Because they work from their strengths. Most efforts to address inner city problems have concentrated on weaknesses' Most efforts to address inner city and other community problems have concentrated on weaknesses, the map everyone knows, of unemployment, gangs, crime, welfare, illiteracy, and so on. The most insidious part of this map is that people begin to believe it, for what we concentrate on grows. Leaders get resources from outside in this system by denying their community's strengths, by emphasising lack. Solutions generated for this very negative story are patchwork solutions and services, encouraging dependency on outsiders.
Residents become 'special needs' and service consumers that only outside resources can fix.
Yet weaknesses are only a small part of the truth. Kretzmann's book, Building Communities from the Inside Out, inspired by Bernice, is a book of success stories by people who looked instead at the strengths of troubled communities, and wove them together. Even the most troubled neighbourhoods have individuals and organisations with resources that can be used more effectively. They estimated that this was half the total. A full 75 per cent of those groups were willing to do more in their communities - and no one had ever asked them before.