realisedevelopment.net

Just another WordPress site

Asset Based Community Development…

by

Last week I ran a workshop for the Yorkshire and Humber Community Development Network on Asset Based Community Development (ABCD), what it is, and why we should think about it.

And one of the questions I got was ‘What is the relevance of ABCD to health promotion?’

An excellent question.

But first let’s establish what we mean by ‘asset based community development’.  Or even ‘community development’.  But wait, can we even agree on ‘community’? Or ‘development’?

Community development, at its best, helps individuals and groups of people develop the power that they need to make the progress they choose in their own lives.

This is done either through a focus on ‘assets’ or a focus on ‘needs’, giving us ‘asset based community development’ or ‘needs (or deficit) based community development’.  The following table gives some examples of assets and needs as they might be described in relation to individuals and communities.

assets and needs in personal and community development

So, in ABCD we start with what people and the community already have and with what they want to achieve, individually or collectively.  Development starts where the people are, and works with what they have got.  It embraces a philosophy that says we already have everything that we need in order to make progress. “Start change from where you are, and with what you’ve got.”

On the other hand, needs based community development starts with some sort of judgement of what is wrong with a community or individual.  What is missing.  This takes the form of some sort of assessment, usually done by an external agency, with a view to working out what needs to be fixed and how this might be achieved.  The vast majority of what is described as ‘community development’ work in the UK takes this needs based form.  It starts from a philosophy that says  ‘we know what is good for the community/individual and we will work to bring it about’.    It might be characterised as ‘Start from where we want you to be, and work with what we give you’.  The vast majority of health promotion work is close to this needs based model.  These needs based projects often use the tools and techniques of ‘community development’ recruiting local champions, building interest groups and generally doing what is needed to achieve the funders policy goals.  But is it community development?  Does it give people and groups the power to work on their agendas, or does it merely seduce them into working on the agendas of the funder?  And if course when the funder runs out of money, or the policy goal changes the community development stalls.

It is worth noticing that if you adopt a need based approach your stance will essentially have to be one of nagging, nudging or nannying however carefully you present it.  Whereas if you choose an asset based approach your role will be to facilitate, coordinate and connect.

So what would an ‘asset based’ approach to health development look like?

Well first of all it would not be on the agenda just because a funder had identified a need.  It would only be on the agenda if local people or groups recognised that they needed to work on health issues in order to make the progress that they want to make.  This implies that funders would need to learn to respond to the self-determined needs , or wants, of the community.  They need to understand working responsively as well as their more usual strategic perspective.

Health would be negotiated alongside enterprise, culture, employment and many other topics that the community may wish to address.  The development agenda in an asset based approach is much more likely to be holistic, whole system and person centred.  This contrasts with need based approaches which frequently lack integration, only work on part of the system and are centred on policy goals rather than people and their aspirations

An asset based approach, starting from where we are, working with what we have got, would be much less sensitive to the changing funding priorities of policy makers and is more likely to enable prolonged and steady progress.  It is also much more likely to build long-lasting social capital, of all types.

So why then are so many, the overwhelming majority in fact, of community development projects ‘needs based’ rather than ‘asset based’?  Well it has little to do with efficacy, in my opinion, and everything to do with accommodating the policy goals, timescales and resources of funders.

With the asset based approach you never really know what issues you may end up working on or what might be achieved. And, regardless of what might be done to help individuals and groups of people develop the power that they need to make the progress they choose in their own lives, which funder is going to invest in a methodology that will not allow them to tightly control outcomes, milestones and resources?

