I'd like to start with a story about digital assets in my small rural community during the start of COVID. Our community relies on tourism for much of our economy here. We are a busy place during the summer when we have lots of visitors, but during the school year, it's a very quiet, very remote community and it's a place where not everyone has access to high speed internet.

When our school closed at the beginning of COVID and students were studying and learning from home, some families didn't have access to internet service that was fast enough for zoom calls and video lessons, especially if they had multiple children. Then one of our local resort owners had an idea... He had high speed internet to serve the tourists who stayed in his cabins.  Since he didn't have any visitors, he offered his cabins with high speed internet to families who needed a place for their kids to study and still be safe from covid. A great use of a digital asset!

For a long time, I've been wondering if we should add a new asset to the six assets we identify through ABCD - digital assets. Are there some digital or technological assets that we are missing when we look at the six assets? Is there a benefit to having a specific category for digital assets? 

By digital assets, I am thinking about some of these questions (and more!):

• Is affordable (or free!), reliable high speed internet and/or cell reception available? at home, out in the community, and/or at specific community sites (e.g., libraries, coffee shops)
• Do community residents have access to purchasing or borrowing devices (phones, tablets, laptops,...)? Do schools give out tablets to students to use? Are there programs or funding sources that help get devices into the hands of people (example: getting cell phones to people who are unhoused)? Are there devices available in local places (coffee shops, libraries,...) that people can sign up to use or borrow?
• What about digital literacy in our community? Who are the people in my community who have the knowledge and skills to use technology? Don't forget the youth (native users of technology)! How are their skills/knowledge shared? Can they help others to learn? Is training available through my neighbors and/or through community organizations

Clearly there are other questions that could be asked. And then I came across this website that specifically talks about using asset mapping to identify the digital assets in our communities for the purpose of digital inclusion. I don't think this site is "perfect" from an ABCD perspective (it seems to rely heavily on local institutions for mapping the digital assets and misses out on the neighborhood residents having a key role in this) but I think it's a good start and provides food for thought. 

So what do you think? Do you routinely think about the digital assets of a community? Do you see value in identifying these assets as a separate category of asset? How do you think about mapping those digital assets? Do you think your answer is influenced by whether or not you are a native technology user? How does this all help us build stronger, more resilient communities? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Community Quilting: Building Community One “Square” at a Time

Washington Island is a small Wisconsin community of about 700 full-time residents located on an island in Lake Michigan. People get involved in this small community in a wide variety of ways. One of the best-known ways is by showing up for the TLC Quilting Group. 

Stop by Trinity Lutheran Church (TLC) on Washington Island on most Tuesday mornings and you’ll find a hive of activity. A group of 6-15 quilters meets each week to make quilts together. Many years ago, the group started meeting to create “comfort quilts”, as well as quilts for Lutheran World Relief. The beautiful “comfort quilts” are shared on the Island with anyone going through a challenging time, such as a hospitalization, a death in the family, a new baby. The sturdy, simpler quilts created for Lutheran World Relief are sent around the world and used for a wide variety of purposes, from bedding to keeping animals warm to creating roofs on rough homes. 

Today’s quilters continue the tradition of creating these quilts but have also added some special quilting projects along the way. Quilts are often made for special causes, such as a silent auction fundraiser for the church’s women’s group, or to raise funds for a local family experiencing financial or health hardships. A more recently added project involves making backpacks, filling them with donated school supplies, and sending them to children around the world through Lutheran World Relief.

Perhaps the most notable, on-going project is the creation of the annual “graduation quilts”. In the early to mid 1990s, one of the quilters, Nancy Thiele, and her husband, Al, participated in a Mission Builders project in the community of McKinley, Wisconsin. During that project, Nancy learned that the church there created quilts as a gift for each graduating student who was a member of their church. Considering that Washington Island has the smallest K-12 school district in the state of Wisconsin – approximately 70-75 students, with 1-6 students graduating in any given year – Nancy returned home and suggested that their quilting group create quilts for every graduating senior in their community. A new tradition was born!

An individualized graduation quilt is created for each specific senior. On the wall of the quilting room is a chalk board, listing the names of the graduates, their favorite colors, favorite themes (e.g., horse lover), and anything else that might personalize their quilt (e.g., his parents have his baby blanket or grandpa’s blue jeans to contribute). Specific quilters are designated to design and organize each quilt, while the actual quilting is done by a mix of members. The presentation of the quilts has become a beloved and highly anticipated part of the graduation celebration. When asked if she was looking forward to graduating, one senior replied that she was really looking forward to seeing her quilt! 

You may be wondering where the money comes from to purchase all the equipment and supplies for these projects. The truth is that almost all of it is donated. They currently have eight sewing machines that have been added to the quilting room. Repairing the machines, creating special quilting tables, building storage shelves, and more are all done by volunteers. The cloth, batting, and even the thread are all donated. Some Tuesdays feel like Christmas when the quilters come to quilt and find bags of donated items sitting in the quilting room!

