Section 4. Asset Development

 

Adolescence is a time of experimentation. Young people test themselves physically, intellectually, socially, and emotionally, all in the service of learning what it means to be an adult. Most young people move through their teen years without experiencing serious, lasting problems. They may have some close calls and have their hearts broken once or twice, but, by and large, they move into adulthood, go on to further education or work, and build lives for themselves.

Some young people experience more serious challenges. They may smoke heavily, drink excessively, use drugs, become involved in violence, get in trouble with the law, experience pregnancy or parenthood during adolescence, or even die – including by suicide or in an alcohol-related driving crash.

We often view young people who have difficulty in a negative way: they have “problems,” or are seen as lacking basic traits – intelligence, self-control, empathy, or persistence, for instance. There’s another way to consider the issue, however: perhaps these young people simply haven’t had enough of the factors in their lives that adolescents need in order to grow into successful, caring, productive adults.

A child benefits from caring parents or caregivers, of course, but is also helped by having positive lessons and values reinforced by what they see and hear from other adults in the community, and by the behavior of society as a whole. It really does take a village to raise a child.

Chapter 2 of the Community Tool Box is about models of community change – ways to introduce changes that will continue improving the quality of life for everyone in the community indefinitely. In this section, we’ll discuss using a model of community change that focuses on young people. It assumes that fostering the internal and external assets that contribute to the healthy development of children and adolescents is the task not only of parents and caregivers, but of the whole community, and proposes that communities be organized to accomplish it. And it assumes that improving life for the community’s children and adolescents will also improve it for the community as a whole.

What is asset development?

Developmental assets are positive characteristics and factors that form the foundation of the healthy development of children and adolescents. A community engaged in asset development for young people is committed to identifying developmental assets that may be less available to children and adolescents in the community, and to working to strengthen access to those assets. The Search Institute (SI) of Minneapolis, Minnesota developed a framework of 40 developmental assets for adolescents, based on its own survey research and the theories and research of others in the field.

In the research summarized in this section, the more of these assets adolescents reported having in their lives, the less likely they were to report behaviors or situations that increased risk. Those behaviors and situations included:

• Substance use (alcohol, drugs, tobacco).
• Sexual activity. Sexual activity during adolescence can involve emotional and physical risks. Those risks can be greater when protection is not used or when adolescents have multiple sexual partners.
• Violence. This can mean anything from experiencing bullying or abuse to carrying or using a gun.
• Behavioral and legal problems. The range here extends from persistent conflict with teachers or other authority figures to serious trouble with the law.
• Depression and suicide risk. Not all depression leads to suicide, of course, and not all adolescents experiencing depression consider suicide. Depression during adolescence can nevertheless be serious, and suicide is a critical concern.
• School difficulties. Academic difficulties, truancy, absence, etc.
• Alcohol-impaired driving. A combination that can lead to arrest, property damage, injury, and death.
• Gambling. Gambling can lead to serious financial problems and put adolescents and their families under significant pressure when debts accumulate.

Thriving indicators are the traits or conditions that indicate positive development. Search Institute studies summarized in this section also found that the more developmental assets adolescents reported, the more thriving indicators they were likely to have. The thriving indicators measured included:

• School success. Good grades, mostly A’s or A’s and B’s.
• Helping others. Spending at least one hour a week helping others outside one’s own family.
• Valuing diversity. Having friends from different ethnic and racial groups, and an interest in their experiences and cultures.
• Good health. Engaging in behaviors – exercise, adequate sleep, good nutrition, and regular medical and dental care – that promote and maintain good physical health.
• Leadership. Taking a leadership position at school, in extracurricular activities, or in the community.
• Resistance to danger. The ability to manage one’s own impulses and peer pressure in order to avoid dangerous behavior and situations.
• Delaying gratification. The ability to save for a future purchase, or otherwise put off immediate pleasure in favor of a larger or more important gain later.
• Overcoming adversity. The capacity to keep going after a failure, or to continue a task or effort in the face of difficulty.

The original list of developmental assets SI compiled numbered 30, but it was increased to 40 as a result of information received in its early surveys. The list was derived both empirically – i.e., as a result of information gathered directly by the Search Institute itself – and from the theories and research of others.

