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