Survey of Interests, Needs, and Skills (INs)

in Asset-Based Community Development

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?

Neighborhood-based community building handbooks recommended by Jim Diers

in Asset-Based Community Development

“Few people in this country know as much about community building as Jim Diers,” said  Fred Kent, President of Project for Public Spaces (PPS). From 1988 to 2002, Jim led Seattle’s Department of Neighborhoods which is “widely known as the most innovative effort in the U.S. to empower local residents” (John P. Kretzmann, Co-director or the Asset-Based Community Development Institute).

Jim’s been dragged all over the world by people and orgs keen to learn from his real-world experience as a community builder. He’s currently on a tour through Ireland, England, Australia, New Zealand, India, Canada, and the US. (It’s not really a book tour, but a lot of the discussions revolve around the ideas and practices detailed in his must-read book Neighbor Power.) Yet he somehow found time to answer my request.

In my own experience as a community organizer, I’ve found that it’s so much easier to get things moving when people don’t have to first invent the wheel. So I like workbooks. Our Blocks recently featured one workbook,which I thought was the best I’d seen so far. I asked Jim if others came to mind. He said he’d give it more thought when he had more time, but off the top of his head:

  1. The Organizer’s Workbook, published by the Indianapolis Neighborhood Resource Center -  a roadmap to discovering, organizing and engaging your neighborhood. (This is the workbook we’d previously featured, as noted above. Incidentally, I corresponded this week with INRC Executive Director Anne-Marie Taylor, who said she’d “love to hear how folks outside of Indianapolis are utilizing this Workbook”.)
  2. The Great Neighborhood Book, by Jay Walljasper, published by PPS. (In the Great Minds Think Alike category, this book was also recommended to us by UMass Professor Emeritus Bill Berkowitz, Development Partner at the Community Tool Box.)

Not a workbook, but something Jim brought up in relation to my plans to do community-building work in the Philippines: From Clients to Citizens – Deepening the Practice of Asset-Based and Citizen-Led Development (pdf) – Conversations from the ABCD Forum, July 8 – 10, 2009. Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada. Edited by Alison Mathie and Deborah Puntenney. December 2009. The Coady International Institute published this under a CC-ANSA license, very nice of them.

Thanks for your recommendations Jim.

Other recent articles on Jim Diers by friends of Our Blocks: Jim Diers on citizen action by Kevin Harris at Neighborhoods; Getting back to Government Is Us at Socialreporter (which includes a beer-powered interview by David Wilcox). You can also find Jim’s talks on The Youtubes, three of which (so far) we’ve added to our Videos collection. Not recent but still fresh, this hour-long conversation on KUOW (note: turns out there’s a difference between mating calls and meeting calls).

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?

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