ABCD Institute
The Four Essential Elements of an
Asset-Based Community Development Process- what is distinctive about ABCD?
Prof. John L.
McKnight & Cormac Russell (2018) Asset-Based Community Development
Institute at DePaul University
Asset based community development should primarily enhance
collective citizen visioning and production through:
1.
Resources
2.
Methods
3.
Functions
4. Evaluation
1. Resources- citizens can use local resources to realise goals. There are six assets or resources that can be used in this way. These abundant and universally available resources enhance local wellbeing. They are as follows
a.
Contribution of residents- The gifts (innate),
skills (learned, taught or practiced), knowledge (of local region) and passions
(what people care deeply about in their local region/civic passion) of local
residents. Often combined and contributed to neighbours in a foundational form
of citizenship.
b.
Associations- Groups, clubs and networks. Unpaid
citizens creating and implementing vision with visible consequence. Can amplify
citizen’s resources when joined with
others in an association- the whole is greater than sum of parts. Can be formal
(Chamber of Commerce) or informal (local book club).
c.
Local institutions- Can be profit, non-profit,
governmental or non-governmental. Also can be grouped into two strands:
institutionally or community orientated. Community orientated institutions are
supportive not directive- see citizens as primary inventors and their role is
to ‘cheer citizens on’ in their inventiveness. Such initiatives/ institutions
work in different ways such as supporting the way people organise their lives
(small and local), putting institutional assets at the service of the community
and offering new alternative ways of working, making it clear what they will
not do so as not to take work/power away from the people they serve and,
finally, in the case of government institutions creating protection against
outside forces that could harm community life.
d.
Local places- Importance of built and natural environment.
Small, local, bounded places that relate to shared places/spaces
(neighbourhood, village, constituency, etc). Understanding allows resources to
become connected and mobilised. Ideal context for gift exchange, hospitality
and provide abundance of practical resources that are essential to community
life. Shared places root our community experiences.
e.
Exchange-Four areas of exchange. The first is exchanging intangibles e.g.
oral tradition and other relational rather than transactional sharing of gifts.
Given from one member of a community to another/others. The second is the exchange of tangibles e.g.
bartering/ transactional like swapping a pig for five chickens. The third area of exchange is that of
alternative currency e.g. time banking where time is used as currency and one
hour of contribution is worth the same no matter what contribution is. The final exchange is that of money-based
exchanges e.g. local shop initiatives or Credit Union Schemes. The first three
are most useful for producing collective wellbeing although money-based
exchanges can also be useful when kept local and can nurture individual’s independence
and control over their lives.
f.
Stories- Local culture finds expressions within
stories about how communities have survived and thrived through time. Ensures
traditions are maintained into a compelling future. Allows these traditions and
life lessons are passed on to future generations. Stories show the tapestry
that weaves communities together e.g. cuisine, spiritual beliefs, dialect. Each
tapestry/ community different. Like a tapestry/mosaic there is beauty in
diversity.
Methods- how communities make their resources productive in a communal sense. Methods used often involve identifying and productively connecting unconnected local resources. This process starts with what residents can do themselves as an association of citizens, without outside help. Next they look at what they can do with a little outside help. Finally, once these local assets have been connected and mobilized, citizens decide collectively on what they want outside agents to do for them. This order is crucial for ensuring citizen power. There are countless methods by which communities can connect and mobilize their resources, including:
a.
Discover- Discovering local connectors who
naturally weave their community together through neighbour to neighbour and
associational relationship building- shows diversity of communities and is a
powerful community tool.
b.
Welcome- Welcoming those who are pushed to the
margins, through inclusive learning conversations and listening. Local citizens
must take a lead role on this and paid practitioners a back seat. They can help
build the ship, but they must never become the ship’s captain.
c.
Portray- No one can hold a full picture of all
the resources in a community, so creating a shared and evolving portrait (asset
map) is a powerful method of enabling citizens to discover what resources they
already have and to figure out how best to connect unconnected resources.
d.
Share- Shareable moments e.g. skills exchanges,
seed swaps, repair cafes. Ideal for people who may be unsure about how to get
into community life. The more these moments enable gift exchange, hospitality
and association the more likely they will become part of a community’s way.
e.
Celebrate- Celebrating neighbourliness through
food, fun, songs and dance is one of the best and most natural ways to honour
past achievements and dream up new community possibilities.
f.
Vision- Collective vision sets down the
priorities and reveals the possibilities for shared future of a community.
Ensures that community own the process and are the primary producers of it.
3. Functions-
Seven irreplaceable bottom-up community functions. Performed collectively by
citizens to create community wellbeing. These are:
a. ENABLING HEALTH- Health is determined
largely by our personal behaviours, our social relationships, our physical
environment, and our income. Epidemiologists estimate that medical care only
accounts for 15% of what keeps us healthy.
b.
