Community Dialogue: How can I serve?

For my Community Dialogue Session I focused on community knowledge and wisdom through the ABCD model. I presented the model by first presenting a Ted Talk on sustainable community development that I felt had good examples of what the model stood for. Cormac Russell, the Ted Talk speaker also described a model which he did not explicitly label as the ABCD model but was what I believed to be the ABCD model. Following the video I gave my definition for the model and identified four primary characteristics of ABCD along with my own example. Then I began to ask the class questions about the video and model as a whole. The whole class attended this session and we had an open group discussion about what the class thought of the video, examples of this model in the community, what we observed at our community partners when it comes to this model, pros and cons of the model, and lastly how we can begin to implement this model into our work with our community partners.

Based on the discussion, I realized that it can be difficult to implement this model without someone leading it or identifying community members who can start a project. I also realized that my final question to the class about how they can implement the model into their work with their community partners was a difficult question for them to answer at the time. I do believe however, that this question did make them think and will hopefully encourage them to continue to think about what they can do to further impact their community. I think that the class really enjoyed the video and that it gave everyone a better understanding of the model and what can be done to impact a community in a big way even if what is done is small. I do think however, that I could have spoken more about the model myself and how I hope to implement it into my community. After I asked the first question I realized that I hadn’t come up with my own answers to them and that I most likely should have. I improvised a bit and did give my answers to the questions but would have preferred to have them already written out or at least noted. I think that if I had planned this part a bit better, the questions may have been easier for the rest of the class to answer.

When researching this topic further it made me think a lot about identity. This was especially present during our in class discussion. I realized how often we walk into other people’s communities with the intention to help but with actions that only harm because we fail to communicate with community members and ask for what they need. This brought me back to a time in my community when a lady came to ask the seniors to participate in a survey. They were asked questions such as if they think their community needs more green and more parks. I noticed how a lot of the seniors were uninterested and it took others to participate for everyone to eventually join. Then I wasn’t sure if they were voting for things they truly believe in or if they were voting because other people were voting. Many of the seniors have never had the privilege of voting and even if they did it is hard to be informed in this country especially when they have limited English knowledge. It made me question how you ask people what they need or want for their community when they don’t know because they’ve never been asked. I do think that this event that the seniors participated in got them thinking about what they want to see more of in their community but they need to continue to be included in these decisions if we want them to continue to ask themselves what they want or need.

For resources I mostly focused on videos. I found a lot of videos around this topic by simply typing in sustainable community development into YouTube. The majority of the videos I found were Ted Talks. I also found some websites that certain organizations had created where they defined the ABCD model and how it is implemented in their communities. I noticed that when doing a google search on this topic I had to use the full phrase (asset based community development model) or I wouldn’t be able to find what I was looking for.