It has often been said that “it takes a village to raise a child”. True enough. But what does it take to raise a village? That’s the topic of this recent keynote from asset-based community development (ABCD) pioneer Cormac Russell, given to the British Columbia Health Forum earlier in 2023.
Addressing health professionals, Cormac starts out wondering how to be better guests in the communities we serve. He takes time to explore five key ways in which communities are ill-served by so much of current work:
- Communities are seen as problems to be solved
- Money goes to services, not the community or the economically poor
- Active citizenship is gragmented and in retreat
- Communities are internalising the ‘deficit map’ model peddled by some professionals
- Single-track politics and siloed approaches dominate
In so many cases, the interdependence of well-being which is so well produced by community life is lost amidst a flurry of well-meaning projects which focus on single aspects and too often come from outside the community and do not engage with it.
Cormac has the start of an answer, of course. I love his three-lane swimming pool model (which he mentions here). The first lane is what people can do for themselves to create health on their own with their neighbours. Professionals should remove the barriers to this and cheer them on. The second lane is full of things that communities can do, with a little help from professionals, who should be humble – on tap, not on top (in Cormac’s memorable phrase). The third lane will contain things that communities need professionals to do for them, with their expertise and understanding. But… we can’t see what’s in the third lane until we resource, lift up, cheer on the first two lanes.
Cormac’s speech is a committed, connected and concise statement of why ABCD has never been so vital, and how professionals can play our part in the neighbourhoods we visit and work with. Watch it now (below).
