(0:03:47) via YouTube, by Occupy Sydney, on FaithInAction.net.au This web page & video provide a good introduction and links.
"...If you have a small group of 4 or 5 people, I would contend that you have more resources in that group -- if you harness them fully -- than are needed to address (a social challenge)...""
I like the attached ABCD summary (2p PDF) from the Handbook of Applied Development Science (2 vols., 2002), under the "American Tradition of Community Development." It makes a useful distinction between "Targeted Asset Mapping" and "Visionary Asset Mapping."
Thinking about ABCD in faith community building, I appreciate the pastoral work of Mike Mather and DeAmon Harges. They have worked as pastoral ministers from Broadway United Methodist Church, in urban Indianapolis. Two videos describe their fruitful approach and interesting results:
1.) http://bit.ly/1O5ec46 (YouTube): Making the invisible visible |DeAmon Harges | TEDxIndianapolis (0:10:30)
2.) http://www.abundantcommunity.com/home/authors/parms/1/which/mike_mather.html (Abundant Community website) Follow link tovideo of Mike describing ABCD engagement uncovering "Adelita's Gift" (0:04:29). This ABCD pastoral accompaniment resulted in self-employment growing into a developed small business. This is also know as "Smart Network Weaving."
Such ABCD for self-employment and small-business development is also illustrated in Ohio in the work of Appalachian Community Economic Networks (AceNet). See a third, longer video:
a.) AceNet's former Dir. June Holley, in akeynote conference address to the Center for Small Towns (YouTube, 0:30:56) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V86KoCtLmo
b.) June's Network Weaving Handbook describes this community development approach: http://www.networkweaver.com
I love the homemade "popular instrument," its local music and its cultural use (e.g., "parading" about) in ABCD engagement:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1r_h9GeV2Q
(Stories of ABCD practice in Australia, with instrumental video sound track.)
Cincinnati, Ohio, USA: We're having good experiences ABCD-organizing public-engagement events around a "generative theme." This theme is our felt need re unemployment and under-employment, to thus develop alternative-economic activity, with special concern for treasured young people. This attractive theme and ABCD responses are congruent with wide "signs of our times." (See TEDx collaborative-economy video: http://bit.ly/1ocyoHm).
Sample events by our Economics of Compassion Initiative (ECI http://econofcompassion.org/about):
An ABCD-purpose of convening these peer-conversation-animating events (see Peter Block's "the Six Conversations" at http://www.asmallgroup.net) is "Targeted Assets Mapping." This is "to identify skills, capacities, resources to mobilize toward a specific (ECI) project or goal" (see attached 2p ABCD definitions).
Our ABCD goal is Smart Network Weaving (SNW): To introduce emerging social enterprises, etc., to people they need to know (customers, fans, local investors, mediating structures). This ismaking needed connections for Community-based Economic Development (CED) with ABCD. For example, a top need of local social-business start-ups (after a biz plan) is investment capital. (See Chapter 7 of Michael Shuman's book Local Dollars Local Sense "Unaccredited Investing in SEC Land.") So, based on peer conversations, we connect people to, e.g., to social business, credit unions, etc., at display tables at the back of a festive ECI-event room. Social-capital-rich faith communities have proved valuable assets in this ECI ABCD event-work.
From this Event- and related Targeted-ABCD work, I'm interested in connecting to other ABCD practitioners in this network to TEACH EVENT-PROMOTERS & -CONNECTORS ABCD. I think ABCD Event Projects can provide a targeted occasion for ABCD leaders, in a variety of contexts, to teach (& ourselves better to practice). This Ning, and other emerging online technologies, are assets for such targeted work. Perhaps a offering periodic e-course -- together -- can support local ABCD-Event "campaign" projects?
Short-term ABCD-Event campaigns (2-3 mos. before a scheduled event) -- with Connector's Tables, generative themes & teaching ABCD experientially -- can yield community visibility. Crucially, Connectors can mobilize interestedpeoples' & institutions' associative "Networks" and "Crowds." I think such needed ABCD-Event organizing offers us a project opportunity for an ABCD-In-Action Ning "Community of Practice," using e-courses, etc. What do you think, based on your practice and local-events? Who do you know (who I don't) with a strong "motivation-to-act" re this ABCD proposal? SNW connecting: Can you "close a triangle" between them and me? Thanks!
For ABCD in Faith Communities I commend Cincinnati Jesuit George Wilson's book Clericalism: The Death of Priesthood (see Google Books for large excerpt). George describes cultural scripts, to be passive in Church contexts, which lay people inherit.
This dynamic and theological reflection is parallel to McKnight's critique of over-professionalization in service-producing institutions and weak communities.
ABCD 2p Summary in Handbook of Applied Dev. Science.pdf - 91KB