A new ABCD Institute publication shows 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:

- 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 helps 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.
u 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 to support a person’s vision or plan for the future.

The guide also offers sample capacity inventories, documents associational support for community-building activities, and supplies questions for interviewing local business owners.

Building the Bridge from Client to Citizen: A Community Toolbox for Welfare Reform, by John P. Kretzmann and Michael B. Green (1998), is available from IPR’s publications department for $5.00. It also can be downloaded from IPR’s web site at: http://www.northwestern.edu/IPR/abcd.html.