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The!following!document!was!contributed!to!the!
Toolkit!by!the!!
Northwest!Regional!Educational!Laboratory!
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Strengthening!Community!Education:!!
The!Basis!for!Sustainable!Renewal!

Mapping!Community!Assets!Workbook!
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by!Diane!Dorfman!
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Northwest!Regional!Educational!Laboratory!
www.educationnorthwest.org!

Strengthening Community Education:
The Basis for Sustainable Renewal

MAPPINGCOMMUNITYASSETSWORKBOOKNorthwest Regional
Educational Laboratory
Rural Education ProgramMappin g Commun ity Assets Wor kbook
by Diane Dorfman
Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory
Rural Education Program
Joyce Ley, Director
1-800-547-6339
Fax: 503-275-0654
http://www.nwrel.org/ruraled/
Clipart provided by Art Parts™
Workbook design by Gambee Hammons Creative
Permission to reproduce in whole or part for use in educational and other not-for-profit groups is grantedwith the acknowledgement of the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory as the source on all copies.
The contents of this publication is based on work sponsored wholly, or in part, by the Office of
Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), Department of Education, under contract number
RJ6006501.The contents of this publication does not necessarily reflect the views OERI, the Department,or any other agency of the U.S. government.
© Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory: September 1998.
Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory
101 SW Main Street, Suite 500, Portland, OR 97204

Strengthening Community Education:
The Basis for Sustainable Renewal

MAPPINGCOMMUNITYASSETSWORKBOOK

by Diane Dorfman

INTRODUCTION
Asset: An item of value owned;
a quality, condition, or entity thatserves as an advantage, support,
resource, or source of strength

council that runs it? The “crime problem?” The
unemployment rate? These may all be attributesof a place, but they are also just perspectives.
Perspectives can be diverse, and each one changes
the nature of what it is you are observing. From acommunity development perspective, it helps tothink of our communities in terms of the wealthin people, things, services, and resources that exist
there. And that is what our work here is: to try tounderstand how to approach what we do from a
positive, creative, productive perspective—a perspective that builds from strengths, resources,
and assets.

Mapping: To make a map of; toshow or establish the features ordetails of, with clarity like that of amap; to make a survey of, or travel
over for, as if for the purpose of
making a map

Asset mapping, drawing a map of what is valuablein our communities, is an exercise in community
development. If you are looking for a way to begin
work towards organizing local people to take anactive role in the place where they live, it is a goodidea to start with what you know. If you don’t know
the place where you live, how will you know how
to take advantage of all there is to offer? How will
you know how to build a strong, active community
without the foundation of assets that are alreadyright there?

Asset mapping reveals and explores those resources
and assets. More importantly, it shows all the interconnections among assets; these interconnections
reveal ways to access the assets. How you get tothe assets and use them, and the people involvedin the getting and using, all these are also assets.
Assets—the relations among them and access to
use them—these are the grounds on which communities are built.

This workbook
asks us to sit down
and think about
who and where
we are as a firststep in getting towhere we want togo.What is thiscommunity wewant to develop?
Is it its geographic
dimensions? Its history? Its demography? Is it the towniii

Star ting from the Top: My Stuff
What do we consider assets? Put yourself in the center and begin a personal asset map. Around you,write down your assets.

1

You have begun a personal asset map.You haveput down what you consider valuable that is yours.
Is everything on your map a material good (a car,house, bank account)? Are these all your assets?
Does a beautiful smile count? How about fluency
in three languages?
Go back and fill in any nonmaterial thing
you did not include that you might consider
an asset.
Assets are more than cars and houses,
or even a great pitching arm. How has
your life been affected by people? How
did you get the stuff? Did you borrowmoney for a car? From a bank? Fromfamily or friends? How are people andtheir relationship to you assets?

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As your map grows, we begin to see that assets are both things (material objects)
and people (relationships with others and others’ involvement in your connection to things). People and things surround us, make up the whole of our world.
Trade your map with a neighbor (preferably someone you do not know well).
With just a glance or two at this person’s map, what do you learn about him or her?

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What kinds of things does this map of people and things NOT tell us about this person?