In the studies summarized here, SI identified 31 or more assets as an ideal range associated with positive adolescent development, while fewer than 10% of adolescents surveyed reported that many. The average number reported in most of the communities described was 18-20, and more than 60% of young people surveyed reported 20 or fewer. The communities surveyed were largely White, but varied in economic status, education, types of employment, and urban, suburban, and rural characteristics.

The survey described in this section consisted of 156 items, each intended to gather information about a specific asset, behavior that increases risk, or thriving indicator. It was designed for young people in grades 6-12. The emphasis was not on completing it within a particular amount of time, but on providing accurate information, with appropriate allowance for age, reading ability, language fluency, and other factors that could affect completion.

Half of the 40 assets are labeled external, provided directly by parents, teachers, the community, or environmental factors. The rest are considered internal, coming from within the adolescent. In reality, however, the distinction is less clear. Internal assets are often specifically taught or encouraged by parents, caregivers, and other significant adults, for instance, or are fostered by community norms and attitudes. External assets may also be influenced by the child’s or adolescent’s relationships, experiences, and individual characteristics.

External assets are further divided into four categories:

• Support. People significant to the adolescent encourage, help, and respect them.
• Empowerment. The adolescent has opportunities to exercise responsibility and to feel a sense of control over important parts of their own life.
• Boundaries and expectations. The adolescent is expected to adhere to clear rules and meet high standards.
• Constructive use of time. The adolescent has opportunities to engage in meaningful and productive activity.

Internal assets are also divided into four categories:

• Commitment to learning. The adolescent understands the value of learning and education, and can apply themselves in school and other areas of learning.
• Positive values. The adolescent has developed and internalized a positive value system.
• Social competencies. The adolescent possesses personal and interpersonal skills to manage their own life and engage in positive relationships with others.
• Positive identity. The adolescent sees themselves in a positive light and has a healthy sense of self-worth.

What are the characteristics of an asset development program?

In the process described in this section, a community organizes to conduct an asset assessment, often through the schools, administers the survey, and receives an analysis of the results. The community then uses that information to determine how to respond to its own needs. Many communities have used their initial organization to mount a participatory effort based on the analysis.

Communities that have assessed developmental assets have used their results to create community plans for supporting children and adolescents.

Once a community – or, more likely, a school system, community-based organization, parents’ group, community official, or governing body – has decided to establish an asset development approach, what should that approach look like? There are some specific characteristics common to a careful asset development effort.

• The effort demands a commitment from the whole community. The asset development approach assumes that, to address challenges affecting young people, it isn’t enough to focus only on individual adolescents experiencing greater risks. A community must make a commitment to developing supportive assets for all its young people. In broadest terms, that commitment includes:
  • A commitment to administering an asset assessment or conducting a similar study that asks children and adolescents themselves – and, in some cases, adults important in their lives and in the community – about the assets they believe are available to them.
  • A commitment by community leaders – elected and appointed officials, school personnel, the business community, opinion leaders, etc. – to support an asset development effort, both with their voices and their resources.
  • Acceptance by the community of the idea that asset development is a community-wide activity that demands a commitment from adults whether or not they are parents.
• The effort should be participatory. As with most types of community efforts, asset development works best if it is conceived, planned, and implemented through a process that involves all sectors of the community, particularly those most directly affected – young people, in this case. A participatory process often involves the formation of a coalition or other leadership body that includes representation from all sectors of the community, including young people, to plan, coordinate, monitor, and oversee asset development efforts.
• The effort should be based on what’s actually needed in the particular community. An asset assessment or some other form of community assessment should be conducted to determine which assets are already widely available to young people and which may need strengthening. Strategies can then be devised to strengthen assets that are less available while maintaining those that are already strong.
• The effort should focus on the positive. Like the other health and community development models we’ve discussed so far in this chapter, asset development has a proactive, positive thrust. It is based on building assets rather than fixing deficits. An asset-developing community is engaged in positive actions that are meant to become an integral part of community life and to affect the quality of that life for generations to come.

