Today I attended a presentation by John McKnight, author of a book
called "Building Communities from the Inside Out." In light of our
2020 discussions, I thought people might be interested in my notes
on the presentation. If anyone is interested, I have a copy of the
book.
* * * * *
Improving the well-being of American communities is most often
viewed from a "needs" and deficiency perspective, which McKnight
argues is fundamentally flawed. Communities in trouble, and the
agencies and institutions with which they are involved, concentrate on
problems, e.g. abandoned houses, single parents, high unemployment
rates, drug problems, etc. But inventorying and measuring these
problems gets us nowhere, for we can not DO anything with the
information. It is incapacitating and demoralizing, rather than
empowering.
Today's single-minded focus on needs, rather than assets, stems from
institutions that "need needs" to survive. These include universities
that do needs surveys, some foundations, government agencies and
especially human service programs, and much of the media. By and
large these institutions turn people into *clients* and consumers of
services.
McKnight argues for a different approach -- looking at the glass half
full instead of half empty, by focusing on community assets. These
are individuals, associations, and institutions. In a powerful
neighborhood or community, the three kinds of assets are linked
together and valued.
Clients have needs and deficiencies, but citizens have gifts and
capacities.
He took the audience through a little exercise to make three points:
everyone has gifts and strengths, these are diverse, and they are all
useful and needed. The more assets that can be identified, the more
power we have. To inventory its assets, a community needs to think
about:
1. Individuals, all of whom can have 5 kinds of assets: home and
work place skills (I think); civic and community skills; enterprising or
entrepreneurial skills; cultural, artistic skills; teaching/educational
skills.
2. Associations, a la de Toqueville, because they mobilize
individuals and are the primary source of community empowerment.
The strongest communities have an association of associations. His
discussion here was very close to Putnam's work on social capital.
3. Institutions, such as schools, churches, libraries, and
government. "Community-serving" and effective institutions (a) tend
to be governed by people from the community and (b) open their
resources to the community. They buy and hire locally, and they offer
the use of their facilities to the community.
In conclusion - community building grows from three values: an
internal focus (i.e. not a knee jerk reaction to seek outside assistance);
focus on assets not deficiencies; a concern with relating/connecting
assets to each other.
Empowered communities have gone through a 4-step process:
created an association of associations with supporting systems on the
side (rather than in decision making positions); created a vision,
instead of a needs assessment; realized that the way to make the
vision real is to mobilize local assets; and finally, concluded what is
missing locally and figured out where to get it.