Deb Wisniewski
Greetings! I'm a connector... I love to help people connect to each other, to share their ideas and to get involved in in their communities. I'm also a Faculty member of the ABCD Institute and a co-founder of ABCD in Action.

State or Province:

WI

country:

US

what are your gifts and talents?:

Connecting people, ideas, communities

why do you want to join abcd in action?:

Connecting

Inviting Neighbors to Participate in Community Development


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Description:
This video illustrates a 5 question door-to-door survey that you can ask neighbors. This tool helps people in neighborhoods connect with each other, and also helps to define a neighborhood community vision from the residents themselves.

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Deb Wisniewski
07/20/15 01:32:50PM @deb-wisniewski:

Oh no! This video seems have disappeared off of Youtube. I'm going to see if I can track down what happened to it.

In the meantime, here are the five questions they suggest asking (paraphrased by me):

  1. How long have you lived in this community/neighborhood? (I find this gets at more than just saying the amount of time... often opens up the conversation and you find out a lot about the person's connections to their community)
  2. What do you love about your community? (People in many neighborhoods are seldom asked that, especially those in "troubled" communities. A great positive way to start a conversation)
  3. If you could wave a magic wand, what would you change in your community? (notice it's not worded as "what's wrong"... also gets at what's important to the person, in a non-threatening way)
  4. What skills or talents do you have that could help make that change happen? (once they show what's important to them, they may be more willing to share their gifts and talents than if you had started with this question).
  5. Would you be willing to get together with other people who are interested in making this change happen to talk about what you can do together? (gets beyond just mapping the assets and starts making the connections between people)

Hope this helps! I'm not sure if I will find the original video, but I will repost it if I do.


Dan Duncan
01/27/14 01:01:42PM @dan-duncan:

Thanks for posting on ABCD in Action. I really like the simplicity of the questions and the focus on building relationships and trust.


Deb Wisniewski
01/27/14 12:20:41PM @deb-wisniewski:

I agree Benson... I know some folks that used a variation on these questions with some school-aged youth, asking them what they & their friends could do to make things better in their school. They got some interesting answers.