Starting With Strengths: How Asset-Based Development Can Transform Communities

When people talk about community development, the conversation often begins by listing what’s missing: clean water, farming knowledge, health clinics, and more. And while understanding needs is important, defining communities by their needs can paint them as passive, helpless, and dependent on outside funding or expertise.

Asset-based community development (ABCD) offers a different starting point: one rooted in strengths, skills, relationships, and the rich knowledge that already exists within a place. This approach isn’t new. It was first named in the 1990s by John McKnight and Jody Kretzmann, whose research showed that communities thrive when development efforts begin with what people already have—not what they lack.

Today, ABCD is used around the world, including by some One Day’s Wages partners. In fact, we intentionally seek partners that actively incorporate community members’ skills, knowledge, and already-existing resources into their projects.

Why start with strengths?

1. It fuels intrinsic motivation. People are far more energized by building on their gifts than by being reminded of their deficits. Perhaps you experience this yourself? When you begin a development project by identifying strengths, people see that their gifts and knowledge matter.

2. It strengthens the social fabric. Communities are built on relational networks that enable them to solve their own problems: farmer cooperatives, women’s groups, elders’ councils, places of worship. By working through existing groups, development efforts can amplify trust, cooperation, and local leadership.

3. It supports long-term poverty alleviation. Projects grounded in local resources are more likely to last. When communities use their own resources, they’re less dependent on external funding—and more likely to continue activities long after a project ends.

4. It honors human dignity. Strengths-based development resonates deeply with our belief that every person is created with inherent worth. When people are invited to contribute their talents, they experience the fulfillment that comes from shaping their own future rather than becoming passive recipients of aid.

A variety of tools are available to mobilize community resources. The indigenous practice of Two-Eyed Seeing offers a lens through which to see the collective strengths of both indigenous and Western knowledges. With that lens in place, an Appreciative Inquiry process can reveal stories of community successes, resilience, and dreams for the future. Resource Mapping can then provide a framework through which to identify the many cultural, social, political, financial, and natural resources that contribute to a community’s goals.

Take the example of ODW partner, PRHE. PRHE operates in a part of Malawi deeply impacted by climate change, but recognized the many resources that are available: a well-established women’s group, a supportive village chief, a regular supply of clay soil, and heaps of discarded peanut shells and sugarcane at the local market. What did they decide to do with these resources? Innovate! In this case, by establishing a women’s cooperative that makes smokeless stoves fueled by climate-friendly briquettes, replacing the need for charcoal.  

In development, the temptation is to rush to meet needs. There are real challenges—climate shocks, soil depletion, and limited infrastructure. But communities also hold deep reservoirs of knowledge, creativity, and social networks that are vital to long-term resilience.

When development begins with what’s strong, communities can flourish.