Facilitating Adult Learning For Social Change (FALSCH) Session Plan

Title: Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) Time: 30 minutes Participants: Groups 6-8 Facilitated by Group 5: Tami Dixon, Changsu Han, Ethan Rumrill & Morgan Tucker,

Facilitators Intentions (Whats behind the curtain?): To provide participants with a useful new tool to use in engaging communities in participating in social change. The intention of the ABCD model is for participants to see their communities from a perspective of already having capacity to create things instead of just having needs that need to be filled. This model intends to create a concrete idea space to generate ideas, resources, and skills that individuals in the community already have, and the community has collectively, that they can use to construct new realities. Communities with problems do not need to simply be viewed as a needs sinkhole. ABCD is a positivist, proactive approach to development.

Learning Objectives/Participants Take Away: 1) Understanding of the basic principles of asset-based community development 2) Ability to asset map

Materials: Whiteboard, laptop computers, index cards, markers, tape

Agenda Overview: Activity Time Needed Materials/Resources Whiteboard

Introduction/Energizer/IceBreaker: 5 minutes (Changsu) Stand up and get in circle Name What it the most valuable asset that you think you have? Session overview: context and objectives (Changsu) 2 minutes

What is asset-based community development? (Ethan) Card-charting in small groups, each with a facilitator: Assetmapping (Morgan) Closure (Tami) Repeat objectives

5-8 minutes

8-10 minutes (5 minutes in groups; 5 minute discussion) 5 minutes

Cards Markers Tape

Detailed Description of Activities: Begin with an icebreaker to introduce participants and facilitators to one another and brainstorm a list of assets. From there, explicitly state the context (the role of the participants) and the objective of the facilitation. Next, lead a guided discussion with the objective of coming to a communal definition of Assets-Based Community Development, specifically by comparing/contrasting an assets-based approach with a needs-based approach. Next, break into three sub-groups responsible for brainstorming assets within the categories of people, institutions, and physical spaces and bring group back together to complete a card and chart exercise where participants construct an assets map. Each small group will have a facilitator. Finally, lead a concluding discussion focused on applying the activities in the facilitation with the objectives outlined at the beginning.

Notes To My FALSCH Self (Am I walking the talk?): How does my content address issues of power and privilege in society? Does it help to build more inclusive, equitable and sustainable communities, societies and social institution? We did not have an explicit conversation while planning or during our facilitation about how our content addressed issues of power and privilege in society. Our content addressed power indirectly by questioning the dominant approach in development of treating everything as a problem and from a negative perspective of causal analysis. The ABCD approach looks at the assets an entity has which is from a more positive state of mind. How do my facilitation strategies address issues of power, privilege and participation in the session? Are we walking the talk? We acknowledge that neither our facilitation plan nor our facilitation explicitly addressed issues of power, privilege and participation in our session. We believe we sacrificed that component due to time constraints. However, we feel that we did indirectly address power dynamics through our icebreaker and introduction, which required all participants to come up

with their personal assets. Thinking of the assets they possessed had the effect of helping participants feel empowered by feeling like they had something to offer within the context of our discussion.