The document discusses asset-based community development (ABCD), which focuses on identifying and mobilizing community assets rather than deficiencies. It emphasizes that communities possess untapped skills, knowledge, associations, and other resources. ABCD aims to stimulate community-driven development by strengthening local agency and catalyzing change from within. The document contrasts this approach with traditional needs-based frameworks that emphasize problems and promote dependency on external aid.

1. “Serious ED”
Asset Based Community Driven
Development
29 Sept 2011

2. ABCD
ABCD = ASSET BASED COMMUNITY DRIVEN

3. Intro & Welcome
Sebastian Mathews
This is who I am.
Please tell me your name, what you do, and
something amazing about yourself…
3

4. Workshop programme
Thursday, 29 Sept
10:30 – 11:30 Think
Appreciative Inquiry
• Group Activity: A Tale of Two Communities (10 min)
• Group Activity: Human Assets: ‘Head, heart & hands’ (10 min)
Overview of Asset Based and Community Driven (ABCD) Development
• The Sustainable Livelihoods Framework
11:35 – 12:45 Do
• Group Activity: Social Assets: Association Mapping
• Group Activity: Physical Assets: Community Mapping
• Group Activity: Economic Assets: Leaky Bucket
12:45 - 13:00 Reflection
- Experiences from South Africa/International
•
- Planning an ABCD pilot
•
- Engaging with the community
•
- Supporting community projects
•
- Changing role of the external agency
•
- Monitoring & evaluation
•
- Next steps
•

5. Exercise: A Tale of Two Communities
Instructions: (15min) Each group to select a community A or B. If you are an
NGO/local government official, what policies or actions would you
recommend to support each communities? Give 3 suggestions…
Healthy families - positive role models
High prevalence of
Women’s self help groups
HIV/AIDS
Strong values and culture
Community B
Community A
Entrepreneurial culture
Wide range of individual skills
No jobs or formal Positive role models (i.e. farmer innovation)
History of communal work
employment Stockvels/Burial societies
Close proximity to urban market
Diaspora that still feel strong links to the community
Many informal associations

6. Answer?
Guess what – A and B are the same community! The way we view a
community tends to determine, however inadvertently, how we
approach them…
Do we see problems… or possibilities….
Disease prevention Healthy families - positive role models
- High prevalence of HIV/AIDS Women’s self help groups
Existing values and culture
Improve incomes Entrepreneurial culture
- No jobs or formal employment Wide range of individual skills
Positive role models (i.e. farmer innovation)
History of communal work
Burial societies
Close proximity to urban market
Diaspora that still feel strong links to the
community
Many informal associations

7. The Dilemma . . .
People and Communities
have deficiencies & needs
Individuals and Communities
have skills and talents

8. Two key questions we are exploring:
How can you stimulate community-driven
development where it is not occurring?
How can communities sustain that
virtuous spiral of increasing assets and
agency?

9. Needs, assets and citizens:
Consequences of a problem-solving approach
Leadership emphasizing community
“needs” in order to secure resources
Community members internalizing what
their leaders are saying (a deficit
mentality)
Funding by categories of needs, and
Money going to the institutions filling the needs
A dependence on external rather than internal
relationships
Downward
Spiral
Coady International Institute, September 2009

10. Neighborhood Needs Map
A needs assessment of a community may for example emphasize
the following issues and problems that require external agents to
come in with programs and services to solve it:
Unemployment Early School
Leaving
Broken Families Poor Housing
Drug Disability
Gangs Crime Literacy
Dealin
challenges
g
Joy riding Graffiti
Environmental pollution

11. Consequences of the Power of the
“Needs Assessment”
Internalizations of the “deficiencies” identified by
local residents
Destruction of social capital
Reinforcement of narrow categorical funding
flows
Direction of funds toward professional helpers,
not residents
Focus on “leaders” who magnify deficiencies
Rewards failure, produces dependency
Creates hopelessness

12. Asset Based
Growing recognition of
the
existence of a multitude
of assets in even the
poorest communities

13. Assets
….are resources for making livelihoods
and coping with life’s setbacks
….provide us with a sense of identity and
meaningful engagement with the world
….have emancipatory value – by
providing us with the capacity to act
….are a catalyst for civic involvement and
enterprise development
(Sen, Bebbington, Moser, Carter, Sherraden,)

14. What do we mean by
community assets?
Stories
Knowledge, experiences, innovations, talents and
skills of individuals
Associations and social networks (including the
community’s diaspora)
Local institutions
Physical assets and natural resources
Financial resources (including the assets accumulated
through stokvels, funeral societies and other informal
savings and credit associations)
Cultural assets (including traditions of mutual aid and
collective action – e.g. the spirit of Ubuntu – the
belief that a person is only a person through the help
of others, including values such as compassion,
respect and human dignity )
Rights, claims and entitlements

15. Neighbourhood Asset Map
While a social asset assessment of the same community highlights a
rich network of internal associations and organizations that can
creatively take their community to a preferred future…

16. The Sustainable Livelihoods Framework –
5 Asset Model
Economic Assets
Human Assets
Environmental/
Natural Assets
Physical/
Social Assets Infrastructure
Assets

17. Community Driven –
Agency (“the capacity to act”)
We also want to strengthen agency i.e. the capacity to act…
In every community there are countless
examples of “positive deviance” - where
citizens have self-mobilized and
undertaken development initiatives without
assistance (at least initially) from outside
organizations

18. Effective Communities
Look inside first to solve problems
Relationships are seen as power
Have a good sense of assets and capacities,
not just needs
Leaders open doors
Citizens are involved
People take responsibility

19. Community Building Approach
• Children do well when their families do well,
• And, families do better when they live in
supportive neighborhoods and communities.
• (Search Institute Research Data)
‘It takes an entire village to raise a child’ African Saying

20. Service Delivery AND
Community Development
Service delivery efforts should ideally be balanced by genuine asset
based community development initiatives
Service Delivery Community Development
To Meet Needs To Build Assets
Solve problem Invest in opportunity
Focus on needs Focus on assets
Responds to problems Builds from opportunities
Grants Matching funds - Grants, Loans, Investments
Entitlement (or charity) orientation Investment orientation
Emphasis on external agencies, programs Emphasis on the initiatives of local associations
Power comes from credentials Power comes from relationships
“Motivation to act”- incentives, terms of “Motivation to Act” – dreams, fears, being asked
employment to contribute
Goal is excellent service Goal is community-driven development
People are clients, consumers People are citizens, members, producers
Programs are the answer People are the answer

21. Summary
Everyone should have the opportunity to be a
producer of their
own and their communities well-being
It takes everyone to build a
strong and safe community

22. Conclusion
“It is what we make out of what we have,
not what we are given, that separates
one person from another.”
Nelson Mandela