At the same time, the need to strengthen assets may coexist with immediate concerns – violence involving young people, school difficulties, substance use among adolescents, etc. Asset-building may be accompanied by strategies that address current problems as well as seek to keep them from recurring. While stronger developmental assets may help reduce violence involving young people over time, for instance, it’s also important to address immediate safety concerns. You can keep a positive and future-oriented emphasis on the overall effort and still deal with current realities. Don’t let ideology steer you away from reality.

• Asset development demands a coordinated, community-wide effort. This means something slightly different from community commitment, although that commitment is probably necessary for a community-wide effort to be mounted. An asset development effort needs to be carefully coordinated so that all sectors of the community – young people and adults, health and human service organizations, community-based and nonprofit organizations, community officials and agencies, businesses, etc. – are working together toward the same goals and sending the same messages.

A community-wide effort also implies that people throughout the community take responsibility for supporting the community’s children and adolescents. It may mean adults responding appropriately when they see a young person in a situation likely to lead to harm or serious trouble. It may also mean parents, caregivers, and other adults volunteering time with adolescents or younger children as coaches, supervisors of after-school activities, community-service mentors, etc.

In the working-class urban neighborhood where the author grew up, for instance, adults knew the children in the neighborhood and wouldn’t hesitate to intervene or call a parent if they saw a child doing something likely to cause trouble. While that made childhood mischief a problem, it also meant that children felt fairly safe. They knew adults would intervene to keep them from getting hurt, and they also knew that the rules would be enforced throughout the neighborhood. In that environment, adults generally felt some responsibility for the children around them, whether or not they were parents themselves.

What are the developmental assets that children and young people need?

The following list of the 40 developmental assets, divided into categories, is based on the Search Institute’s 1997 framework.

External Assets

• Support
  • Family Support – Family life provides high levels of love and support.
  • Positive Family Communication – Young person and parent(s) communicate positively, and the young person is willing to seek advice and counsel from parents.
  • Other Adult Relationships – Young person receives support from three or more nonparent adults.
  • Caring Neighborhood – Young person experiences caring neighbors.
  • Caring School Climate – School provides a caring, encouraging environment.
  • Parent Involvement in Schooling – Parent(s) are actively involved in helping the young person succeed in school.
• Empowerment
  • Community Values Youth – Young person perceives that adults in the community value young people.
  • Youth as Resources – Young people are given useful roles in the community.
  • Service to Others – Young person serves in the community one hour or more per week.
  • Safety – Young person feels safe at home, in school, and in the neighborhood.
• Boundaries and Expectations
  • Family Boundaries – Family has clear rules and consequences and monitors the young person’s whereabouts.
  • School Boundaries – School provides clear rules and consequences.
  • Neighborhood Boundaries – Neighbors take responsibility for monitoring young people’s behavior.
  • Adult Role Models – Parent(s) and other adults model positive, responsible behavior.
  • Positive Peer Influence – Young person’s best friends model responsible behavior.
  • High Expectations – Both parent(s) and teachers encourage the young person to do well.
• Constructive Use of Time
  • Creative Activities – Young person spends three or more hours per week in lessons or practice in music, theater, or other arts.
  • Youth Programs – Young person spends three or more hours per week in sports, clubs, or organizations at school and/or in the community.
  • Religious Community – Young person spends one or more hours per week in activities in a religious institution.
  • Time at Home – Young person is out with friends “with nothing special to do” two or fewer nights per week.
  • Internal Assets
• Commitment to Learning
  • Achievement Motivation – Young person is motivated to do well in school.
  • School Engagement – Young person is actively engaged in learning.
  • Homework – Young person reports doing at least one hour of homework every school day.
  • Bonding to School – Young person cares about their school.
  • Reading for Pleasure – Young person reads for pleasure three or more hours per week.
• Positive Values
  • Caring – Young person places high value on helping other people.
  • Equality and Social Justice – Young person places high value on promoting equality and reducing hunger and poverty.
  • Integrity – Young person acts on convictions and stands up for their beliefs.
  • Honesty – Young person “tells the truth even when it is not easy.”
  • Responsibility – Young person accepts and takes personal responsibility.
  • Restraint – Young person believes it is important not to be sexually active or to use alcohol or other drugs.
• Social Competencies
  • Planning and Decision Making – Young person knows how to plan ahead and make choices.
  • Interpersonal Competence – Young person has empathy, sensitivity, and friendship skills.
  • Cultural Competence – Young person has knowledge of and comfort interacting with people from different cultural, racial, and ethnic backgrounds.
  • Resistance Skills – Young person can resist negative peer pressure and dangerous situations.
  • Peaceful Conflict Resolution – Young person seeks to resolve conflict nonviolently.
• Positive Identity
  • Personal Power – Young person feels they have control over “things that happen to me.”
  • Self-Esteem – Young person reports having high self-esteem.
  • Sense of Purpose – Young person reports that “my life has a purpose.”
  • Positive View of Personal Future – Young person is optimistic about their personal future.

