Our Vision
We envision strong, constituent-led Coastal Bend neighborhoods and community groups discovering what they care about and organizing to accomplish their shared dreams.
Our Purpose
Our purpose is empowering the self-development of communities.
Our Mission
We are on a mission to empower communities to achieve self-determined goals through constituent-led development.
Our Difference
We shift the power for neighborhood wellbeing back to the people who live there, by using a community development approach rather than a social services model. Our deliverables are simply coaching and training to help them identify what they care about, mobilize their strengths, and take collective action on shared goals.
Comparison
ABCD Approach
Focus on assets
Builds from opportunities
Investment orientation
Emphasis on associations
Focus on community
Goal is empowerment
Power comes from relationships
People are the answer
People are citizens
Social Service Model
Focus on needs
Responds to problems
Charity orientation
Emphasis on agencies
Focus on individuals
Goal is services
Power comes from credentials
Programs are the answer
People are clients
What we believe & our values
Complex, systemic problems like poverty and its related issues require a change of underlying root causes at the community level.
Neighborhoods and community groups are the basic unit of social change.
All communities have hopes, dreams and concerns they care about, which may be very different from the agenda of an outside agency or organization who wants to engage them.
All communities have abundant assets (relationships, gifts, skills, talents, culture, methods of exchange, story, associations) and the capacity to thrive by mobilizing their assets to do what matters to them and their wellbeing.
When one-way, top-down, charitable assistance does not transition in a timely way to the development of communities to thrive, it disempowers the people most impacted, diminishing their capacity to mobilize their assets to do what matters to them and their wellbeing.
Be part of it
Volunteer, partner with us, or support the work with a gift.