Love all these resources, I just need to get into a better habit of engaging. I think our Community of Practice will help me stay more up to date. Thanks Deb for pulling this group together.
What a wonderful list! Thank you for sharing. I can't wait to learn more from you about your work in rural communities and how these resources have been helpful. I came to this work through my work with churches. I have an MDiv from Baptist Theological Seminary but never pursued ordination and instead began doing community development work in partnership with faith communities which eventually led me to a broader base of multi-sector clients. It is weird that most of my church coaching clients are Methodists and Episcopalians and not a single Baptist but I am not giving up on them yet.
The link between the missional church movement and ABCD is how I fell into this work. There is a clear connection as it relates to loving our neighbors and a focus on place and I built my first training off Luke 10. However, I have found it difficult sometimes to work with church planters who put the church at the center and thier need to grow a church above the concerns of the citizens and the desire to strengthen the community apart from the church. I would love to know your experience with this intersection. I have some fantastic church clients who totally get it but they seem to me to be more the exception than the rule but maybe I am just a little jaded.
LOVE THIS! I was just listening to a Matthew Fox YouTube presentation and I was struck by how so much of what ails us is the result of being cut off from nature, something our rural communities have never lost. Here is the video for anyone who is interested. Kind of long but I really enjoyed it:
Thanks again to all who have expressed an interest in the Rural ABCD Community of Practice. During our meeting last month, the group expressed an interest in meeting monthly on the 4th Thursday. You can find out more about this recurring event in the "Events" section of this site.
To aid us in our planning efforts, we have put together a quick survey to serve as a guide for our upcoming group sessions. If you are a member of the Community of Practice or would like to join us, please take a few minutes to participate in this survey:
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I've invited you to fill out a form: |
If the link does not work, please email me at wendy@embracecommunities.org and I will email you the link.
Join us for this kick-off meeting of a new Community of Practice (CoP) that will gather together rural practitioners of Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) to share stories, experiences, and tools. By coming together, we will learn ways of building on the assets in our rural communities, addressing shared or recurring challenges and how we turn them into opportunities. This group is designed for individuals who have a working knowledge of ABCD and who are practicing ABCD in rural environments.
This CoP is being organized through the work of the Rural Communities and ABCD (RC/ABCD) workgroup of the ABCD Institute. The group will be hosted by Heather Keam and Wendy McCaig and facilitated by the members.
The kick-off meeting of the CoP will be via Zoom on May 25th at 10 am EDT / 9 am CDT / 8 am MDT / 7 am PDT. You can check out the time of this event in your timezone here.
We ask that you register here in order to give us some idea about who will be attending and to receive the zoom link the day before the call. There is no cost to joining this CoP.
To learn more about the community of practice and to sign up.
In addition to engaging youth in asset mapping we have also engaged them in an oral history project. You can learn more about that project here: https://embracecommunities.org/node/61. In this project the youth interviewed seniors, captured stories, learned the history of thier neighborhood, helped write and performed in a play, wrote a song, recorded it professionally and produced a music video and performed it all live. It was a two year project and probably one of the most powerful ways I have seen youth engage.
Most of our ABCD work engages youth in the asset mapping process. We have a playlist on our youtube channel that has all our youth related video's - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrDnyD5XuZw&list=PLAurA3KWWAgWKZgPzPsmAGb_7U2zVf8QL . There are a few video's we have done that might be helpful. In particular the Broadwater story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrZTfZY9rto&list=PLAurA3KWWAgWKZgPzPsmAGb_7U2zVf8QL&index=15.
We have a virtual training for youth development organizations. In the fall we are working with a local school district to create a virtual version of our training for students. We have a virtual version for the adult leaders but not a student version since pre covid 19 that was done live. In the fall, we are going to do a student learning cohort through a virtual classroom setting if all goes as planned. We are still trying to figure out what this would look like post covid 19.
Hi Jean and Maya, We developed a curriculum and have a process that centers youth (High School Age Only) in the ABCD process. If you are interested in learning more, you can email me at wendy@embracecommunities.org. Our website is www.embracecommuities.org. We are doing ABCD with youth in both a neighborhood and in a school setting.
Thanks for sharing! We will check it out.
My client in Corpus Christi Texas is using Maptive. Has anyone else used that tool?