Why would you (and why would you not) use an asset development approach?

Advantages to the asset development approach

• It’s based on extensive research. The asset development concept, as well as the contents of the asset list, grew out of Search Institute research with adolescents as well as research and theory by others in the field.

As discussed above, the research summarized in this section included surveys of more than a million adolescents. It found associations between the number of assets adolescents reported and both behaviors that increase risk and thriving indicators.

While the average number of assets reported was fairly steady across communities in this research, the particular assets that were present or less available varied by community. Thus, although adolescents in several surveyed communities might report a similar average number of developmental assets, the specific assets in question could be significantly different in each community. By the same token, young people in each community might report different behaviors that increase risk and different thriving indicators. An assessment can help each community better understand which assets, challenges, and thriving indicators are common among its young people.

The research described here does not establish a simple one-to-one relationship between particular assets and particular behaviors or thriving indicators. Communities therefore need to be careful about assuming that one specific asset will automatically produce one specific result.

• Its participatory approach to planning and implementing the effort encourages community buy-in and puts many minds to work. The emphasis on an inclusive and widespread process increases the chances that the community will see the effort as its own, and thus work hard to make it succeed. Including all sectors of the community, particularly young people, in planning and implementation provides a broad range of knowledge and ideas to work with and can increase the effectiveness of the effort.

Including young people, particularly those experiencing greater risks or barriers, reduces the likelihood that the effort will be seen as just another attempt by adults who may not understand their experiences. If young people are involved from the beginning, treated with respect, and know that their opinions matter, they’re more likely to see themselves as part of the effort.

• Placing the accent on positive asset development can make challenges affecting young people seem more possible to address. A community facing high levels of violence involving young people, substance use, or pregnancy among adolescents may see no clear solution to the problem. If the issues are multiple, they can seem even more difficult to address. A positive approach – actively building assets and strengthening adolescents’ connections with supportive adults and institutions – allows the community to identify constructive steps it can take to bring about change.
• Each community develops its own approach to asset development, based on the assets it needs and other factors unique to it. Rather than taking a cookie-cutter approach, asset development encourages the examination of each community as a unique entity. Each community examines its own situation and develops asset-building strategies designed for its own needs.
• Data can be analyzed in numerous ways. It may be that young people attending one school report different asset needs than those attending another, or that young people from a particular neighborhood or population report different experiences than others. Breaking down assessment data can help a community understand those differences and plan accordingly.
• Asset development aims at long-term social change. With its focus on the next generation, and on changes in attitudes and behavior throughout the community, an asset development approach can contribute to long-term positive change.
• Asset development can address a broad range of issues. School difficulties, leaving school before graduation, crime involving young people, substance use among adolescents, pregnancy among adolescents – all of these and more may be affected by the ongoing strengthening of developmental assets and by changes in community attitudes and behavior.
• Asset development can increase community cohesiveness. Because it concentrates on continuity and on preparing the next generation, an asset development approach can bring together people throughout the community to work toward its future. That not only heightens awareness of the meaning of community among those involved, but creates a sense of purpose as well. People aren’t just solving a problem – they’re moving forward into the future as a community.
• Healthy Youth helps to foster a Healthy Community. SI calls its asset development approach Healthy Community/Healthy Youth. If you focus on supporting the healthy development of all young people in the community, you’re focusing on the development of the community as well. A healthy community is one where children and adolescents have access to the support and opportunities they need. If that happens, the chances are that equity is being nurtured in other areas as well.

Despite these reasons to pursue asset development, there are also cautions to consider before proceeding with it.