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Perhaps a more detailed map would help us know more.What kinds of things would need to be included
so that we could know this person really well just by reading his or her map?

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This is really what asset mapping is about:
Learning about something by finding out
all that comprises it.This knowledge canbe one of the most important components in community work.
How would you begin an asset
map of a place?

Some things seem to define us, while others tell less about “who we really are.”But each item on the map brings us closer to knowledge of the whole person.
Breaking ourselves down item by
item, person by person, helps us
build an encompassing picture of
the whole; it helps us learn who or
what that whole is.

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What would the things you previously listed tell you about the place you are mapping?

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Below we will begin the process of learning about our communities by mapping them.

NOT NEEDS BUT ASSETS

Mapping a Community
When you think of your community, do you see ageographic map in your mind? Or perhaps you see aretail and residential map that tells you what’s available and where people live.
We know a lot of things about our communities, butthere is often much we never know about because
we do not know how or what toask about them.

Does your list above focus on what your community needs and how to make up for what it
lacks? It is common in community development work to begin by assessing needs.
This approach to knowing communities
basically maps deficiencies. It seems logicalthat it will be a lot harder to build or develop
your community from nothing (what it does
not have) than from something (its assets).
To build from what you do have requires
asking different kinds of questions to learn
different kinds of things about where we live.
We can create a map of our community thattells us what and where its assets are: the positive, powerful people and things that contribute ideas, resources, and capacities.This
is the focus and goal of asset mapping.

What do we know about theplaces in which we live? Maybe
one thing we know is that somehow we want to develop, renew,
or revitalize the place. If you areinterested in strengthening yourcommunity, you must have somesense of it.Why do you believe it should be developed, or that anything should be done with it?

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Communities can only be built by focusing on the strengths and capacitiesof the citizens who call that community home. Those who have escaped
the lures of deficiency, therefore, have been drawing up a new map basedon old truths, an “Assets Map”... At the center of the map, and of thecommunity building process, lie the “gifts” of individual residents, theirknowledge, skills, resources, values, and commitments.
(John Kretzman,1997).

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First we must learn to know our places.Where do we start? Is there any one thing that
instantly springs to mind when the name of your community is uttered? Skiing? Wheat?
An annual festival? Can you map your community with whatever is special in the center?
Who and what comprise or are connected to this special center?

You have now begun to map your community as
a collection of assets, as a positive, useful resource.
At the center is a main event, feature, or product.
From here radiate, perhaps, the wheat farmers, theirmarket, their suppliers, and their connections toeach other.
This is the beginning of learning about our communities as places FULL of positive, useful resources.
What other resources could you list that did notappear on the map?

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We can return to our personal maps and recall that we distinguished there
between things as assets and people as assets. Did you include any of those assets
in your community map? How many people have you listed on your community
map? Are there two or three? Go back to a couple of the people, list them below,
and write briefly about your relationship with them.
PersonRelationship..........................................................................................................................................................
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make richer, wider ranging, more illustrative maps.

People are important on these maps in several
ways.We can think of them as resources, relationships, and mappers. Let’s start with the last term:
mappers. If a community is more than the sum of
its parts, it is also not any one of those parts alone.
So it would be hard, if not impossible, for a single
member of that community to create its asset maps.
People working together—drawing on multitudesof relationships, experiences, resources, and skills—

Therefore, it is best to work in partnership withothers to create these maps.
Now, let’s continue to think about people. How
are people resources (owners of goods, knowledge,
and skills)? Return to the people you listed andthink about them in terms of resources.What do
you come up with?

PersonResource..........................................................................................................................................................
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Or did you include both kinds of things? If you
started with material goods, now list their knowledge, skills, and abilities (or vice versa).

Where did you start? Did you think of these people
in terms of stuff they own (material things) or
knowledge, skills, and abilities they have to offer?
PersonResource..........................................................................................................................................................
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We may be able to do this for a few people that weknow, but how do we learn about members of ourcommunities we haven’t met? To elicit informationon community assets in order to draw our maps, afirst step could be to develop a questionnaire that
may be sent out to a broad range of community residents or used in interviews. The questions shouldreflect the goals of your own community’s work.
John Kretzman and John McKnight have written abook on how to learn about a community’s assets.
According to them, a typical questionnaire might
cover:• Enterprising interests and experience, aimed at
uncovering past and present business experience, culture, and arts skills.