Since the start of the pandemic, the quilting room is a lot quieter but that doesn’t mean that nothing is happening. Indeed, all the usual quilts – including the graduation quilts – are still being lovingly created, mostly at the homes of individual quilters who happen to have “an abundance of fabric”.  In addition to the usual quilts, they’ve also taken on the making of masks to help protect people during the COVID pandemic. At last count, approximately 6000 masks have been created. Some of these have been shared with other communities, but masks are made available free of charge to anyone who lives on or visits the Island, through the grocery store and other businesses.

Each year, the quilting group makes around 200 quilts, as well as numerous other projects. The love of quilting pulled this group together. The love of community has led them down this path of creating beautiful quilts, backpacks, and masks that are given away as gifts of the heart. 

As I was surfing the web one day, I came across this wonderful story about a town that organizes its own "popup" university each year during the month of March. This is how they describe it:

A pop-up university for the community, by the community!

Bethel University is a unique community pop-up university in Bethel, Vermont. During the month of March each year, anyone can teach courses on any topic under the sun.

How does this work? To start with, anyone in the community can teach a course and anyone can take a course free of charge. Community members are invited to submit proposals. In January of each year, these are reviewed by community members who form the Bethel Revitalization Initiative Team (BRI Team). Anyone is welcome to join this team. BRI contacts professors soon after.  (Again, you should note that anyone can be a professor if they offer to teach a course.) They then announce courses publicly and open registration in early February.

According to their website, the town of Bethel Vermont US (population around 2,000) has been doing this since 2014. Here's their list of nearly 70 great courses and meet-up groups (informal gatherings) that were offered in 2019:

• Acoustic Music Jam
• Coworking
• Fraud and Scams: Self- Defense in an Age of Attacks
• Nutrition to Prevent and Heal Dental Problems
• We are Changing: We are the Change!
• Bethel Outing Club & Snowshoe
• Intro to Improv Comedy
• Love Your Life in 30 Days
• Art & Science of Foam Rolling
• Firefly: Bethel’s Burning Man
• Introduction to Linux OS
• Learn to Meditate
• Nerf Gun Fun
• Risotto 101
• A Rainbow of Spring Salads
• Traditional Dances of Vermont’s Italian
  Immigrants
  
• Build a Little Library
• Let’s Talk Politics
• Exploring Minecraft
• Farmers Market / Craft Fair Success
• Logo Design Basics
• What Do You Do with Tofu?
• Investing with Your Values
• Quilts Unplugged: Grandmother’s Flower Garden
• Stress Management
• Core Strength for Everyone
• Wine Tasting
• Dodgeball
• Roll Your Own: Sushi
• Resilience: The Biology of Stress and the Science of Hope
• Healthy Eating on a Budget
• Nail Art 101
• Not Your Grandparents’ School
• Home Composting
• World Celebration in Song
• Baking Biscuits with Kids
• Grow and Store Your Own Food and Flowers
• Beauty and the Budget
• Startups and Sidehustles
• BCorps: Using Businesses as a Force for Good
• Vintage Gas/ Wood Stove Meetup
• Find Your Voice: Giving Great Talks and Presentations
• Rites of Spring: Medieval European Folklore
• Holistic Approach to Fibromyalgia/CFS
• Shape Note Singing
• National Parks and Wildlife of Africa
• Healing Without the High: Hemp & CBD
• Brisket: Hot and Fast Method
• iPhone Photography
• Kombucha
• Landscape Plan Graphics 101
• Placemaking with Community Art: Chelsea Barn Quilt Trail
• Fairy Gardens
• Quilting for Beginners
• Evaluating the Condition of a House
• Chainsaw Safety
• Stress and Hormones
• Make Lace Beads with Polymer Clay
• Soiree: Cultural Heritage Dance Party
• Baking Craze: Kids’ Cupcake Class
• Easy, Colorful Polymer Clay Earrings
• Introduction to Signed Languages
• Solarize Bethel Region 
• Art of the Grill: Cooking with Fire
• Lego Time

To learn more about Bethel University, check out their website and the Facebook page for Bethel Revitalization Initiative.

I just received this article from a colleague of mine - Using Emergence to Take Social Innovation to Scale, by Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze. I'd love to know what other people think of it.

Emergence is a new term for me, so I'm still pondering what it means in te scope of the work that I do. What do you think? How do these ideas affect your thinking/working?

Here's the article...

Building Caring Communities, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada is looking for a new Director of Community Development and Social Networks.Learn more about the position here.

The following post was written for the Abundant Communityby Deb Wisniewski, with Dan Duncan and Tom Mosgaller, as a support piece related to theupcoming online/audioconferencewith John McKnight, Peter Block and Tom Mosgaller.

