Asset-Based Community Development

Peter Levine points to a study that documents the cold, hard realities of one inner city zip code (53206). In this Milwaukee, Wisconsin zip code:

62% of the men in their early thirties are now or have been in state prisons;

The number of incarcerations for "drug offenses only" has risen by 493% since 1993 (yet more incarcerations are for assault than for drug offenses);

Women in their 30s outnumber men by 3 to 2;

Housing prices have risen by at least 50% in the last three years;

The average income of tax-filers (a small proportion of the population) was $17,547; 90 percent of these individuals are single parents;

Two thirds of consumer spending is outside the zip code;

Ninety percent of people who declare income from working in the zip code live outside it;

56 percent of people who declare income from working in the zip code are white even though 97 percent of the residents are African American; and

More than three quarters of loans to homeowners are subprime or high interest.

This sounds exactly like the areas where I worked during the last election, and I fully agree with Peter that "civic, participatory, grassroots strategies need to work for people in places like 53206--and quickly. That is the test of whether they are worth anything at all." In fact, I'm pretty sure that this description could describe at least 25% of Philadelphia.

I have been working on a few funding proposals in the hope of getting the 8th Street project going once again, and the biggest change to my thinking on the project is that it absolutely must have some component that deals with the realities that face many, if not most, of the city's youth: i.e. high dropout and crime rates, few opportunities for positive advancement, very little in the way of financial resources, etc. I briefly discussed this in my post on IDAAY and Don't Fall Down in the Hood, which sound exactly like the projects in the spirit of the Asset-Based Community Development Institute (which Peter points to in his post).

The asset-based approach is explained well in the introduction to "Building Communities from the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community's Assets" by John P. Kretzmann and John L. McKnight, which the ABCD Institute credits with the increased interest in these types of programs.

Each community boasts a unique combination of assets upon which to build its future. A thorough map of those assets would begin with an inventory of the gifts, skills and capacities of the community's residents. Household by household, building by building, block by block, the capacity mapmakers will discover a vast and often surprising array of individual talents and productive skills, few of which are being mobilized for community-building purposes. This basic truth about the "giftedness" of every individual is particularly important to apply to persons who often find themselves marginalized by communities. It is essential to recognize the capacities, for example, of those who have been labeled mentally handicapped or disabled, or of those who are marginalized because they are too old, or too young, or too poor. In a community whose assets are being fully recognized and mobilized, these people too will be part of the action, not as clients or recipients of aid, but as full contributors to the community-building process.

In addition to mapping the gifts and skills of individuals, and of households and families, the committed community builder will compile an inventory of citizens' associations. These associations, less formal and much less dependent upon paid staff than are formal institutions, are the vehicles through which citizens in the U.S. assemble to solve problems, or to share common interests and activities. It is usually the case that the depth and extent of associational life in any community is vastly underestimated. This is particularly true of lower income communities. In fact, however, though some parts of associational life may have dwindled in very low income neighborhoods, most communities continue to harbor significant numbers of associations with religious, cultural, athletic, recreational and other purposes. Community builders soon recognize that these groups are indispensable tools for development, and that many of them can in fact be stretched beyond their original purposes and intentions to become full contributors to the development process.

Beyond the individuals and local associations that make up the asset base of communities are all of the more formal institutions which are located in the community. Private businesses; public institutions such as schools, libraries, parks, police and fire stations; nonprofit institutions such as hospitals and social service agencies--these organizations make up the most visible and formal part of a community's fabric. Accounting for them in full, and enlisting them in the process of community development, is essential to the success of the process. For community builders, the process of mapping the institutional assets of the community will often be much simpler than that of making an inventory involving individuals and associations. But establishing within each institution a sense of responsibility for the health of the local community, along with mechanisms that allow communities to influence and even control some aspects of the institution's relationships with its local neighborhood, can prove much more difficult. Nevertheless, a community that has located and mobilized its entire base of assets will clearly feature heavily involved and invested local institutions.

To a large degree, this approach is the exact approach that we have been talking about since the Music for America days: that we must mobilize our cultural and social assets and bring them to bare on the political world. The biggest difference that I can see is the focus on impoverished communities, something which I don't think we talked much about in the past, primarily because our focus was on defeating the Republicans and/or building progressive political infrastructure.

But, as with everything in this nation there was most definitely a class bias to our thinking, and it is this bias which I believe causes the rift between social justice groups and progressive political organizations. It is this gap that I am currently trying to figure out how to bridge, within the context of the project I linked to above, and I hope that we can in fact make some inroads here.

I am trying to get Mark Ensley, who works for IDAAY and who I am working on an updated proposal with, to come on here and talk about things from the asset-based principles that IDAAY works from, as well as how he sees things as someone who grew up in, and who is actively trying to improve, SW Philly, our poorest neighborhood.