KaBOOM! – Empowering Neighborhoods and Restoring Play

in Asset-Based Community Development

Peter Gray is a research professor of psychology at Boston College. He has conducted and published research in comparative, evolutionary, developmental, and educational psychology; published articles on innovative teaching methods and alternative approaches to education; and is author of Psychology (Worth Publishers), an introductory college textbook now in its 5th edition.

Peter Gray

In Empowering Neighborhoods and Restoring Play, Psychology Today columnist Peter Gray asked his readers to help him develop a proposal to build a neighborhood play and learning center “that could serve as a model that communities everywhere might emulate”. I said I’d help, and after putting in a few hours, recommended that he check out KaBOOM!, a nonprofit founded by Darell Hammond, who studied under John Kretzmann, Director of the Assets Based Community Development Institute (ABCD Insitute) at Northwestern University.

A 2008 study authored by Deborah Puntenney found that “when implemented appropriately, the KaBOOM! Community-Build process creates a lasting impact on the communities it partners with, both in terms of building capacity, enhancing community pride and cultivating leadership, as well as enhancing the play experience of neighborhood children.” Dr. Puntenney’s researchers conducted site visits and telephone interviews with 110 playspace builders, and reported that:

  • Nearly 100% believe that their KaBOOM! playground positively impacted the quality and quantity of children’s play
  • 94% believe that their playground project helped strengthen relationships among neighborhood residents and among community partners
  • 91% said that the KaBOOM! Community Build model and tools work

The KaBOOM! model (Road Map) comprises eight steps:

  1. KaBOOM! Road MapResearch – Why play matters, the “community-build model,” benefits of a community build model, play equipment appropriate for specific ages, abilities, and types of play, playground safety hazards in old equipment, make the case for a new, community-built playground.
  2. Conceive – Create a project vision and mission statement, form a planning committee, choose a playground site, choose a surfacing and equipment vendor, estimate the project budget, establish a project timeline, create a fundraising strategy.
  3. Organize – Organize and hold the first playspace meeting, start fundraising, finalize planning committee teams, determine the necessary site preparation, create a project website.
  4. Design – Holding a Design Day, working with an equipment vendor to select a design, press materials and media involvement, accelerating youth involvement through the Design Day and service learning projects.
  5. Coordinate – Recruiting Build Day volunteers and captains, creating a contingency plan for bad weather and emergencies, mapping the build site and the Build Day “matrix,” creating a maintenance plan with the landowner and staff, leveling the site and removing old equipment.
  6. Energize – Planning final fundraisers, writing and sending out a media advisory to notify local newspapers, radio, and TV stations, ordering side project materials, confirming delivery schedule for equipment and surfacing, training build day captains.
  7. Build – Equipment and surfacing delivery, organizing materials one to two days before the Build Day, motivating volunteers, rehearsing the ribbon cutting ceremony, taking pictures of the site and securing the area.
  8. Maintain – Sending official thanks you’s, starting your maintenance program, hosting a final planning meeting, supervising, playing and enjoying, RALLY!-ing for play.

The website’s toolkit provides resources (including samples) for every step on the map, including pre-planning, community involvement, volunteer recruitment, fundraising,  construction, and maintenance.

KaBOOM! also provides free online training, and a Project Planner: a free website that aims to help you plan each step of your project, communicate with your team, recruit local volunteers, raise money, get free advice from the professional playground builders at KaBOOM!, and connect you to a community of people like you who are building playspaces around the country.

KaBOOM! Project PlannerClick here to read news articles on KaBOOM!

Capacity Inventory samples

in Asset-Based Community Development

Source: Discovering Community Power: A Guide to Mobilizing Local Assets and Your Organization’s Capacity | The Habitat Exchange.