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Working in the Gap

Often, when you get together with a group of people interested in Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD), you find a conversation about the gifts of individuals and what communities can do for themselves. But what about institutions? Institutions have been primarily focused on identifying community problems (deficit-based) and bringing in outside experts to solve those problems. Does ABCD give us a way to think about institutions and their relationships with communities in a different way?

It had become evident that the ability of institutions to respond to deficiencies as the primary model was doomed to failure, especially given the growing complexity and unpredictable events taking place in communities. Many local institutions began exploring how they could do their work differently if they thought of it from an ABCD perspective. What would happen if they changed the nature of their relationships with the community? Instead of trying to take over or fix a community, how could they actively support and empower people and the communities they live in? And what would it actually look like to have their staff do their work differently?

A transformation of thinking and doing was taking place. Communities have to become partners and co-producers of our future. The mental model of government or not-for-profits as vending machines where we put in our money, pull the lever and expect service is no longer viable.... Tom Mosgaller

As a result, the transformation that had been taking place was given a name - "Working in the Gap." The "Gap" is that space between the Institution andthe Community. "Gappers" are both the staff who do the actual work in communities, as well as the institutions who are working to put ABCD into practice through their organization.They have one foot in their institution and one foot in the community they serve. Gappers are a visible expression of the transformation that has been going on in institutions that are actively changing the way they thought about and worked with communities.

Gappers understand that, to build stronger and healthier families and neighborhoods, they must engage the people they serve as the primary producers of their own and their communitys well-being. They see their work as not just delivering services to meet the needs of the people they serve (filling in their emptiness). They see their role as working to create opportunity so that the people they serve can use their gifts. Gappers help people they serve move beyond the role of client to that that of a community participant, by asking not just "what do you need?", but also asking "what can you contribute?" They work to identify and unlock the assets present in neighborhoods and communities where they work. Gappers are in key role to remove the barriers that keep community members from sharing their gifts and contributing to their communitys well-being.

There are challenges to working in the gap for both the individual Gappers as well as the institutions. Some of these include:

• Does changing the way your organization function conflict with its mission? How does leadership (including board members) feel about the changes?
• Are Gapper staff fully supported by the organization or do they feel that they need to fly under the radar?
• Are there staff members who are still committed to maintaining the old way of helping people (focusing on needs rather than assets, fixing problems identified by outside systems, etc.)?
• What do Gappers need in order to navigate the institutional structure, while trying to fully support and empower individuals and communities? How can they juggle the expectations and demands of two different worlds?
• What are the institutional barriers that get in the way of supporting and empowering people and communities? What can the institution do about those barriers?
• How do you work with your primary funders to understand and support the changes that happen when you are committed to working in the gap? As an organization, can you continue to respond to funders who ask you to identify and fix the needs in a community, even as you realize that there are better ways to build stronger and more sustainable communities?

So are you a Gapper? Do you work directly to identify the gifts of those you serve, their neighborhoods and communities, and to remove barriers so that people can share their gifts?Does your organization or institution work to put ABCD principles into practice, changing the way your organization "does business"?

Conversations about working in the gap are taking place on ABCD in Action (http://abcdinaction.ning.com), the online community of practice for Asset-Based Community Development. Wed love to have you share your challenges, your questions and your stories.

The deadline for this offer has been extended! We are also currently checking to see if any of the scholarships areavailableoutside of North America. Please contact Deb Wisniewski (scgwis@gmail.com) or Caroline Tomlinson (caroline_tomlinson@icloud.com)and let us know if you're interested in a scholarship.

Are you interested in attending the ABCD Festivalin England this coming June, but aren't sure you could afford it? Good news for people in North America! An anonymous North American corporate sponsor is offering partial scholarships for the conference.

But you must act now! Please contact Caroline Tomlinson (caroline_tomlinson@icloud.com)ASAP since the funds must be completely accounted for by the end of March. Caroline will also answer any questions you may have.

Details of the scholarships:

The total cost for booking with a scholarship will be 160.00 (decreased from the full cost, which is380.00) . This will cover your conference fee, food, accommodation, and entertainment for the whole five days. Unfortunately it cannot be extended to travel.

The conditions are simple:

• You've got to be from somewhere in North America and an ABCD Enthusiast;
• You've got to be prepared to share with four other people you don't know, or self-organise into a group of five and contact Caroline as a group;
• You've got to ask yourself could you possibly get support from somewhere else, such as institutional support-if the answer is no, you're in
• Ask yourself: 'could some else do with one of these places more than me?' if the answer is yes, self deselect, and encourage that person to apply. (or you could both apply!)
• Must complete all payment and arrangements by March 29th.

Festival organizers will not be policing the above criteria. They are doing this completely on trust and a code of honour among friends.

If you're not sure about whether you would be eligible for a scholarship, I encourage you to connect with Caroline since we want to be sure that none go unused!