• Skills information, including skills people havelearned at home, in the community, or at theworkplace. Usually people are asked to identify
their “priority skills,” those about which they are
most confident.

Briefly put together a questionnaire with about six
to 10 questions that cover the information listed
above. Questions might touch on whether a person
has cared for children or aging parents; what kindsof repairs or improvements they have done on
their homes; whether they make their own gifts,
give a lot of parties, or work/play on
computers. How would you answer
your questions?

• Minimum personal information, for follow-up
purposes (Kretzman, 1997).

Using a questionnaire is also a great way to get toknow and begin to develop relationships with people.You may find that the quiet man who is known
only as a heavy drinker is a carpenter; a mathteacher is a cellist.

• Community skills information, aimed at uncovering precious community experienceand potential interests.

9Your Questionnaire

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How did you do? Now look at the answers of apartner or member of your group.You two canalready begin to build a pool of resources, skills,
and knowledge.What, though, do we do with thispool? How do we begin to put it to use?

can provide a strong foundation for continued
building of assets and community. Relationships
provide access to assets, another reason why they
are assets themselves.
Once you have begun to learn of all the things people have to offer, you can begin also to see how
people are connected and what value lies in thoseconnections. People can be connected throughtheir assets (you are in a network with the woman
who brokered your house sale), but connections
themselves are an asset (and she helped your sister
find a house when she moved to your town).

One thing we could do is see how our skills,
resources, and knowledge complement each other.
Maybe you are a potter and your neighbor an excellent accountant: a business is in the making.
Now, think about where or how you could offer
your resource pool to the community. Skills are notskills unless they go to work, and unless they areaccessible, they can’t work.This is where you can
go back to thinking about services that are currently going unrendered, or things that are wanted but
not yet realized for those who want them. For
instance, if Main Street is boarded and ghostly,
a pottery shop would be a vital contribution.

Write down a recent project you worked on inyour home, job, or community (such as buying ahome, organizing little league, chairing the PTA
bake sale, etc.). Then write in all the people you
worked with in this project.
Project: ..................................................................................
People:....................................................................................
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Matching assets to needs can also be achieved inanother way. Taking the collection of skills andknowledge you and your partner or group amassed,
you can set up a skills bank and begin an exchange:
people who need your expertise can ask for it; thenthey offer whatever they have to the bank and it
can be drawn at any time by anyone. Use a blankpiece of paper as a ledger of accounts and begin
to make some deposits and withdrawals on yourskills bank.

Now return to each name and see if the people towhom you are connected are connected to one
another. What is the nature of that connection? Do
you even know of its existence? If one of your coworkers coaches the softball team of your librarian’s
daughter, important links to resources and institutions can be traced through these relationships.

Relationships

If you don’t know about these relationships, how could you find out about
them? One way is to have more people in on your mapping. Anotherway is to alter your questionnaire
so it elicits information on
relationships.Yet anotherway is to find people
through places: buildings,
groups, or institutions.

With every exchange you as an individual
make, you become a part of a relationship.You give to someone who in turngives to another, and you receive some
wisdom, service, or object in exchange.
These exchanges begin to set up
networks. Once the service has
been rendered or the knowledge
shared, the relationship can remainin place.Your link to other people

11Institutions

a particular person there. He or she is another relationship, both to the person and the agency.

As you wrote in
the names on theprevious page, did
the people come“on their own” orwere they part ofsome organization,enterprise, or institution? You may have added on to your house.
Friends offered advice, but so did clerks at home
improvement stores. Each clerk is a new node in a
network, and they are linked to their workplace,which may also be counted as an asset to that
network. Connections to people can also be,
or become, connections to resource-filled
institutions. Likewise, your connection tosome organization or institution may actuallyconceal a personal relationship.You may say
your house loancame through “X”
agency, but in fact
you worked with

Let’s begin to broaden our maps by including institutions, organizations, and enterprises. First, on thefollowing page, list those that you are currently connected to (any office, club, league, enterprise and soforth you are connected to). Then compare yourmap with your neighbors’. Build a comprehensive
list of local organizations and institutions, and lookfor overlap. To what institutions do more than
one person belong?
Next, compare your “people knowledge” ofplaces. Ask your neighbors to list any people
they know of that belong to an institution
you wrote down. See how many of thosepeople you know yourself. Do the samefor their lists.
Look at ways inwhich each placeis also a collection of people.

