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SUBJECT: Kretzmann Lecture and Workshop Series

CONTACT: Bonnie Sachatello-Sawyer, Hopa Mountain, (406) 586-2455

Hopa Mountain, along with our partners Opportunity Link, The Associated Students of MSU, and Horizons, hosted renowned sociologist Dr. John “Jody” Kretzmann in a short lecture and workshop series in Bozeman and Havre at the end of March. In Bozeman, nearly a hundred community-focused individuals attended Dr. Kretzmann’s workshop “Building Strong Communities: Asset-based Strategies and Tools” for an opportunity to learn from and interact with a gentleman whose 35 years of experience have taken him the world over and witnessed hope and progress arise from disparity and poverty. The workshop spurred from the book series he and his organization, the Asset-based Community Development Institute, have published for specific community betterment facets. He stressed the importance of communities to strengthen and embrace local relationships, noting how “Local relationships are like a muscle. If you don’t use them, they atrophy.” Another major topic he touched on was the current system of mentalities associated with grant writing. Dr. Kretzmann recognizes that the current system appears to “reward failure” in that organizations have to prove that they have not made enough of an impact on that which they are addressing with the given funds. This recurring funding creates a dependency for the organization, and the way to achieve this renewable resource is to prove that you have not successfully addressed your respective issue yet.

The lecture, titled “Building Vital Communities from the Inside Out”, drew around 50 people to MSU where students were told of how much impact that they can have on these strives to develop communities with this strength-based approach. Here, Dr. Kretzmann employed a fresh look on the ‘glass half full’ cliché, as he did at all of the gatherings. It was not a matter of focusing on the empty half or the full half, but rather “recognizing that everyone has a combination of fullness and emptiness”, said Dr. Kretzmann. The students, invited by the MSU Leadership Institute, seemed to get quite involved in Dr. Kretzmann’s call to arms for their fresh approaches towards uniting

One of his most compelling stories of hope came from an individual that he had the pleasure of meeting in the South Bronx during a time that The Bronx was well-known as a place of decay. He paints a scene of a place that more than 100,000 high-paying industrial jobs relocated and left the community in a state of true despair. Small outposts of community participation in reformation started naturally sprouting up, and it appeared that with any research, the name Edna Johnson could be found as an integral player in the betterment processes. Dr. Kretzmann’s story is the one of 14 African American men had taken it upon themselves to change their ways. He tells that in the previous 18 months to his visit, the young men were involved in drugs and gang activity and feared that they would end up dead or imprisoned if they continued their lives of crime. They turned to Mrs. Edna Johnson for a suggestion of how to better their situations, and she took to heart their desire to change. She introduced them to a project that had started in Harlem not too long ago, a project involving teens and young adults trading in their old ways for carpentry and plumbing skills and participating in Youth Build. These 14 individuals openly embraced this idea and were quick to undergo training and looked forward to being productive and giving members of society. This simple suggestion from a woman very in tune with ways to better her community helped these young men turn their lives around.

Dr. Kretzmann, always affirming that he considers himself a realist and not an optimist, recognized that these were wonderful strides taken in the right direction in a community that was still falling farther from its prime. To be frank, he asked Mrs. Johnson “This is still the south Bronx. How do you explain this downward spiral of this community?” She paused for nearly a minute, he recollected. Dr. Kretzmann believes that Edna was reeling through the laundry list of ‘right’ answers to this direct question about the state of her home community. She scanned answers of hope, answers that could dissuade the pessimism, answers that could deny the decline of the south Bronx. The silence was broken when she responded, “The worst thing that ever happened to this community is that we were put in a prison”. Dr. Kretzmann noted that he saw no barbed wire fences or patrolling guards in his view from Edna’s porch where they sat and chatted. She followed with the idea that she was referring to “a prison made up of people’s ideas of who we are.” She was not externalizing the plight of her community, but addressing the fact that outside forces were a big part of their reputation and stereotypes.

In Havre, Dr. Kretzmann met with a similar roomful of people concerned with learning how they can better address their specific community issues. His advice was thorough and beneficial, and presented in ways that everyone can simply understand and implement. He stated the importance of sustainability, and recognized that every community is made of assets. The simple three steps of creating sustainable recognized assets is that the leaders must

(1.) Find the assets.
(2.) Connect the assets
(3.) Link the assets to the ongoing vision of the future.

These pearls of wisdom and advice stem from years of hands-on experience with diverse communities facing the same issue of how to rally their own troops in the fight for change and betterment. He is a master of relating these principles to stories, in part due to his lengthy experience with many facets of societal unrest. From the reformation of the South Bronx and the Civil Right movement to influencing civic engagement activities for Saskatchewan, Dr. Kretzmann’s stories and teachings have helped to ignite the passions in citizen leaders spanning geography and time.

The core of this lecture series was that people make sure to look at the whole picture when considering the well being of their community and deciding how to engage the local leaders towards betterment. It was stressed that this does not mean simply focusing on the positives, but making sure to recognize ass assets and facets of the community as factors governing progressive change. This approach is successful in that it does not start out addressing the deficits of the community that need to be filled and overcome, but rather focusing on what is already going well and ways in which individuals can elevate and expand these successful practices. The perception of the community needs to be one of promise and hope in order for productive change to occur.

SUBJECT: Community Asset workshop and lecture by John “Jody” Kretzmann

CONTACT: Bonnie Sachatello-Sawyer, Hopa Mountain, (406) 586-2455

On Tuesday, March 25, Dr. John “Jody” Kretzmann will lead a workshop on Building Strong Communities: Asset-based Strategies and Tools from 9 a.m. – 3 p.m. at the Holiday Inn in Bozeman. In this workshop, learn more about the assets to discover and mobilize the skills and interests of individual residents, local voluntary associations, local institutions, the physical assets of the community (e.g. land, buildings, transportation), the economy, the community's culture and stories. The cost is $15, which includes lunch.

Kretzmann is the Co-Director of the Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) Institute at Northwestern University (Chicago, IL) and author of Building Communities from the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community’s Assets. He has international recognition as an inspiring, straightforward, and wise advocate of strength-based approaches to building healthy local communities.

Kretzmann will also give an evening lecture in Montana State University ‘s Ballroom D on March 25 at 7 p.m. entitled Building Vital Communities from the Inside Out. This free evening lecture is open to everyone interested in learning about practical resources and tools to identify, nurture, and mobilize neighborhood assets. Kretzmann challenges the traditional approach to solving community problems, which focuses service providers and funding agencies on the needs and deficiencies of communities. He demonstrates that community assets are key building blocks in sustainable urban and rural community revitalization efforts.

This program is co-sponsored by Hopa Mountain, Opportunity Link, Montana State University’s Horizons Program and Leadership Institute, and ASMSU. To register for the workshop, visit www.hopamountain.org or call Hopa Mountain at (406) 586-2455.

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