- Community-Centered Services
- Community at the Center of Connected Learning
- Asset Framing
- Community-Centered Partnerships
- Rethinking Partnerships
- Gathering Data
- Asset Mapping
- Talking with the Community
- Analyzing and Using the Data
- Tools for Connecting Your Community
- Starting Conversations
- Combining Your Powers
- Making Plans Together
- Working with Different Types of Partners
- Ending a Partnership
- Community-Centered Services Workbook
- Additional Resources
Asset Framing
“Every living person has some gift or capacity of value to others. A strong community is a place that recognizes those gifts and ensures that they are given. A weak community is a place where lots of people can’t give their gifts and express their capacities.”
John Kretzman & John McKnight
Asset framing is a “glass half-full” perspective that focuses on the resources and capacities that already exist in any community. This approach teaches that every member of a community has a “gift” that they can share with others, which could be expertise, resources, or time. The key is to build connections between and among different types of assets—individuals, associations, and institutions—so their gifts can be put to use to better the community. Finding the unique gifts available in your community can lead to unexpected but beneficial collaborations and projects.
The asset-based community development (ABCD) model, developed by John Kretzmann and John McKnight, focuses on the strengths of a community, rather than its weaknesses, as is often typical in community development efforts. ABCD identifies five types of assets: individuals, associations (groups of individuals), institutions (formal and professional groups of people like government agencies), physical resources (like land or money), and — most importantly — connections (relationships between assets).