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John McKnight asked me to write a brief report on the Weave the People gathering that we both attended in Washington, DC from May 14-16. I’ll offer my perspective, but if you want a more complete and less biased...

Tamarack Institute and the City of Edmonton, Alberta, collaborated on a case study describing the development of the City's Abundant Community Initiative, which was implemented for five years in 106 neighborhoods. The authors conclude that after having that building communities...

Making Meaningful Connections Conversation with Jonathan Massimi ~ March 12, 2019 About every six weeks for the last five years, John and Peter have hosted online / dial-up conversations with community-building pioneers as their guests. For their March 12, 2019 dialog...

Some years ago I attended the annual Canadian Conference of Community Development Organizations. Several hundred groups were attending. The convener of the conference told me that the best community “developer” in all of Canada was at the conference. He...

In Kitchener, Ontario, community reinventor Jonathan Massimi once led a discussion group with city staff, eight community connectors and a neighborhood association to explore the ideas from John and Peter's book The Abundant Community. That initiative grew into an eight-week...

Profound social change requires movements. Movements open our hearts and minds. They create the favourable political conditions for legislative change, resource allocation and policy shifts.... Social movements do two things much better than other forms of organizing. Social movements do two...

One way of understanding who represents a neighbor is their elected representative. Nonetheless, there are other neighborhood groups and associations that claim they also represent the neighbors. In the 50‘s, 60’s and 70’s, the then Mayor Daley in Chicago was...

Conversation with Paula Ellis ~ November 27, 2018 About every six weeks for the last five years, John and Peter have hosted online / dial-up conversations with community-building pioneers as their guests. For their Novemmber 27, 2018 dialog they invited Paula...

In Recasting the Narratives That Shape Our Lives, Paula Ellis, a leader in journalism innovation, transformative change, and employee and community engagement, describes how innovators in journalism are reimagining and experimenting with what journalism might look like today.

Click here to download the full paper The primary goal of an Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) process is to enhance collective citizen visioning and production. This paper discusses each of four essential elements in detail in an effort to answer...