John Kretzmann

Community development initiatives are underway in Holland, Egypt, England, and South Africa through the work of IPR's Asset-Based Community Development Institute.

The initiatives have diverse goals‹whole neighborhood development, identifying community resources, promoting public health, and involving higher education in community building‹but facilitators John McKnight and John Kretzmann, co-directors of the Institute, see a common theme.

"What all sectors have in common is a growing understanding that the outcomes they're interested in are dependent on engaging local residents to solve problems in local communities," Kretzmann said. "Government, universities, and health systems are all rethinking their relationships to community people, seeing them not just as recipients of services but real co-producers and partners in attaining these desired outcomes."

Holland. A mayors association that represents 21 mid-sized Dutch cities (80,000 to 250,000 people) invited McKnight to speak at a conference on neighborhood development in April. He also met with government officials and residents in four of the cities to discuss resident participation and control in community initiatives.

"The tradition has been that neighborhood development was the responsibility of the government and the authority resided with local governments and the agencies they funded," McKnight said. "But ABCD researchers emphasized the importance of organizations made up of the people who live there. We help residents to shape their future."

McKnight said ABCD faculty will faciliate relationships between the Netherlands residents' organization and a similar project in the United States, the ABCD Neighborhood Circle project (see story, page 7), to share the results of the community development initiatives.

The partnership with the mayors' group started when the U.S. State Department recommended the ABCD Institute as the best source on community development. Delegations from the mayors' group had met twice with ABCD faculty at the Dutch embassy in Washington, D.C., to learn about community development research in the United States.

Egypt. Helping the United Nations adapt a program for rural community development to urban areas, Kretzmann traveled to Cairo in June 1999. The UN Development Prect wanted to combine ABCD methods with its "sustainable livelihoods approach," which had been used in rural communities in Africa, Latin America, and India. Kretzmann facilitated a four-day seminar with Egyptian government planning department and Cairo city government officials before they began initiatives in four cities, including Cairo.

The project involved using residents' skills in community development. In one of Cairo's poorest neighborhoods, Kretzmann learned that the neighborhood had many skilled masons and carpenters. Together, they developed an employment strategy aimed at rehabilitating the city's centuries-old housing. A group of younger masons helped to build a school, while other young people were involved in an intensive effort to increase resident ownership of the land and buildings.

England. Neighborhood parks and community gyms are as important as hospitals in improving public health, Kretzmann told various British government groups in September 1999, his second visit to England for a project with the British public health system.

"It's not enough to be concentrating on diagnosis and treating sick people," he said. "That's important, but if you're interested in creating healthy people, you have to understand the ABCD idea that local communities are critical co-producers of health.²

As the British public health system broadens the debate about "What is health?" non-health professionals such as parks and recreation departments are building healthy communities alongside health professionals. Others are exploring the use of lottery proceeds to construct "healthy living centers² in up to 100 British cities, especially targeting low-income neighborhoods.

Some of the leadership in England is part of the Healthy Cities Movement (sometimes known as the Healthy Communities Movement in the United States), an effort to link health-related resources and to broaden the range of civic leaders and groups in prevention and health promotion activities.

South Africa. How could a community and a university combine to develop the economy? In August and September 1999, Kretzmann met with eight teams of university leaders, community leaders, and non-government organization (NGO) representatives to explore this question as part of a new initiative, the Community Higher Education Service Partnership.

Working with the Higher Education Trust, South Africa's premier education policy center, the groups met to forge a link between universities and their surrounding communities, particularly low-income rural areas and urban townships.

Kretzmann visited five of the eight sites and then facilitated a four-day community building seminar in Cape Town. The teams focused on building community agendas that would use the service capacities of students, the expertise of the faculty, the resources of NGOs, and the leadership of local residents.

The eight teams spent 10 days in October and November each visiting a sister U.S. university and then met in Philadelphia to share their impressions of similar efforts at the schools.