12Institutions: A Map

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is connected to other churches and so congregations of like or different denominations. It may evenhave a newsletter. List three institutions from yourpooled list and write down all the resources you
can think of contained within it.

What else are places good for? What other assets dothey hold? A church may have meeting rooms that
could hold meetings or classes; kitchen facilities forbake sales, meeting refreshments, or community
picnics; or blackboards, offices, and telephones. It

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Did You Happen to Mention the SCHOOL?
The school is important, not just because it is abuilding bursting with possibilities. List a few if
you haven’t already:One institution that is found in almost every community—one that holds valuable resources, knowledge, and assets—is one that is often overlooked.

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places they live. Rural youth may learn from TV andprint ads that urban lifestyles or what can be acquiredin malls define all that is good and desirable. For it
is not enough for folks to learn about the positive
things in their own places; they must see the value
in those things as well.

The school may be the most important institution
you can count on for the simple reason that young
people are there. If a community is to be a community, it has to have identity, economic vitality, andsustainability (among other things).The next generation’s participation and support go a long way
towards insuring sustainability. But many kids leave
their communities for college orwork. How can we make it possible for them to stay in or to
return to their home towns afteradvanced schooling or training?
If they learn (in school!)
locally appropriate skills—
through curriculum developed inconcert with local economic development initiatives—then they can graduate and be
ideally suited for local employment possibilities.
They will be able to pursue careers locally!

School and community-based learning curriculums
go a long way towards getting kids to know about
the places in which they live, and to see the valueof that place. Moreover, by participating in community projects, they see important places for themselves within their communities.They can learn
biology and about the
local pond. History
class can involve
interviews withlocal senior citizens who may
have participated in thefounding of the town, labor
strikes, migrations, or an international war.

Getting kids to identify with a place also
makes them more connected to it; they
have more reasons to staythere, andthis toohelps
achieve sustainable change.The
school can play a big partin building connections to place. In many
places, kids do not think much of their communities—maybe they are too poor or
remote. Many kids learn to identify
success and achievement withqualities and things that arefound outside theOn the next page, designclasses for any subject—science, math, English, history, or combinations ofsubjects—that gets students out into theircommunity. It’s noteasy. Where would
you begin? Who or
what would need
to be involved?

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Community as Curriculum

Conclusion....................................................................................
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Learning how to ask what
communities have to offer
begins a process of building,creating, and developing. It brings
resources, knowledge,
skills, capacities, and people together. Throughthese connections, accessto more resources andassets is at our fingertips.
As we build relationships
with people, agencies,
institutions, or businesses,
we increase our connections
and access to a multitude ofassets.

Below, list people and institutions that are involvedin the project you created.
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Asset mapping can be a tool atmany stages of community building processes, and involve many different participants. How would a map made by co-workers look?
What different kinds of things could a students’map have to offer? What would happen if the students read the workers map and vice versa? What
could they learn about their community and about
each other?
Try mapping with different groups. See what happens when students, workers, administrators, police,
and business people build a map together.

Did you think about a project for which theresources (people or places) were not readily available? What was lacking? Was it really lacking, or perhaps just overlooked? Would an asset map of particular skills, business opportunities, or people be able
to help ferret out the resources you’d need? An
asset map could also show how you might modify
the project so that (1) it didn’t rely on locallyunavailable resources, or (2) it created a way todevelop the resources that are currently lacking.
Students could be a part of developing resources
as they learn about their hometowns, what’s there,
and what they have to offer.

Once the assets are identified and you learn how
to access and use them, a variety of new ideas about
directions for community building may follow. As
more people come into the process and bring ideas
as well as skills and resources, new approaches toold issues will come into the process as well.

16