Building the Bridge from Client to Citizen:
A Community Toolbox for Welfare Reform

©1998
by John P. Kretzmann and Michael B. Green

A recent paper from the Asset-Based Community Development Institute demonstrates how five "tools" successfully used for community-building activities may be adapted to help former welfare recipients move toward economic independence and more fulfilling lives. Three of the tools are inventories and two involve support groups:

• The Capacity Inventory is designed to elicit information about the skills, talents, and interests of individuals, which may be utilized to reconnect them to community life and economic opportunities.

• The Associational Inventory can help discover the many small-scale voluntary groups that exist within a community and to which a formerly isolated recipient of services may connect and contribute.

• The Business Inventory gathers information about local economic opportunities from interviews with local business owners.

• Self-Help Peer Groups, such as Alcoholics Anonymous or "loan circles" such as the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, provide support for everything from eating disorders to microenterprise development.

• Circles of Support, invented in Canada to reconnect people with disabilities to the larger community, assemble a group of friends--not peers or professionals--to support a person's vision or plan for the future.

The paper is available from IPR's publications department for $5.00. You may download it now by clicking below.

Click here to see Acrobat Version

Adobe Acrobat Reader 3.0 (or higher) is needed to read the Acrobat Version. If you need a copy of the Acrobat Reader installer, click the appropriate button below. When the installer file has been downloaded, run the installer to put the Reader on your hard drive.