Potential disadvantages to the asset development approach

• The original data underlying the framework were drawn from a largely White sample of young people. The research described in this section drew heavily from a population that was about 80% White. That raises questions about how well findings from that sample represent young people from the full range of racial, ethnic, cultural, and community backgrounds. Surveying only young people also raises several considerations:
  • First, self-reported data reflect adolescents’ own perceptions of their lives and circumstances. Those perceptions are important, but they may differ from the perspectives of parents, caregivers, teachers, or others.
  • Second, school-based surveys may not fully capture the experiences of young people who are no longer enrolled in school. Excluding them could leave an important part of the community’s adolescent population out of the assessment.
  • Finally, perspectives from adults who are significant in adolescents’ lives may add useful context to young people’s responses.
• An assessment by itself does not tell a community exactly how to develop assets. The ability of each community to plan for its own unique needs is an advantage, but communities may still need research, technical assistance, and local expertise to decide how best to strengthen the particular assets they choose to address.
• Using an external survey and analysis process may require resources and reliance on an outside organization. Communities need to consider the costs, timing, support, and analysis available through whatever assessment process they choose.

The original section also discussed CADY (Community Asset Development for Youth) as an alternative asset-development model. At the time described, CADY focused more narrowly on reducing substance use, violence, and bullying among young people and combined an asset framework with identified community deficits.

It also sought information from school personnel, parents, community leaders, community members, and young people. This broader set of perspectives was intended to provide additional context for understanding conditions affecting adolescents.

At the same time, the model described here provided young people with less direct involvement in planning and coordinating the asset-development program and relied more heavily on leadership from schools, agencies, officials, and organizations. That distinction is important in a section that emphasizes participatory community work.

• Small communities or small schools may not have large enough populations for detailed statistical analysis. Statistical analyses require enough participants to produce reliable findings, particularly when a community wants to examine smaller subgroups. Rural communities and small schools may therefore face limitations in how specifically they can break down their results.
• There is no guarantee that an asset-development effort will address every current problem. Asset development is largely future-oriented. Young people currently experiencing serious difficulties may need immediate forms of support in addition to a longer-term community asset-building strategy.
  • Another question is how developmental assets function at different ages and stages of development. Older adolescents and young adults may respond differently from younger adolescents, and communities should not assume that the same strategy will have the same effect for everyone.
• Most adolescents do well despite not reporting the ideal number of assets. Even though relatively few adolescents in the research summarized here reported the number of assets SI associated with optimal development, that does not mean that everyone with fewer assets is experiencing serious difficulties, or that everyone with many assets is necessarily doing well. The developmental assets can be useful indicators without determining any individual young person’s future.

The SI picture of an adolescent with all the desired assets can sometimes look like an ideal young person from an adult’s point of view – good grades, likes school, helps others, and avoids experimenting with potentially harmful behavior. Sometimes we lose sight of the fact that adolescents also question, test limits, experiment, and sometimes flounder as they develop an adult identity. The ideal is to provide ways for them to do that as safely as possible, but not every adolescent will follow the same path, assets or not.

Then there are the poets, the dreamers, the rule-breakers who refuse to be bound by convention. They may spend their adolescence struggling, sometimes because they don’t have support for who they are from either their families or society. Some may continue to struggle as adults, while others may go on to make remarkable contributions. They may not fit an ideal asset profile, but they may still be developing internal strengths that shape their future.

There is little question within the framework presented here that children and adolescents benefit from developmental assets, particularly support from caring adults. But some internal assets may develop later, as older adolescents test themselves against the adult world. The fact that they don’t yet appear to have every asset may be part of the process of adolescence. An asset-development approach therefore has to leave room for the questioning, experimentation, and occasional failure that can be part of developing an adult identity.

• When considered together, the advantages listed here may outweigh the potential disadvantages, but those disadvantages still deserve attention. Perhaps an overriding reason to consider asset development as a means of community building is that supporting the next generation is one of the most important functions of a community. An inclusive, participatory effort to provide young people with support, opportunities, values, skills, and meaningful roles can sharpen the community’s focus on what a community is and does. The result can improve the quality of life not only for young people, but for the whole community.

How do you use an asset development approach?

