In Springfield, Ohio, local residents discovered and connected the gifts of their community to turn an empty lot into a place for connection, rememberence, and beauty.
Discovering Individual and Associational Gifts
Every neighborhood is full of gifts including people with dreams and talents, places for connection, and local groups and organizations that provide resources.
The process of discovering these gifts is known as Asset Mapping (watch our webinar Getting Started with Asset Mapping for an overview). When rooted in the principles of Asset-Based Community Development, asset mapping is a proven way to discover the overlooked resources within a neighborhood.
In this blog, we’ll dive into how you can discover the most important and the most overlooked fit in your community – the gift of individuals.
The most important and the most overlooked gift in your community is the gift of individuals.
The residents in a community bring a wealth of gifts including knowledge, technical skills, hobbies, and interests. These are building blocks for a strong neighborhood as empowering individuals to use their gifts is what moves residents from participants to leaders in their neighborhood.
The Gifts of Individuals include their skills, passions, and knowledge. In Asset-Based Community Development, we refer to these as gifts of the head, hands, and heart.
- Gifts of the Head: What do you know well enough to teach someone else?
- Gifts of the Hands: What can you make or do with your hands?
- Gifts of the Heart: What do you care about enough to act on?
When two or more people join together to share these gifts we refer to them as associations. Associations can be formal (i.e., HOA, Boys and Girls Club) or informal (i.e., walking group, book club) and are typically formed around a shared goal, shared interest, or shared place.
In asset mapping, it can be tempting to start by mapping the obvious gifts such as the physical world, institutions, and economy. A search on google maps or drive around a neighborhood can help us discover these gifts without having to form relationships or build trust in the community.
However, in ABCD and asset mapping, we start by discovering individual gifts and moving at the speed of trust.
Several years back in Springfield, Ohio, neighbors came together wanting to create a space for beauty and connection in their neighborhood. More than that, they wanted to remember a community elder, Auburn J. Tolliver Sr., who was a person of peace in the neighborhood.
Through discovering and connecting individual gifts from neighbors like Brian and the Keith family, these residents transformed an abandoned lot to the Auburn J. Tolliver Sr. Community Peace Garden.
This was just one of the projects residents collaborated on to bring neighbors together and strengthen their neighborhood. Over a few years neighbors held many events such as block parties and improved their neighborhood using the gifts they already had.
It was through this process that the neighborhood experienced a:
- 43% decrease in violent crime
- 75% increase in parental engagement in the schools
- The school’s grade average improved from an F to a B
What would be possible if the residents in your community had meaningful opportunities to use their gifts like those in Springfield, Ohio?
Below are a few ways you can get started in mapping the individual and associational gifts of a community.
Note: Asset Mapping is as much about the process as the end result. These activities are designed to foster neighbor-to-neighbor connections, not just create a spreadsheet. Schedule a Discovery Call with us here for a free asset mapping coaching session to dive deeper into best practices for your role.
Activities to Asset Map Individual and Associational Gifts
Conversation Starters
Conversation starters are a great way to engage residents and learn about other’s experience in the neighborhood. The following can be used in one-on-one conversations or in group settings:
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What is one hobby you have that makes you lose track of time?
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What are the groups and clubs that exist in our neighborhood? What clubs are you a part of?
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What is one thing you’d like to learn?
Offer and Needs Market
The Offer and Needs Market is a great way to match individuals around gifts to share and needs to meet. You can learn more about this workshop from ABCD practitioner, Joel Zaslofsky, here!
Discover the Gifts workshop
You can inspire and equip residents to improve their neighborhood through discovering their gifts. This 90-minute workshop introduces residents to ABCD and provides simple, easy next steps for them to activate their neighbors. Learn more here.
Individual and Associational gifts are just a few of the six types of gifts found in every community. Check out the blogs below for resources and ideas to discover the:
Do you want to activate residents to be the community builders and change makers in their neighborhood?
You don’t have to figure this out alone.
Check out the Discover the Gifts training to become certified to facilitate asset mapping workshops in your community. This workshop has been used from South Carolina to Florida to Texas to help residents move from focusing on problems to creating new possibilities in their community.