What’s Strong With You – What does a healthy community look like?

By Paul Jackson – What’s Strong With You?

When it comes to addressing the challenges of living together in community, there are many ways to get stuff done. Some will move us toward a healthy, flourishing community and others away from it. I’m not primarily talking about what gets achieved here but how it gets achieved.

This monthly column draws on and aims to communicate an approach to community development called Asset Based Community Development (ABCD). ABCD focuses on the abilities and potential of individuals within a community rather than their problems or deficits by discovering, empowering and activating them to do the things they care most about.

Below is a list of attributes that either help or hinder community health and flourishing. I’m guessing that we are all guilty of acting out of the unhealthy column more often than we’d like but what two or three attributes from the healthy column could you be more intentional about bringing to your community interactions this month?

“WHAT DOES A HEALTHY COMMUNITY LOOK LIKE?” 

(According to Bruce Adams of the Pew Partnership for Civic Change)