32 (Tentative) Beliefs About Community Development

by

  1. Development occurs when people change their habits, patterns, attitudes and perhaps most importantly behaviours.
  2. Community development is a function of the number of individuals who are changing their habits, patterns, attitudes and perhaps most importantly behaviours.
  3. Sometimes there is lots of individual development but no community development – we have a steady state.  For example if the number of people that break an addiction are matched by the number of people that take up that addiction we have lots of individual development but no community development.
  4. We only get community development when individuals’ personal development is in some way aligned.  This alignment is a process of finding common cause.  Negotiation of self interest is critical in developing community.
  5. The ‘direction’ of both personal and community development may be progressive, regressive or neutral.  Sometimes it can be hard to tell.
  6. Personal development is always in pursuit of ‘self interest’, which may, or may not, be ‘rightly understood’.
  7. Long term self interest is frequently sacrificed on the alter of short term self interest: ‘live only for today for tomorrow may never come’.
  8. People change their habits, patterns, attitudes and behaviours all of the time in relation to changes in their environment – development in this case is driven externally.  The locus of control is external and the individual is essentially manipulated by their environment.
  9. This externally driven change is the paradigm on which most personal development, community development and public policy is based – it is the world of nudging, nannying, infrastructure and service development in order to achieve behaviours specified and desired by ‘The Anointed’.  It usually makes communities less enterprising.
  10. Many of us are happy to work with an external locus of control, because it let’s us off the hook.  In this context my progress depends on others.  ‘I’ am more or less out of the equation
  11. While it is tempting to nudge, nanny and legislate to encourage ‘development’ it is a temptation that should be yielded to rarely.  It is in many cases, counter-productive.
  12. Instead, perhaps we should choose to provoke reflection and the analysis of self interest.
  13. People can also choose to change their habits, patterns, attitudes and behaviours because they recognise that such a change is in their self interest – development in this case is driven internally.  The locus of control in this case is internal and it provides the individual with a sense of agency and power over their own lives.  People with a primarily internal locus of control are usually experienced as ‘enterprising’.
  14. Self interest is not selfishness.  Self interest is about ‘self amongst others’.  Pursuing self interest is about pursuing what matters personally in the context of a community.  It demands compassion, empathy and values if it is not to be merely personal greed and selfishness.  Selfishness is self interest wrongly understood.
  15. In order to achieve community development we must increase the number of people for whom an internal locus of control drives their personal development and help them to support each other in common cause.
  16. Community development is accelerated when individuals learn to associate, collaborate and co-operate in pursuit of mutual self interest.
  17. When people change their habits, patterns, attitudes and behaviours we call this Learning.
  18. Learning is at the heart of Personal and Community Development.
  19. All real learning is driven by self interest.
  20. If the rate of learning is greater than the rate of change in the environment then progress becomes possible.
  21. If the rate of learning is less than the rate of change in the environment then regression is inevitable.
  22. Learning depends on both the acquisition of  existing knowledge and the generation of insights and the creation of new knowledge through reflection and enquiry.  Most of our communities and their education systems value the acquisition of knowledge over the processes of reflection and enquiry.
  23. ‘The community’, or more accurately our peer group, shapes what types of learning are acceptable.   This is an important aspect of community culture.
  24. Swapping one peer group for another can be a powerful catalyst for personal development.
  25. Building peer groups that have primarily an internal locus of control can be helpful.  These peer groups are ‘community’.
  26. In some communities it is OK to be aspirational and believe in the power of progress and change.  These are communities with an internal locus of control – they believe they can shape their own futures.
  27. In some communities such positive attitudes are, more or less, discouraged as they challenge the dominant belief that things are the way they are because of other people.  These communities prefer to blame others, including The Anointed for their circumstances.  This is one reason why so many communities see ‘The Council’ as outsiders.  It is ‘their’ fault.  It is the fault of other communities.  It is the fault of the Government. Or Europe.
  28. Development always happens in all communities – but its focus is often on the maintenance of the status quo in a changing environment rather than the pursuit of progress.
  29. Community developers often avoid tricky conversations about self interest by convening individuals around a ‘common good’ such as a project to refurbish a playground for example.  This results in the establishment of a local group of the anointed and further reinforces the external locus of control.
  30. Much of what is called community development work these days is NOT community development.  It appropriates the tools and processes of community development in order to pursue the objectives of the state.
  31. Much of what passes for ’empowerment’ is actually those with power nagging those without power to ‘pull their (metaphorical) socks up’.  We can create the conditions in which individuals and communities build their own power.  But we cannot easily give them ours.
  32. Community development depends on the personal development of both self interest, rightly understood, and the power to pursue it

I am sure that there is more.  Much more.

But perhaps there is enough here already to suggest a basis for radical and empowering approaches to community  and personal development.

  • What do you think?

Dock Street Market – and the role of the Leeds communities

by

I went to a very wonderful opening for Dock Street Market last Friday.  It used to be a decent enough shop that had many fans and reportedly turned over a million a year.  But still it could not survive.

Now the shop has been taken over by a number of local artisan producers and entrepreneurs, all of whom offer a phenomenal product.  We have fish and chips reinvented by the wonderful Fish &, excellent north Italian coffee and more from Bottega Milanese, superb breads from the Riverside Sourdough Bakery and more.  The people behind these businesses are phenomenally hard working and focussed on quality, service and value.  They are doing their bit to make the collaborative project a success.

But my interest is in the role of the rest of us.  The fine citizens of Leeds.  Of the 700 000 plus people that live in the city, my guess is that the vast majority will not even know that the Dock St Market exists.  They are ‘strangers’ to the market.  Perhaps 10 ooo or so are aware of the market and certainly a couple of hundred rocked up at the opening last week.  These constitute ‘prospects’.  People who know the market exists and may become customers.

But customers so far, by definition, are a smaller group.  Having only just opened not many of us have had the chance to spend our cash in Dock Street Market yet….