A. From Greyrock Commons Co-Housing Community

GIFTS I CAN GIVE MY COMMUNITY

  • GIFTS OF THE HEAD
    Things I know something about and would enjoy talking about with others, e.g., art, history, movies, birds.
  • GIFTS OF THE HANDS
    Things or skills I know how to do and would like to share with others, e.g., carpentry, sports, gardening, cooking.
  • GIFTS OF THE HEART
    Things I care deeply about, e.g., protection of the environment, civic life, children.

capacity inventory

B. From the New Prospect Baptist Church

GIFTS

Gifts are abilities that we are born with. We may develop them, but no one has to teach them to us.

1. What positive qualities do people say you have?

2 Who are the people in your life that you give to? How did you give it to them?

3. When was the last time you shared with someone else? What was it?

4. What do you give that makes you feel good?

SKILLS

Sometimes we have talents that we’ve acquired in everyday life such as cooking and fixing things.

1. What do you enjoy doing?

2. If you could start a business, what would it be?

3. What do you like to do that people would pay you to do?

4. Have you ever made anything? Have you ever fixed anything?

DREAMS

Goals you hope to accomplish.

1. What are your dreams?

2. If you could snap your fingers and be doing anything, what would it be?

Vertigo and The Intentional Inhabitant: Leadership In A Connected Environment

in Asset-Based Community Development

Bill Traynor is a leading theoretician and practitioner in the field of community development. He is currently the Executive Director of Lawrence Community Works, an initiative that’s rebuilding the struggling city of Lawrence, Massachusetts, his hometown. He was the Director of Community Development for the Boston Community Training and Assistance Center, and the Executive Director of the Coalition for a Better Acre in Lowell, where he raised over a million dollars to support organizational growth and to implement several housing and economic development projects. The author of numerous articles on community development and community organizing, Traynor received a Loeb Fellowship from Harvard University in 1998. During his tenure with LCW, Traynor grew the organization from a staff of two and a deficit, to a staff of 45 and an operating budget of over $2 million, while leveraging over $25 million in public and private project investments for affordable housing, infrastructure investments, a city-wide youth network, and a range of family asset building and community organizing initiatives.

The Nonprofit Quarterly features this article in its current edition. Read the full article: Vertigo and The Intentional Inhabitant; Leadership In A Connected Environment: « The Value Of Place. Excerpts:

I have had to grapple with trying to find a way to lead when many of the traditional levers of power and decision making are neither handy nor useful. Moving from a traditional environment to a network or connected environment can cause a kind of vertigo because the environment is so radically different. It operates by different rules and responds to different stimuli. To try to lead in a network environment armed only with the perspectives and skills honed in traditional settings, is unsettling and disorienting.

It’s About the Space

A network environment is dominated by space, and so it is the space that should dominate your attention. The leader in a connected environment has to understand that the power of these environments comes from the space, not the forms that populate the space. Therefore the critical function of the leader in the network is the recognition of, and the creation, preservation and protection of space.

What is meant by space in this context? Well, it’s time and opportunity mostly, as well as accessibility, flexibility and options. It is the time for unfolding, time for adaptation, time and opportunity for intentional and random bumping and connecting, for creation, for response, for listening and reacting, for deconstruction. It is the space in between, around, behind, on top of and underneath the all of the action, the commitments, the transactions – these things are all forms. Networks die when the space closes because in the clutter of commitments, expectations, structures, programs, partnerships etc, there is no more space for adaptation or response.

At LCW we try to build language, tools and systems to help us recognize, create, preserve and defend space. We try to resource the demand environment in lots of different ways so that we can get better at resourcing real life opportunities rather than concepts and ideas that we or funders come up with. We try to keep all of our teams and committees loose and flexible and leadership moving from person to person so that we can stay focused on ‘what we do’ rather than ‘who we are’. This creates space for experimentation and allows things to grow and also allows for things to go away when they aren’t useful anymore. We try to do the routine things as efficiently as possible so that we can save time for the complicated stuff.

Over the past several years I have found that there are three ways to create and preserve space in a network environment.

