Why Asset Based Community Development Matters
Our guiding principles are based on the asset-based community development framework. Our involvement with any project or collaboration in our city focuses on bringing residents to the places where discussions and decisions are being made or processed for implementation.
1.
Resident-Led
There are certain things that only residents, in association with one another and the assets around them, can do. Asset-based Community Development (ABCD) is focused on this domain of change.
3.
Place-Based
Small local places are the stage on which a good, sustainable and satisfying life unfolds. Seeing the neighborhoods as the primary unit of change is a powerful strategy for addressing some of our most intractable socio-political challenges. It is a strategy that is counter-cultural, in that it seems to contradict the vast swathe of helping strategies of Institutions
4.
Inclusion Focused
Communities have imperceptible boundaries, inside which are those deemed to belong, and outside are those considered to be strangers. ABCD therefore, as well as supporting local residents to discover and connect local assets, is about actively creating a welcome for ‘strangers’ at the edge of those unnamed boundaries.
2.
Asset-Based
The starting point for Asset-based Community Development (ABCD) is with what’s strong, not what’s wrong. Some misunderstand this as an attempt to minimize life’s challenges, or normalize injustices, nothing could be further from the truth.
