-->
According to Jim Diers, Community Development guru from Seattle, there’s a difference between ‘community’ and ‘neighborhood’. Neighborhood refers to a geographical place and community refers to our social connections. In some cases we have ‘community’ in our neighborhoods, but not always. More often than not our most vibrant community connections are through our work, sports activities, common interests, religion etc.
So how do we build community connections in our neighborhoods? Jim Diers says that there are several keys to creating community. For one thing, gathering places are essential, providing folks with opportunities to bump into one another. We also need to make community life fun and more engaging than television.
As community developers, it’s vital that we start where people are at and empower them to develop and work on dreams for their community rather than imposing what we think is best. After all, communities are ripe with talented and passionate people to tap into.
We also need to take a ‘cup is half full’ approach by building on the assets in communities versus the typical institutional approach of focusing on what’s wrong or missing and then looking to the outside for answers and to quick ‘fix’ the deficiencies. Too often we are defining people by their disabilities (at-risk, homeless, isolated, low-income) instead of on their gifts. Jim says that every individual has gifts of the head, heart and hands.
Community asset mapping is a great process for taking stock of what already exists in community to build on.
According to Diers, every place has a plethora of assets to tap into and build on including:
- Gifts of individuals
- Voluntary associations
- Built and natural environment
- Local economy
- Local heritage and identity
- Local agencies.
As well, Diers says that local agencies in particular are underutilized because they aren’t democratic. Schools for example have incredible resources that community could tap into after hours yet very few schools are able to function as true ‘community schools’. There is a disconnect between ‘community’ and ‘school’ even though learning is life long and occurs in the context of community itself.
Finally Diers identifies steps toward effective agency/ community partnerships including:
1) Do no harm. In other words don’t distract or undermine community, don’t waste their time and don’t create dependency. The iron rule he says is to “never do for people what they can do for themselves”.
2) Remove Agency Barriers including: centralized decision making, cookie cutter programs and regulations that don’t serve, rigid silos and departments, bureaucratic red tape and the know it all attitudes.
3) Build Community Capacity: including focus on leadership development, out reach, networking, matching funds.
