Asset-Based Community Development

Asset-Based Community Development

The Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) is a methodology that seeks to uncover and highlight the strengths within communities as a means for sustainable development. The basic tenet is that a capacities-focused approach is more likely to empower the community and therefore mobilize citizens to create positive and meaningful change from within. Instead of focusing on a community's needs, deficiencies and problems, the ABCD approach helps them become stronger and more self-reliant by discovering, mapping and mobilizing all their local assets. Few people realize how many assets any community has:

* the skills of its citizens, from youth to disabled people, from thriving professionals to starving artists;
* the dedication of its citizens associations — churches, culture groups, clubs, neighborhood associations
* the resources of its formal institutions — businesses, schools, libraries, community colleges, hospitals, parks, social service agencies.

By the late 1990s, communities around the country were mapping and using these resources in imaginative ways, bringing them out of the closet and into creative synergy with each other, with dramatic results. Asset-based community development has provided leaders and institutions in all sectors with an approach that is relatively cheap, effective and empowering, that avoids paternalism and dependence — an approach that can be supported by all parts of the political spectrum and initiated at any level of civic life.

ee also

* Allotment gardens
* Community development
* Community-based participatory research (CBPR)
* Participatory rural appraisal (PRA)
* Searsolin
* Praxis intervention

Further reading

*John P. Kretzmann and John L. McKnight, Building Communities from the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community's Assets (Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research, 1993)

External links

* [http://www.northwestern.edu/ipr/abcd.html Asset-Based Community Development Institute]
* [http://searsolin.xu.edu.ph/index.php?currentpage=3 Social Leadership Development Course, SEARSOLIN]
* Nurture Development- ABCD approach in Ireland http://www.nurturedevelopment.ie/phil_abcd.html
* [http://habituspraxis.sprinterweb.net/praxisintervention.pdf Praxis Intervention]
* [http://www.kaboom.org/WhatWeDo/tabid/436/Default.aspx KaBOOM!] is the ABCD approach used to build playgrounds in the U.S.


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Поможем решить контрольную работу

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Asset-based community development — is an approach to community development which advocates the use of skills and strengths that are already present within the community, rather than obtaining help from outside institutions. The phrase asset based refers to a positive, capacity… …   Wikipedia

  • Community development — (CD) is a broad term applied to the practices and academic disciplines of civic leaders, activists, involved citizens and professionals to improve various aspects of local communities. Community development seeks to empower individuals and groups …   Wikipedia

  • Community Development Digest — Type Newsletter Format Online journal Owner CD Publications Publisher Mike Gerecht Editor Tom Harman Found …   Wikipedia

  • Community Development Corporation — (CDC) is a broad term referring to not for profit organizations incorporated to provide programs, offer services and engage in other activities that promote and support community development. CDCs usually serve a geographic location such as a… …   Wikipedia

  • Community-based participatory research — (CBPR) is research that is conducted as an equal partnership between traditionally trained experts and members of a community. In CBPR projects, the community participates fully in all aspects of the research process. CBPR projects start with the …   Wikipedia

  • Community organizing — Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now protest (Richir) Community organizing is a process where people who live in proximity to each other come together into an organization that acts in their shared self interest. A core goal of… …   Wikipedia

  • Community — For other uses, see Community (disambiguation). A community of interest gathers at Stonehenge, England, for the summer solstice. The term community has two distinct meanings: a group of interacting people, possibly living in close proximity, and… …   Wikipedia

  • Community engagement — This article is about grassroots community benefit efforts. For governmental community benefit efforts, see public engagement Community engagement refers to the process by which community benefit organizations and individuals build ongoing,… …   Wikipedia

  • Community Reinvestment Act — The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA, Pub.L. 95 128, title VIII of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1977, 91 Stat. 1147, 12 U.S.C. § 2901 et seq.) is a United States federal law designed to encourage commercial… …   Wikipedia

  • Community council — For community councils in Belize, see Local government in Belize. A community council is a public representative body in Great Britain. In England they may be statutory parish councils by another name, under the Local Government and Public… …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”