ASSURING SECURITY- Importance of being familiar with neighbours and present
visible in public. Police presence can be secondary and less necessary if
community policing/ development movements present.
c.
STEWARDING ECOLOGY- Communities as citizens of the Earth. Energy, light, waste,
travel can all start locally.
d. SHAPING LOCAL ECONOMIES- building resilient local economies which are
less reliant on mega systems of finance and production. Nurturing and
supporting local businesses. Reliable source of local jobs and a crucial
consideration for the future of communities.
e. CONTRIBUTING TO LOCAL FOOD PRODUCTION-
Allied with local food production by supporting local producers and markets.
Sourcing locally better for local environment, economy and health and wellbeing
of community.
f.
RAISING OUR CHILDREN- Expense of raising children or arranging others to help
out. Adults have often forgone responsibility and capacity to join their neighbours
in sharing abundant knowledge with our children. And receiving their wisdom in
return. This reconnection and exchange is our greatest challenge and our most
hopeful possibility.
g.
CO-CREATING CARE- Care is the basic freely given power of a community of
citizens. It is the new connections and relationships we create locally that
build communities because in joining each other together, we manifest our care
for the children, neighbours and the earth.
Three universal and abundant powers that
enable us to fulfil our community functions:
1. The giving of gifts – the gifts of the
people in our neighbourhood are boundless. Our movement calls forth gifts to be
reciprocated. 2. Second, the power of association – in association we join
gifts together and they become amplified, magnified, productive, and
celebrated. 3. Third, hospitality – we welcome strangers because we value their
gifts and need to share our own. Our doors are open. There are no strangers
here. Just friends we have not met. When these three powers are combined, what
becomes manifest is a culture of community. A culture can be understood as the
way people have learned to survive and thrive in a place over time as it is
passed down.
As well as the seven functions two other (cultural)
capacities are evident:
·
The capacity to accept and embrace human
limitations, death, and suffering. Includes accepting death and ritualizing
grief.
·
Communities make meaning in the face of mystery
and the unsolvable includes things such as dance and poetry and seen in many
indigenous cultures
4. Evaluation-
The authenticity of everything we do in such a process is evaluated against the
primary goal: enhance collective citizen visioning and production. This final
essential element considers how communities take stock of their journey
together. This process of engagement is not about auditing, it is about
learning, and making midcourse corrections that allow us to stay committed to
our cultural calling. Evaluating an ABCD process therefore requires a move away
from traditional top down summative and formative evaluation processes.
Here are four ABCD evaluation principles.
An effective evaluation:
a.
It identifies the maximization of gift exchange.
The more citizens contribute their gifts to the wellbeing of their neighbours
and their community, the healthier, safer and more prosperous all will be.
b.
It identifies the maximization and deepening of
associational life. Abundant communities are made up of associations that a)
welcome the gifts of all, b) while allowing sufficient space for diverse
associational life to form, and c) facilitating an association of associations
to seek a shared vision and work together to produce that vision.
c.
It attends to the maximization in the number of
participating and co-producing residents and the increase in their citizen
power. It places a particular emphasis on the inclusion of those who have been
marginalized. We can evaluate the quickening of community life by regularly
asking, ‘are we seeing neighbours whose gifts were not previously received,
participating and contributing more?’ ‘Are we seeing collectives of citizens
driving change and feeling more powerful?’ ‘Are associations in the
neighbourhood, coming together to talk about what they can do together, that
they can’t do alone, and then taking productive action?’
d. Sponsors of ABCD processes ensure that associated evaluations actively conform to the preceding three principles. . If you are a community worker facilitating an ABCD process or a sponsor agreeing to an evaluation process, ensure that the impacts that are being evaluated are what people in the community say they want to learn from and enable them to do that in a way that is fun and useful to them, and creates a compelling community owned story. The preferred learning process is one that values what goes on between people, not what goes on within them as disaggregated individuals. It is not therefore about counting numbers of people who show up, but about cheering on the participation and contributions that deepen community life. Most of the things that matter in life are meant to be treasured, not measured. Hence the accent must remain on learning and sharing not on auditing and counting.
What Makes ABCD Distinctive?
Our answer is: other forms of community work, often possess one or more, but not all four essential elements. What makes an ABCD process distinctive then, is the combination of: 1. Resources 2. Methods 3. Functions 4. Evaluation The elements exist in relation to each other simultaneously and dynamically, so you can start with any one or a combination of the four elements, as long as ultimately you engage with all four. Hence it is only when all four elements are a feature of your community building effort, that it can be said to be an Asset-based Community Development process.