Asset-Based Community Development

Asset-based community development (ABCD) is an approach to community practice that begins by identifying and mobilizing the strengths a community already possesses — the skills of its residents, the energy of its associations, and the resources of its institutions — rather than starting from a catalogue of its problems and deficits. Articulated by John Kretzmann and John McKnight in their 1993 book Building Communities from the Inside Out, ABCD reframes community members from clients and recipients of services into citizens and producers of their own development, and is a cornerstone of strengths-based community social work.