributable evidence of latter outcomes of community association and a local vision for change. Despite this, evidence of activism not attributable to ABCD offered insights into how the ABCD approach might remedy these problems. Most of the ABCD Capabilities goals identified by research participants were found to cluster around ABCD outcomes early in the activity cycle. By contrast, the goals identified in the final domain of participation and voice were located across the ABCD mechanism cycle, moving from personal decision-making through to the wider associational commitment of civic activism. This suggested a participation pathway, requiring activity and advocacy support across the ABCD cycle in order to reach the ‘tipping point’ of wider association and vison for change.
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A recent evidence review found there are many community development and empowerment models where health needs are identified by the community members who then mobilize themselves into action (O'Mara-Eves et al., 2013).These models often aim to enhance mutual support and collective action and the review found there is evidence that they have a positive impact on outcomes, such as health ...
The Marmot review (Marmot, 2010) advises that meeting the health needs of disadvantaged populations and tackling inequalities in health requires a broader focus on creating and developing healthy and sustainable communities.A key recommendation includes engaging with the third sector and community groups and empowering individuals and local communities to improve health and well-being outcomes.
The Community Development Program at Northwestern University's Institute for Policy Research established the Asset-Based Community Development Institute based on three decades of research and community work by John P. Kretzmann and John L. McKnight. Principles Needs-based community development emphasizes local deficits and looks to outside ...
Definitions of asset-based community development and their sources t Asset-Based and Citizen-Led Development is an approach that recognizes the strengths, gifts, talents and resources of individuals and communities, and helps communities to mobilize and build on these for sustainable development. Source: Coady International Institute, Canada ...
There is broad consensus that the current evidence base for asset-based approaches is limited and there is scope for more robust research (Alvarez-Dardet et al., 2015;Cassetti et al., 2020;Hills ...
Building healthier communities for children and families: Applying asset-based community development to community pediatrics. Pediatrics , 115 , 1185-1187. Crossref
Because participation in community development can take various forms with different (and unintended) outcomes, its important to note the different philosophies when it comes to involving people.
The current paper uses Asset Based Community Development as the basis for an enhanced version of ABCE, offering a more structured approach to mapping community resources and acknowledging the need to identify current levels of community engagement and barriers to engagement, in order to support empowerment, maximise personal capital and address ...
DOI: 10.1177/2158244018823081 Corpus ID: 149461622; Asset-Based Community Development: Narratives, Practice, and Conditions of Possibility—A Qualitative Study With Community Practitioners
Leverage activities, investments, and resources from outside the community to support asset-based, locally defined development. Karabanow (Citation 2004) provides guidelines for step one, i.e. implementing an anti-oppression organizational framework. Anti-oppression organizations should define the problem structurally and from the community's ...
assets of these institutions help the community capture valuable resources and establish a sense of civic responsibility. x Physical Assets: Physical assets such as land, buildings, space, and funds are other
Asset Based Community Development builds on the assets that are found in the community and mobilizes individuals, associations, and institutions to come together to realise and develop their strengths. This makes it different to a Deficit Based approach that focuses on identifying and servicing needs. From the start an Asset Based approach ...
Asset based community development, theory-based evaluation, capabilities approach, participation. Colleges/Schools: College of Social Sciences > School of Social and Political Sciences > Urban Studies
Over the last fifty years, approximately $2.3 trillion has been spent to alleviate global poverty. Even so, the economic disparity between the poor and the non-poor is wider and continues to grow, while restlessness grows among civil societies, and socio-political power remains in the hands of an elite few. It is this development paradox with which the case for an Asset-Based Community ...
In the December 2006 edition of Harvard Business Review, Michael Porter and Mark Kramer argue that by approaching corporate social responsibility (CSR) based on corporate priorities, strengths and abilities, firms can develop socially and fiscally responsible solutions to current CSR issues, which will provide operational and competitive advantages.
The rise of asset-based approaches in health and care has been swift since the notion of an asset model for public health evidence was first proposed by Morgan and Ziglio (2007).Frustration with the limitations of a deficit model of research based on investigating risk and health need has not yet been replaced with shared understandings of how knowledge on health assets should be built ...
Integrated community development and asset-based community development are two of the most popular community development approaches. In this paper, we will critically discuss how integrated community development and asset-based community development can promote sustainable community development.
Haines, Asset-based community development, An Introduction to Commu- nity Development, edited by R. Phillips and R. H. Pittman, Routledge, in the USA and Canada (2009) , pp. 38-48.
The Role of Assets in Community-Based 1 Development C ommunity development has its roots in several academic disciplines, including sociology, economics, political science, planning, social work, and even architecture. The interdisciplinary approach of community devel - opment has many advantages, but it also presents analytical problems. It
In response IACD produced several papers. Firstly, in partnership with Forum for the Future who are researching the British and Irish context, we produced a detailed methodology paper which outlines our approach to this study. ... Asset Based Community Development Has become most closely association with the work of McKnight and Kretzmann ...
Vol. 20 • No. 1 • March 2000 COADY Antigonish • Nova Scotia • Canada INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE St Frauds Xarter Unwcraitj Asset-based Community Development I n September 1999, John McKnight of the Asset-based Community Development Institute in Evanston Illinois, visited Antigonish and addressed a group of over 300 people from northeastern Nova Scotia, including all 46 participants in the ...
Asset based community development in mountain environs: A strategic application for sustainable community based tourism development in the Jaunsar-Bawar region of Uttarakhand, India. African Journal of Hospitality, Tourism and Leisure , 6(3), 1-11.
The Asset-based community development is also referred to as the community-driven development, because it deals with mobilizing the local communities and ensuring stronger values within the community.