Many communities are discovering that collecting information about a recipient’s skills and abilities is the essential first step in moving that person toward productivity and active citizenship. As long as people are defined solely by their needs, problems, and deficiencies, they will remain recipients and clients. But the moment they and their neighbors begin to focus on their capacities, new possibilities for connection and contribution begin to appear.

“What do you do best? And where can you do what you do best?” Those central questions open doors, as the following examples illustrate:
• In one struggling, isolated Portland neighborhood, a group of neighborhood women organized the Neighborhood Pride Team. They started their community-building work by interviewing their neighbors about their skills and abilities. What they discovered was a gold mine: along with cooks, musicians, gardeners, and computer experts, they uncovered a llama bridle maker, a motorcycle circus aerialist and a resident sword swallower. They’ve nurtured these skills carefully, and the neighborhood has come alive as a result. NPT has created its own community-development corporation and job-skill center. Residents have created a handful of new businesses, while others have been connected to existing jobs. Pride has indeed been restored to this community. (See Appendix A, Table 1 for their capacity inventory.)• In Minneapolis, the church-based community-organizing group called Interfaith Action worked with their predominantly Hispanic congregations to uncover skills and talents that could be mobilized for economic development purposes. They found vastly underused capacities and experience in, for example, theater, music, arts and crafts, and specialty foods. Some of the still-unfolding uses of this wealth of skills include new enterprises and job connections, a new business and community relationship, and plans for a three-day Fiesta and a “mercado,” or market, built on the businesses of the dozens of entrepreneurs uncovered by the inventories.

• In New York’s South Bronx, the Banana Kelly Community Improvement Association has two decades of community development experience, and has been an important factor in the efforts to rebuild that part of the city. For the past decade, Banana Kelly staff and leaders have used a capacity-inventory process with the new residents of the apartments they build and manage. The skills and talents of residents become major resources for governing and maintaining the buildings, and for planning and leading future Banana Kelly projects. Often, capacity inventories explore two broad categories of skills, those that might lead to employment or enterprise creation, and those that might be contributed to the community. Obviously, both sets of skills are important in the context of welfare reform as well. Just as important as the economic development agendas are civic or community-building activities that are often fed by the capacity-inventory process. Neighbors create a skills bank where talents can be bartered (or offered freely); a learning exchange, through which people teach and learn from each other; and a variety of community celebrations featuring the cultural and artistic skills of residents. All of these activities reconnect recipients to the broader community as valuable contributors to the well being of the whole. New relationships collapse some of the boundaries between the employed and those without jobs, between “haves” and “have nots.” These connections are critical not only because they provide social support, but because they open paths to economic opportunity as well.

John P. Kretzmann
Co-Director, The Asset-Based Community Development Institute Building the Bridge from Client to Citizen: