How to Ask Better Community Questions: It’s as Easy as ABCD with Cormac Russell – SASM 127

Cormac Russell and Joel Zaslofsky Combined Picture

You're about to Learn ...

  • Why our unexpressed gifts can do tremendous harm.
  • How an institutionalized five-year-old changed Cormac’s life direction.
  • Why community makes a better verb than a noun.
  • How to get past the sense that someone’s either trying to sell you something or sell you out.
  • The two words that simply summarize Asset-Based Community Development.
  • How to have conversations that respect the past and present, but aren’t held captive by either.
  • When to show up as a host or guest in someone’s life.
  • How to ask better questions about and within your communities.
  • Why consumer culture is actually an anti-culture.
  • Why emphasizing discoverables is better than focusing on deliverables.
  • How Asset-Based Community Driven Efforts may be the next evolution of ABCD.

Resources and Items Mentioned in This Episode

Timestamps and Topics

  • [03:17] How I think about community and my sense of belonging
  • [12:41] Cormac’s seeds of awesomeness
  • [19:23] How being an orphan informs Cormac’s ABCD work
  • [24:23] How Cormac’s background in psychology and “community care” led him to ABCD
  • [29:31] The essence of ABCD
  • [33:30] Community as a verb, not a noun
  • [39:38] The tension between trust and privacy
  • [52:02] The limits of ABCD and discoverables over deliverables

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