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Often, when you get together with a group of people interested in Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD), you find a conversation about the gifts of individuals and what communities can do for themselves. But what about institutions? Institutions have been...

The Community Tool Box is celebrating its 20th anniversary by hosting an Out of the Box Prize to honor innovative and promising approaches to promoting community health and development happening in communities worldwide. The Grand Prize winner will receive...

Detail from a graphic record of a facilitated discussion in Vancouver, B.C., in which participants talked about what belonging and community mean. The artists included examples of local community development in the drawing. Illustration by Liz Etmanski and Aaron Johannes/Spectrum...

Amber Cannon feels most energized when she looks back over the last few months that she’s been active in her community and realizes the mental health issues she’s struggled with in the past have lessened considerably. “Since I’ve been involved...

“I’m incredibly energized by the power of simple things,” Evangeline Hammond says. “By little things having the power to change people’s lives, and bring beauty to neighbourhoods. Soccer programs. Potlucks. Just sharing food.” She’s not talking hypothetically. She’s talking about a...

In 1968 Robert Kennedy critiqued the Gross National Product (GNP) as a flawed measure of progress; he noted that the GNP measures everything (in money terms) "except that which makes worth while." Our work is motivated by Kennedy’s challenge:...

Pioneering economist Mark Anielski outlines the pitfalls of relying on gross domestic product (GDP) as a measure of societal wealth. Instead, we need to measure the things that matter most to us to really understand how we're doing. And...

Cormac Russell's recent post, Community Building and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, reminded John of what Alexis de Tocqueville called the productive and almost unimaginable power of American associations. "Our community abundance is revealed," John said, "when we see how...

World-renowned Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann's off-the-cuff observations on how the Scarcity Narrative pervades individual and community life. Running time: 00:01:49 Related: The Food Fight: Accumulation and Abundance (Brueggemann) Home page image: eye of einstein

More than two years ago, Gary Robbins, Meagan Lauer and I got together after an ASG  monthly gathering and decided to work on a few common interests together. One item was to develop a workshop where the three of...