Lessons learned – from Neighbor Power, by Jim Diers

in Asset-Based Community Development, Resources

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Excerpts from Neighbor Power, by Jim Diers. I will conclude by summarizing what I have learned about community, community organizing, community initiatives, and the role of government.

A neighborhood is not the same as a community. A neighborhood is a geographic area that people share, while at community is a group of people who identify with and support one another.

Strong communities are those that rely on their own resources, including the assets that each and every person possesses.

Individual reciprocity is not sufficient. Communities are most powerful when they take collective action. The process of building that kind of power is called community organizing.

The key to community organizing is to start where the people are. The more local the activity, the higher the percentage of people who will get involved.

Organizing entails building on existing networks. Most people are already organized and cannot reasonably be expected to develop an entirely new set of relationships and find time for yet another organization.

Starting where people are also involves identifying their interests. That means listening. The organizer should be prepared to hear and understand interests that may be different from her own.

If a common interest involves an issue, that issue should be framed in a way that is as immediate, as specific, and as achievable as possible. People get involved to the extent that they can have an impact on the things they care about.

Community plans, projects, and social events are good ways to bring people together. Whatever the approach, whatever the issue, it is best to think big and start small.

Community self-help projects tend to have qualities that are missing in projects generated by institutions. Innovations are more likely to emanate from community efforts. Communities have a knack for converting a problem into an asset.
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AmeriCorps Member Revitalizes Neighborhood

in Asset-Based Community Development, Resources

via Serve.gov | Stories of Service: Profiles in Service: AmeriCorps Member Revitalizes Neighborhood.

By Fred Wong

On April 21, 2009, President Obama signed the Serve America Act into law – the most sweeping expansion of national service in a generation. To mark the one year anniversary, we are going to spotlight the stories of everyday service heroes who are transforming lives and local communities across the country. Here is Effy’s story.

Five years ago, Mika Community Development Corporation recruited its first AmeriCorps member in the Shalimar neighborhood of Costa Mesa, CA. Her name was Effy Sanchez. During that year Effy walked door to door in this neighborhood trying to discover what neighbors were interested in changing to improve their community. She listened over and over. Finally it was clear. The neighbors wanted their park back.

It was a tiny park. It had been taken over by drug users and gangs. It was riddled with paraphernalia dangerous to children. The park caused such fear in parents that they brought their children to school and back home holding their hands the whole way and they did not allow their children to leave the house.

Within a year, Effy organized a neighborhood committee. With the committee established, neighbors were able to collaborate to make the community safer. The neighbors arranged a new neighbor welcome program, organized meals for the sick, and established a trash clean up schedule for the elderly.

Eventually, Effy arranged for meetings with the Parks and Recreation Department to upgrade the park. She coached the committee members in negotiations with the department. Today they have their park back with lights that work and a new playground. It is a community center where residents interact. The committee has since moved on to other successes.

In her second year of service, Effy began walking and listening to the Maple neighborhood, a second target neighborhood. She organized a local citizens group to take responsibility for the neighborhood. The group’s greatest undertaking to date has been organizing and developing an after-school learning center to help students succeed. The group used its meager resources to rent a center (which was an apartment) and provide snacks and supervision. The group engaged church volunteers from a nearby supporting congregation to help operate the center.

Mika CDC has now been an AmeriCorps program four-and-a-half years and it is working in its fourth neighborhood. Costa Mesa is stronger and better because AmeriCorps members are teaching residents, churches, non-profits, and the city how to implement Asset Based Community Development principles and practices in their neighborhoods.

Learn more about AmeriCorps.

Survey of Interests, Needs, and Skills (INs)

in Asset-Based Community Development, Resources

Here’s a tool you might be able to use to get a better appreciation of the interests, skills, and needs of your constituents, and to help them connect with one another, and with other local resources. You can download the pdf by clicking on the image below. You can also edit and download the form, in spreadsheet format, here (some formatting was lost in the file translation).

The form was designed for residents of multi-family subsidized housing communities. We didn’t use some of items from the original Capacity Inventory (Kretzmann & McKnight 1993), but kept them in a separate tab (Skills, column J), so you can just copy & paste as needed.

Most respondents completed the form in under eight minutes, with some, who answered the open-ended questions at the end of the survey, taking up to 15 minutes.

Matt Singh (a fellow founder of the Idealist Silicon Valley group) and I developed the form, which we derived (with thanks) from several sources:

We’d appreciate your feedback. And as we roll this out to more residents, we’ll need online/offline tools to make it easier for them to match their interests, needs, and skills with those of their neighbors. Any ideas?