Coady and Celebrating Community

Whilst in Nova Scotia, I spent a useful few days at the Coady International Institute, at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish.

The Coady Institute is committed to, “advancing community self-reliance, global security, social justice and democratic participation and has been providing educational opportunities for community development workers from over 130 countries for over half a century”.

Citizen driven and asset based approaches are at the heart of what Coady does and their training on Asset Based Community Development attracts students from all over the world with many of the students coming from developing countries.



I made it! Outside the Coady Institute.



The Institute is named after Rev Moses Coady, who, back in 1939 described how the rural people of northeast Nova Scotia were "using what they have to create what they have not". Coady didn't call what he was doing back then ABCD, but his description was the same:

“promoting citizen-led development that combined people's skills, capacities, savings and social capital with physical and natural resources to build local economies.”

Today the Coady Institute continues to promote approaches to community development that place citizens at the centre of the development process and which draw on the assets communities already have to help create what they have not.

The very excellent library at the Coady Institute.

I spent a day in the Coady's excellent and well stocked library where I was able to watch the 'Unnatural Causes" series - which I highly recommend as essential viewing to anyone  interested in health inequalities and the social determinants of health.

I also had useful discussions about the Coady’s work on asset based approaches to community development with a number of people at the Institute including Gord Cunningham, Brianne Peters and Alison Mathie.

I was keen to get a better understanding of how we could build on the work we have done on identifying assets and the development of social capital in the Altogether Better Programme, and how we could encourage greater use of asset based approaches to help sustain some of the work of our 16 projects.

Gord reflected that, ABCD is about a set of principles more than anything else and that these principles can be built into organisations and how they operate. He explained; “people are trying ABCD in their own ways…” and that a, “generic ‘strength’ based approach rather than pure ABCD is being used in many places”. Perhaps we need to think about how a similar set of ABCD principles could be incorporated into our work in the UK…

Gord described ABCD as, “a conversation about the rights and responsibilities of citizenship more than anything else”. Much of their thinking on ABCD approaches is encompassed in a recent publication, “From Clients to Citizens”. Gord explained how the process of simply identifying assets in communities can create positive momentum, “people are amazed at what [assets] they have”. Alison added to this by saying that, “ABCD is as much about asset building as it is about asset mobilising”.

Much of Brianne's work is with communities and organisations in Africa and she was able to give me some useful introductions to people in South Africa for the 2nd stage of my fellowship in October.

Whilst much of the Coady’s work is internationally focused –they also realised there was an example of ABCD in action happening closer to home - in the community of St Andrews – just 10 miles down the road.

I spent some time with Mary van den Heuvel from St Andrews, who completed the ABCD course at Coady in 2008 and now works at the Institute. St Andrew’s has a population of 1,100 and around 14 community organisations representing a range of interests.

Mary told me how the interest from the Coady Institute had ‘shone a light’ on St Andrews and highlighted what they were doing and achieving as a community. “This helped people to see the vast range of assets they had and encouraged people to mobilise these assets for better outcomes for the community.”

The St Andrew’s community has its own website which sums up their progress:

“The people of St. Andrews have built this community with a solid base of cooperation and volunteerism. During the last 30 years softball fields were built on land donated by a community member, the church and six cemeteries were upgraded, and a fire hall was established. In the last decade and a half, a curling rink and a community centre were built and money was raised to dig nine wells for villages in India and Haiti. In 2006, St. Andrews opened the first phase of a community-owned and community-managed housing project for seniors and the second phase opened in 2008. Community spirit continues in fourteen strong community organizations. “ (from www.standrewscommunity.ca)

The St Andrew’s Community Partnership is made up of representative from the 14 organisations in the community and they have even developed a strategic plan for the community. In 2009, St Andrews Community was awarded the ‘Community Spirit Award’ from the Lieutenant Governor for Nova Scotia and has also won the “Excellence in Collaboration Award” from the Provincial Government of Nova Scotia in recognition of its achievements in Community Development activities.

They continue to build on and mobilise community assets by asking three simple questions:

1.       What action is needed?

2.      What do we have inside? (what assets and resources)

3.      What do we need from outside?

Read more about St Andrews on their website here and in this summary produced by the Coady. 

My knowledge and learning around ABCD is growing thanks to my time at the Coady and has been enhanced further by meeting with Jim Diers in Seattle last week. Today I am getting the great opportunity to attend a session facilitated by Jim and John McKnight of the ABCD Institute in Chicago. Both Jim and John's work has been a great source of inspiration for my fellowship so feels a very fitting end to my journey (yes folks - this is my last week and I fly home on Wednesday 27th).