Connect
One of the goals of our neighborhood association is to nurture a sustainable healthy community. Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) provides a framework for achieving this by focusing on the wholeness realized through sharing our gifts with others to improve our safety, health, children, environment, economy, food, and care.
ABCD starts with connecting our gifts via our associations, extended by our hospitality:
gifts: the raw materials for community. “The gifts of the people in our neighborhood are boundless.”
associations: the connections through which gifts are exchanged. “We join our gifts together and they become amplified, magnified, productive and celebrated.”
hospitality: the act of widening our inventory of gifts. “We welcome strangers because we value their gifts and need to share our own.”
..and connectors, who discover and share these resources with other neighbors.
To learn more about ABCD, start by reading Community Capacities and Community Necessities, followed by these resources for getting started.
Would you like to help connect the gifts within our neighborhood?
Contact Rodney Rutherford <rodneyr@gmail.com> to get involved.
Resources for Asset-Based Community Development
- Online Resources
- abcdinstitute.org - research and publications related to ABCD (Northwestern University)
- Capacity Inventories (PDF, 90pp)
- abcdinaction.ning.com - a social network for those interested in ABCD
- abcdinstitute.org - research and publications related to ABCD (Northwestern University)
- Books
- The Abundant Community, by Peter Block and John McKnight
- abundantcommunity.com - the website that supplements the book
- Community Capacities and Community Necessities - an introduction to ABCD
- Neighbor Power: Building Community the Seattle Way, by Jim Diers,
- neighborpower.org, the website that supplements the book
- about Jim Diers
- The Abundant Community, by Peter Block and John McKnight
This page is inspired by the book The Abundant Community and the Asset-Based Community Development Institute (http://www.abcdinstitute.org). The ABCD efforts in SRHBT are being organized by neighborhood director Rodney Rutherford <rodneyr@gmail.com>.