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Reflections on Community Organizing and Resident Engagement in the Rebuilding Communities Initiative

in Asset-Based Community Development

Reflections on Community Organizing

Reflections on Community Organizing and Resident Engagement in the Rebuilding Communities Initiative.

Bill Traynor. Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Reflections of a community’s struggle with resident engagement and community organizing. The report’s focus in on understanding the role and practice of community organizing and resident engagement in the context of a comprehensive community change initiative.

Highlights:

We tried many things; some worked, some did not. Throughout the process, we all participated in a collective struggle to understand and master the challenge of effective resident engagement in a complex, multi-faceted comprehensive community initiative … This monograph is a reflection on their struggle. Its focus is on understanding the role and practice of community organizing and resident engagement in the context of a comprehensive community change initiative. It is based on my own reflections on their work as well as the thoughts and experiences of dozens of residents, activists, and professionals who have been involved in RCI.

  • It is difficult to establish strong and reliable measures of success. To complicate matters further, the rhetoric of resident engagement and community building is now so banal as to render much of it meaningless.
  • The truth is this work is difficult to do well, especially over a long period of time. Moreover, even successful community-based organizations (CBOs), such as those selected to participate in RCI, face significant challenges as they try to build capacity to do this work.
  • At its core is the challenge of engaging residents and other stakeholders to shape new thinking, new policies, new actions, and new visions. Of course, this requires a new approach to how CBOs identify, educate, activate, and mobilize their constituencies.

Lessons learned:

  • Community building efforts can only be successful if they are concerned both with building social capital and implementing an agenda for change.
  • For many groups, the shift to a community-building approach represents a wholesale shift in organizational culture and operations.
  • An investment in developing professional community organizing capacity is necessary to get results from community-building work.
  • Community-building efforts suffer from a dangerous combination of high expectations and meager resources.

(more…)

The Community Builder’s Approach to Theory of Change

in Asset-Based Community Development

A theory of change can be a helpful tool for developing solutions to complex social problems. At its most basic, a theory of change explains how a group of early and intermediate accomplishments sets the stage for producing long-range results. A more complete theory of change articulates the assumptions about the process through which change will occur, and specifies the ways in which all of the required early and intermediate outcomes related to achieving the desired long-term change will be brought about and documented as they occur.

To best realize the value of creating a theory of change as part of planning and evaluating social interventions, the Aspen Institute Roundtable on Community Change (Roundtable) developed an approach to help community builders create the most robust theories of change possible.

The Community Builder’s Approach to Theory of Change: A Practical Guide to Theory Development is for planners and evaluators who are going to facilitate a process for creating a theory of change with community-based programs and community change initiatives.

rcccommbuildersapproach.pdf (application/pdf Object).

Building Communities From the Inside Out

in Asset-Based Community Development

Notes from Building Communities From the Inside Out, by John P. Kretzmann

  • In distressed communities across the United States, savvy organizers and leaders are rediscovering ancient wisdom about what builds strong communities.
  • Serious community builders have no choice but to return to basics, to the communities themselves to rediscover and mobilize the strengths, capacities, and assets within those communities.
  • Communities can only be built by focusing on the strengths and capacities of the citizens who call that community home.
  • Start by drawing an “Assets Map“, which includes: (1) the “gifts” of individual residents – their knowledge, skills, resources, values, and commitments; (2) those groups and organizations, sometimes called “associations,” in which local citizens come together to pursue a wide range of activities; (3) institutions located in virtually every community: schools, parks, libraries, police, human service agencies, community colleges, when those institutions can refocus at least part of their considerable resources on community building.

When all these local community assets – the gifts of individuals, the power of citizens’ associations, and the resources of local institutions – have been rediscovered, “mapped,” and mobilized in relation to each other and their potential to solve problems, then a community previously regarded as empty and deficient will appear on the large civic stage as capable and powerful. With this goal in mind, consider a few of the concrete tools and methods local communities are developing to rediscover and activate their assets.

