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Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) is an approach to sustainable community-driven development. Beyond the mobilisation of a particular community, it is concerned with how to link micro-assets to the macro-environment. Asset Based Community Development's premise is that communities can drive the development process themselves by identifying and mobilizing existing, but often unrecognised assets. Thereby responding to challenges and creating local social improvement and economic development. This page will describe ABCD through five key aspects.

The Democracy Collaborative was established in 2000 to advance a new understanding of democracy for the 21st century and to promote new strategies and innovations in community development that enhance democratic life. Our goal is to change the prevailing paradigm of community economic development-and of the economy as a whole-in the United States toward a new emphasis and system based on: Broadening ownership and stewardship over capital Democracy at the workplace Stabilizing community and emphasizing locality Equitable and inclusive growth Environmental, social, and institutional sustainability The Collaborative is a national leader in the field of community development through our Community Wealth Building Initiative. The Initiative sustains a wide range of projects involving research, training, policy development, and community-focused work designed to promote an asset-based paradigm and increase support for the field across-the-board.

Advancing a new understanding of democracy for the 21st century and promoting new strategies and innovations in community development that enhance democratic life. Promoting new strategies and innovations in community development that enhance democratic life. The Collaborative is a national leader in the field of community development through our Community Wealth Building Initiative. The Initiative sustains a wide range of projects involving research, training, policy development, and community-focused work designed to promote an asset-based paradigm and increase support for the field across-the-board.

ABCD stands for Asset-Based Community Development and it refers to a type of community development based on the work of Professors Jody Kretzmann and John McKnight. ABCD challenges the traditional deficit-based approach that tries to solve urban and rural development problems by focusing on the needs and deficiencies of individuals, neighbourhoods, towns, villages, etc.

We are one of eleven strategic partners of the ABCD Institute, and the lead partner in Europe. We have worked as ABCD social explorers, trainers, mentors, facilitators, researchers and consultants with change partners and disruptive innovators around the world. These include Communities, Charities, NGOs/NPOs, Faith-based organisations, Think Tanks; local and national Governments in over 30 countries. Our ambition is to support the proliferation of inclusive, bottom up, community driven change. We aim to achieve this by supporting local communities and supportive mediating/civic organisations to create the conditions where any neighbourhood can identify, connect and mobilise its assets to the benefit of the whole community.

Right in our neighborhood we have the capacity to address our human needs in ways that systems, which see us only as interchangeable units, as problems to be solved, never can. We all have gifts to offer, even the most seemingly marginal among us. This book suggests how to nurture voluntary, self-organizing structures that will reveal these gifts and allow them to be shared to the greatest mutual benefit. Block and McKnight recommend roles we can assume and actions we can take to reweave the social fabric that has been unraveled by consumerism and its belief that however much we have, it is not enough.