A note about asset development approaches:

This section examines a specific logic model – the Search Institute framework of 40 developmental assets for adolescent growth and development. The original approach described here included use of a formal survey and analysis process. Not all communities, however, have the resources – or the desire – to approach asset development in so formal a way.

There are ways around this. One – perhaps the most straightforward – is to focus on developing and/or strengthening developmental assets broadly. Another is to focus on an area that you already know represents a gap in your community – involving young people in town government and community service (empowerment), for instance, or creating or strengthening mentoring programs for parents and adolescents (support). Still a third is to develop your own method of identifying assets and gaps, perhaps with help from a university or another research partner if such support is available.

A fourth possibility is that you can employ asset development as part of a larger healthy community initiative. You may want to take SI’s 40 developmental assets into account without using them as the sole foundation for your effort.

Much of what follows assumes the use of a structured asset assessment. It’s important to realize, however, that that’s not necessarily the only way to address developmental assets in your community.

Once you’ve decided to employ an asset development approach in your community, how do you go about it? Because a successful effort has to involve the whole community, it’s not just a matter of starting and picking up support as you go along.

Someone has to take the initiative. Whether or not you plan to use a formal survey, the community has to be informed about developmental assets and prepared to focus on them. Existing efforts may be spearheaded by schools, but one could be led by other entities as well:

• A pre-existing coalition
• Civic officials or a civic agency – the mayor or the police department, for instance
• A parents’ or caregivers’ group
• A community-based or other nonprofit organization, particularly one that works with, or is concerned with, young people
• A community-wide nonprofit, such as United Way
• A faith-based organization or clergy association
• A business or a business group, such as the Chamber of Commerce

Form a coalition or other group to introduce asset development (and the idea of an asset assessment) to the community. The group should contain people from all sectors of the community, including young people, and should be participatory, involving everyone in decision-making.

Whoever takes the initial lead should expect to be a collaborative leader and allow for the possibility of sharing leadership with, or relinquishing leadership to, a community member or group.

Good communication by this group – in speaking, in writing, and through the media – is crucial to the success of an asset development effort, especially if a survey is to be part of it. (Please see Communicating Information about Health and Community Issues and Promoting Awareness and Interest Through Communication.) People may have questions about surveys and about how their responses will be used. In order to build trust, the coalition or group should provide the information people need, answer questions candidly and clearly, and try to anticipate common concerns. Questions people in many communities might have include:

• Who is conducting the survey or assessment? What organization is involved, what are its credentials, and what role will it play?
• What other communities have used this assessment, and what did they do with the results?
• Is the survey anonymous and confidential? What will happen to the results after they’re tabulated? Can young people or their parents opt out?

This last question, if not carefully considered, can cause major problems. If you go through the schools, the school system may have its own requirements regarding parental permission and research involving students, and may also be subject to applicable laws or policies. Whether parents are asked to take a positive action to allow participation, or are informed of the process and given an opportunity to decline, can be an important issue. It’s the kind of detail that can stall or even prevent a community effort if it isn’t handled carefully.

• What will the assessment cost the community?
• Who will be responsible for setting up the assessment and transmitting, receiving, and publicizing the results?

Once the community agrees to pursue an asset assessment, its logistics have to be worked out. Will the survey be carried out in school? Will all eligible young people be surveyed, or only those in certain schools or grade levels, or a sample? If subgroup analysis is important, the community also needs enough participants to produce meaningful results for those groups.

• If the school system isn’t able or willing to administer the assessment, another local organization, members of the coordinating coalition, or another appropriate group may be able to assist. Whatever process is used, it is useful to designate a coordinator to manage communication and administration.

Implement the assessment. The survey or other assessment now has to be administered, collected, and prepared for analysis. If it is school-based, the cooperation of the school system will probably be important. Communities may also want to consider ways of hearing from young people who are not enrolled in public schools, so that the assessment does not automatically exclude their experiences.

Analyze the assessment results. Once the assessment has been completed and analyzed, the community has to make sense of the findings: which assets appear widely available, which appear less available, which challenges are most common, and whether experiences differ among groups of young people.

• If an outside organization conducts the analysis, communities should understand what interpretation or technical assistance is included and what additional support, if any, may be needed to move from results to action.

