Welcome to Sustaining Community
Families, community engagement and environmental sustainability – for parents, students, practitioners and anyone who wants to make a difference. By Graeme Stuart from Newcastle Australia.
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Tag Archives: Strengths-based approaches & ABCD
ABCD and Making the invisible visible
This is a great TEDx talk by DeAmon Harges demonstrating some features of asset-based community-driven development (ABCD). The following are a few of the great quotes that stood out for me. Find the gifts and talents of everyone in the … Continue reading
What is Appreciative Inquiry?
Appreciative Inquiry is a strengths-based approach to creating change. Although it is often discussed in the context organisational change, Appreciative Inquiry can be applied in a range of contexts. The following is a great overview by Jackie Kelm from Appreciative … Continue reading
10 things I’ve learnt about strengths-based community engagement
Strengths-based community engagement recognises that communities have many strengths that can help achieve a wide range of objectives. The following are 10 things I’ve learned from doing strengths-based community engagement in a variety of contexts. They aren’t commandments or principles, … Continue reading
A World Cafe in a school – a step-by-step description
World Café’s are interactive, inclusive group processes that encourage conversation-like discussion of things that matter. (It might help to read an overview of World Cafés available HERE.) I recently facilitated a couple of sessions at my daughter’s school to help … Continue reading
It takes a child to raise a village!
I continue to be amazed at how the Kids’ Vegies on the Verge is helping to create social capital by building relations in the street. It has become a real social hub for some of the local kids. Most days … Continue reading
What is asset-based community development (ABCD)?
[Updated 7 November 2017] Asset-based community development (ABCD), or asset-based community-driven development as it is sometimes called, is a bottom-up way of working with communities that focuses on community strengths and assets rather than on deficits and problems. In another … Continue reading
Ernesto Sirolli: Want to help someone? Shut up and listen!
This is an interesting TED talk by Ernesto Sirolli (“Want to help someone? Shut up and listen!”) which captures the notion of capturing people’s passions and the idea of building on community resources. I don’t have quite as much faith … Continue reading
Ron Finley: A guerrilla gardener in South Central LA
An inspiring (and entertaining) video about urban guerrilla gardening. This is a great example of focusing on the strengths of a community. Rather than seeing abandoned, run-down blocks of land, Ron sees their potential as gardens. Rather than seeing people … Continue reading
Asset-based community-driven development in Ethiopia
[Updated 1 November 2018 to fix some broken links.] Oxfam Canada and the Coady International Institute have been doing some asset based community driven development (ABCD) in Ethiopia. Below are three videos explaining how it has changed the lives of … Continue reading
A story of two communities
Some colleagues and I have recently started using a great asset-based community development (ABCD) training exercise—Community A and Community B—to explore how the questions we ask can shape how we see the communities we work with. There is a bit … Continue reading
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