Discovering and Using the Gifts of Individuals

  • Every community is built by the contributions of its residents.
  • The great organizer Saul Alinsky argued that it takes no more than five percent of the residents of any community to bring about significant change.
  • For purposes of building communities “from the inside out,” that number is inadequate.
  • Every person in this community is gifted, and every person in this community will contribute his/her gifts and resources.
  • To rediscover the gifts and resources of all community members, community groups have utilized some form of a “Capacity Inventory.” The inventory is simply a questionnaire aimed at uncovering a person’s skills, areas of knowledge and experience, commitments, and willingness to be involved in community building and/or economic development activities.
  • Among the many potential uses for the capacity inventory, the seven listed below seem to be most common. Each, of course, requires asking residents a different set of questions.

Seven Uses for a Capacity Inventory

  • Link skills to employers
  • Discover market opportunities
  • Develop local skills bank. Housed with block captains, in churches or local community organizations, a skills bank can facilitate neighbor-to-neighbor help, e.g. baby sitting, snow shoveling, carpentry, plumbing
  • Learning Exchange: “What would you like to teach?” and “What would you like to learn?” One community for over a decade operated a learning exchange that grew to a listing of more than 20,000 topics.
  • Discover new participants in community life. Questions about previous involvements and current interests uncover new contributors to community organizations.
  • Discover new cultural and artistic resources. Inquiries about cultural and artistic skills in a number of communities have uncovered visual artists, writers, musicians, theater people, and crafts people, most of whom are willing and ready to be involved in community and civic activities.

The questions that make up the inventory should reflect the uses that the organizing group wants to emphasize. A typical questionnaire might cover:

  • Skills information, including skills people have learned at home, in the community, or at the workplace. Usually people are asked to identify their “priority skills,” those about which they are most confident.
  • Community skills information, aimed at uncovering precious community experience and potential interests.
  • Enterprising interests and experience, aimed at uncovering past and present business experience.
  • Culture and arts skills.
  • Minimum personal information, for follow-up purposes.

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Discovering Community Power: A Guide to Mobilizing Local Assets and Your Organization’s Capacity

in Asset-Based Community Development

Discovering Community Power: A Guide to Mobilizing Local Assets and Your Organization’s Capacity (2005) is a workbook developed by the Asset Based Community Development Institute which aims to strengthen community-based projects by enhancing both project design and proposal preparation. Based on the premise that “your community’s assets plus your organization’s assets produces strong community-based projects,” the workbook guides reflection on a proposed project’s relationship to community assets and helps connect the two sets of assets within a particular project. Key tools include an illustration of community and organizational asset-mapping as well as illustration of a typical “power ladder” depicting community decision-making. Discovering Community Power will be of interest to organizations seeking to develop projects in partnership with its local community.

In Section One of this manual, we will introduce a series of questions designed to guide your reflections about a proposal’s relationships to five categories of community assets. These include:

  1. Local residents – their skills, experiences, passions, capacities and willingness to contribute to the project. Special attention is paid to residents who are sometimes “marginalized”.
  2. Local voluntary associations, clubs, and networks – e.g., all of the athletic, cultural, social, faith-based, etc. groups powered by volunteer members – which might contribute to the project.
  3. Local institutions- e.g. public institutions such as schools, libraries, parks, police stations, etc., along with local businesses and non-profits – which might contribute to the project.
  4. Physical assets – e.g. the land, the buildings, the infrastructure, transportation, etc. which might contribute to the project.
  5. Economic assets – e.g. what people produce and consume, businesses, informal economic exchanges, barter relationships, etc.

In Section Two, we will provide questions to guide you in asking about your own organization’s wide range of assets, and their relationship to the proposed project.

In Section Three, you will find additional tools and illustrations to help you connect your proposal and your organization with community assets.

In Section Four, you will find information about the ABCD Institute.

via Discovering Community Power: A Guide to Mobilizing Local Assets and Your Organization’s Capacity | The Habitat Exchange.

See also: Capacity Inventory samples