Community Development Training

SSeveral of our staff are trained and certified in methods which can assist communities, organizations and churches into and through the process of development – social, community and mission focused development – which builds capacity for the future. We use techniques which focus on the assets and positive history of groups, communities and organizations – not their failures and deficits. We call this Asset-based planning and development.

Asset-based planning and design is a human and organizational capacity-building approach that purposefully attempts to identify, celebrate, and emphasize the factors and activities which bring life to a group of people, community or, organization. One asset-based tool, commonly referred to as Appreciative Inquiry (Al), focuses on helping people to envision a collectively desired future and, providing the means to achieve that vision. It does so in ways that moves people’s views of historical and current realities within an organization into “positively-framed” perceptions based in experiences of success. It then crafts these perceptions into what is possible; and, a collective belief about what can be, into reality. “AI seeks out the best of “what is” to help stir-up “the collective imagination of what might be.”

Al as an Organizational Change Process

Appreciative Inquiry is an “art” as opposed to a mechanism. It is the art of discovering and valuing those factors giving life to an organization or community or group. In its most practical construction, AI is a form of organizational study that selectively seeks to locate, highlight, and illuminate the life-giving forces of the organization.

In the historical organizational paradigm, the underlying belief is of one “best” way: one best way to do things, one perfect way for an organization to be formed, one preferred way for employees to perform, one acceptable way for people to behave. As a result, we have, in the past, looked for things in our human organizations that were not best, perfect, or preferred in order to fix them. There is a catch to this method, however: Who knows what is best, perfect, or preferred? Where do those beliefs come from? In our emerging global village it takes very little time to understand that the “perfect” way for a manager to behave in one part of the world can be downright offensive in another. How, then, can we have healthy and productive organizations, communities, and families without some idea of how to make them more perfect?

AI differs from conventional managerial problem solving. With the problem-solving method, the basic assumption seems to be that organizations represent “problems” to be solved; therefore, we must discover and fix things that are wrong in order to improve the organization. Change in this way assumes we can repair a human system much as we might repair a car or computer. If we fix the problems, the organization will succeed.

By contrast, the underlying assumption of Appreciative Inquiry is that organizations are solutions to be embraced. As human systems designed to be creative and innovative, organizations are full of solutions. It is their very diversity, multiplicity, and forward movement that the AI approach highlights and builds upon.

What AI can offer!

A means by which you can effectively design and implement new programs and activities without the fear of conflict or exclusion

The mechanism for ownership and management of on-going goals, policies and procedures through increased participation in design

Improved cooperation through wider understanding of respective contributions to organizational goals

Defusing internal “vested-interest” power struggles through a collective visioning and planning process that involves all stakeholders

Role clarification and matching of interests with gifts and skills through self-assessment and individual role affirmation

Vision development which articulates goals, designs implementation and action plans and provides for follow-through with the church groups responsible for the work

Management planning that will anticipate the need for change in today’s fast-paced, highly changeable environment


For further information or to schedule a consultation, contact Terry at terry@mypeopleinternational.com