A large part of the success of the market will depend on the rate at which strangers are turned in to prospects, prospects are turned into customers, and customers are turned into loyal supporters of the brand.

Historically this process of marketing and sales would be down to the entrepreneurs.  This is their job.  But I am interested in the role of the rest of us.  Those who are already prospects and customers, and our ability to help in the sales and marketing process.   Our power to influence others to check out and support the development of the great independent traders  in Dock Street Market.

Because the ability of a community to support great business is perhaps as important in developing an enterprise culture as the development of the entrepreneur.

Social media has amplified the voice of the prospect and the customer.  It can help to reach the strangers.  As can word of mouth strategies based on good quality referrals and introductions.

So of course let us keep giving the entrepreneurs the training and skills that they need.  But let us also consider how we can equip the rest of us to properly support businesses in our community.

Good luck to all behind the Dock St Market venture.  And let’s see just how much the rest of us can do to really support the kind of independent, artisan based businesses that many of us say we want to see thriving in Leeds.

You can find Dock St just south of the river.  It is well worth checking out!

More on Dock Street Market. And More…from Bronchia

Key Note for Voluntary Action Leeds AGM

by

16th November 2010 Wheeler Hall, Leeds Cathedral

  • Thank you for the invitation to speak with you today.  It is a very real privilege.
  • Let us get a little perspective on the last decade or so…real growth in the sector and the budgets that it has at its disposal…but have we made the impact on social justice in the city that would hope for in the course of such relatively plentiful times?
  • For a decade or more we have pursued a dumb strategy, taking Govt money to do Govt work in our communities.
  • We have let politicians in Whitehall and increasingly their celebrity friends do our research and development, come up with new schemes and programmes, which they have paid us to ‘roll out’ in our communities
  • Now we need a smart strategy…one that does not trap us in the hands of the economy and politicians; but that puts us at the heart of our communities and their development.
  • Now is the time to start listening, responding to and facilitating the people who we are here to serve (NB this is not civil servants and ministers but people in our communities, especially the marginalised)
  • We have in recent years lost ground in our communities as we have pursued the dumb strategy – but it is ground that we can and will make-up.  We are uniquely placed to respond.
  • We must no longer look at the economy as the only thing that matters.  Economy, culture, society cannot be separated out.  Making GDP ‘king’ is daft! Other forms of wealth matter too.
  • Mark Prisk Secretary of State for Trade and Industry may have shown some interest in the role of the third sector in contributing to the work of the Local Enterprise Partnerships and the Regional Growth Fund.   We should not turn our back on this opportunity, but we must recognise that this is more about increasing the tax base for the Treasury than it is about growing local, vibrant and most importantly sustainable communities.  We must be careful not to keep pursuing a dumb strategy.
  • And a word on big society.  Again there are opportunities and risks.  Risks in getting drawn into a London centric debate about using volunteers to deliver front line services.  Risks in developing initiatives that maybe under-capitalised, under specified and deliver more political impact than social justice.
  • There is another big society.  One in which local people come together to support themselves in pursuing their own agendas for change and progress.  More ‘Our Society’ than ‘Big Society’…
  • The role of community organisers in the city?  Well, I love what the people behind Leeds Community Organising are trying to do, but are we in danger of that project being swamped by Mr Cameron’s army of Community Organiser?  If delivered on a per capita basis we would have about 60 in Leeds.  If paid this would require a budget of well over £1m a year.
  • So who is driving ‘development in our city’?  It is still the money men and women.  The bankers, the insurers, and the investors, supported by the planners and the architects
  • Physical regeneration matters, but it is expensive, elitist (investment goes to where the ROI is greatest in the short term ie commerce) and slow.  Main beneficiaries are builders, developers, architects and investors.  They tend to suck money out of our community and return it to shareholders elsewhere.
  • Eastgate, Trinity, The Arena on the large scale. But on a smaller scale too I see asset transfer and similar projects channel love, energy, wisdom, experience and millions of pounds into re-casting concrete, bricks, stone and steel in a city already full of under-used infrastructure.
  • Now of course physical regeneration matters….but …
  • Psychological regeneration matters more.  How do we engage 700 000 Leeds residents in making progress in their own lives?   Regeneration between the ears can be fast, relatively cheap and egalitarian – for every pound that is spent on physical infrastructure how about a penny being put into community development and facilitation?  Contributions from Trinity, Eastgate and Arena would be roughly £12.5m over next 5 years.  Add that to philanthropic sources and we have a serious budget – even in times of austerity.  The question is can we, a coalition between public, private and third sector generate a return on investment in the long term.  Real cultural change.
  • How do we help people to plan and organise in pursuit of what really matters to them?
  • Time to put social justice right at the heart of our work….
  • Time to get to work