Since attending the recent asset-based community development (ABCD) event in Kitchener, I have begun to think that I may have gotten something about community development fundamentally wrong by thinking of the term 'community' almost exclusively as a noun.
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I'm just back from a truly inspiring conference hosted by the Asset Based Community Development Institute (or ABCD) and their Canadian partner, Deepening Community at the Tamarack Institute.
The conference was titled "ABCD For Healthy Neighbourhoods" and what I learned from John McKnight, Cormac Russell, Al Etmanski and Paul Born (they are the ABCD Faculty) changed the way I think about our caregiving community.
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I am fortunate to have had the opportunity to attend Tamarack’s Asset-Based Community Development for Healthy Neighbourhoods event this week. We gathered at Kitchener’s beautiful Victoria Park Pavilion in decidedly unspring-like weather conditions for this three-day gathering of community builders from across the country. The program featured two of the world’s top trainers in Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD), John McKnight and Cormac Russell, among others.
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I was speaking with Howard Lawrence from Abundant Community Edmonton about their work around neighbourhood development and we got talking about making a difference in our community and how do we know if anyone is better off because of the changes/activities that have been implemented. How do we measure change in our neighbourhood work? Howard told me about a tool called the Sense of Community Index that is used in the social science area to determine sense of community.
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Asset Based Community Development (ABCD): Looking Back to Look Forward - In conversation with John McKnight about the intellectual and practical heritage of ABCD and its place in the world today, by Cormac Russell, tells the story behind ABCD. When I say "behind", I mean it provides us an intimate reflection on the people that most influenced John and the ground-breaking ideas that formed his thinking.
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I was reading a 2015 article called Deepening Community, Realizing the Potential of Citizen Leadership by Sylvia Cheuy, Director of Engagement at Tamarack. The article talks about community wellbeing and collaboration - how change requires organizations, groups, governments and citizens to work together. No one sector working alone can effectively address complex community issues. Building neighbourhoods is about strengthening relationships, trust and sharing their unique skills, knowledge and perspectives to work towards shared action.
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