Asset Based Community Development in Practice
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.
1) Collect stories
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.
2) Bring together a core group
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.
3) Map the gifts, capacities and assets of individuals, associations, and local institutions
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:
Identifying associations
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.
Identifying individual gifts, skills, and capacities
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.
Identifying the assets of local institutions
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.
Identifying physical assets and natural resources
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.
Mapping the local economy
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.
4) Find and engage connectors who can build relationships
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.
5) Ask the gathered community to lead the creation of a community vision and plan
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.
6) Engage the self mobilisation of the community’s assets by action applied through association.
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.
7) Lever knowledge of the community’s assets and strengths to secure investments and resources needed from outside the community for community-driven development.
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.