By this point, more people may want to be part of your coordinating or planning group. It’s probably a good idea to keep the group open to new membership in some way, although a group that’s too big can become unwieldy. The formation and use of subcommittees or task forces may be one way to keep the planning group to a reasonable size and still accommodate many people who want to help.

Depending on how the population is assessed and how results are reported, an examination of the findings can tell you:

• Which assets are most often less available to young people in your community.
• Which behaviors or situations that increase risk are most common among young people in your community.
• Whether experiences differ among groups of young people by neighborhood, school, age, gender, socioeconomic conditions, or other relevant factors.
• Which thriving indicators are most often found, and among whom.

Communicate your findings to the community. If this is to be a community-wide effort, the community has to have as much information as possible. The coordinating group or individual should communicate the results through the media, public meetings, neighborhood gatherings, community organizations, schools, and other channels that can reach people throughout the community. The goal is to prepare community members to take part in planning the next steps if they so choose, and to think about their eventual participation in an asset development effort.

Plan your next steps. The character of your plan will depend on which developmental assets your community decides to address, but there are some general steps that can be helpful in any planning process.

• Convene a diverse, inclusive, and participatory planning group (or, as mentioned above, a number of task forces or committees, perhaps one for each related group of assets you plan to address), representing all sectors of the community, including young people. It might be the same group that has guided the process so far, that group with members added, or an entirely different group. Some people may be invited to join because of their skills or influence; others may volunteer solely out of interest and dedication to the community.
• Determine what assets you’ll focus on. A community with considerable resources – money, people, space, available expertise, etc. – might decide to address many assets at once. Another with fewer resources might choose to focus initially on one area – support, for instance – and/or on a particular part of the youth population.

Many communities may decide that the appropriate focus is all adolescents and/or children in the community. A “community,” however, could be a relatively small neighborhood as well as a diverse city or a whole rural county. How the community is defined may have a great deal to do with where its focus lies.

• Do your research. Find out what other communities have done, and how. Look at promising and effective practices, and at the research on the areas you’re addressing. Enlist faculty and students at local colleges and universities to help.

Research on asset and child/adolescent development can help communities understand different approaches to strengthening developmental assets. Community partners, universities, and organizations with experience in youth development may all be useful sources of information and assistance.

• Develop a strategic plan for building assets. The strategic plan is long-range, and should serve as a guide to what may be a decades-long process of community change. This is your conception of how you’ll build and maintain developmental assets in your community over time, including which you’ll approach first, how you’ll keep the community involved, how you’ll measure your success, etc. It should include a timeline, with benchmarks to check your progress against.
• Design an action plan. In general, each benchmark will require some kind of action – often an effort or program designed to address a particular developmental asset or group of assets. Each of these actions will need its own action plan, describing exactly what you’re going to do and how. Issues to consider here are cultural differences in the community and the actual practice of promoting the development of various assets. The Community Tool Box deals with the specifics of interventions and initiatives in a number of different areas, many focused specifically on young people.

Strategic and action plans can be devised regardless of whether you choose to use a formal survey. Developing and strengthening developmental assets can remain a goal even when many are already strong among the community’s young people. Assets won’t necessarily remain strong without continued support for parents and caregivers, adolescents, teachers and other adults significant in young people’s lives, and community members in general.

Present the plan to the community. Communication is again the key here. Community members should have a chance to understand, discuss, and react to the plan. Their feedback should then be considered in developing a final version.

Implement your initial action plan. Once you’ve finalized how you’re going to approach developing assets, it’s time to get to work. The first phase of your plan may involve only one small group of assets, or it may address changing your community in many ways.

Continue to monitor, evaluate, and adjust your action plan. As with any type of intervention or action, it’s vital to make sure that you’re doing what you planned, and that it’s having the results you aimed for. If either of these is not the case, or if circumstances in the community change, you may need to alter what you’re doing, or even rethink it completely. Even if it’s working well, careful monitoring and evaluation can often show you ways to make it better.

Continue to form, implement, monitor, and adjust new action plans, and to maintain the gains you’ve made. As you make progress in asset development, remember that the goal is to transform the community over the long term. Once assets have been made more widely available to adolescents and children in the community, that access has to be maintained. The work of making your community a place where all children and adolescents are valued, supported, and able to thrive has no end.

In Summary

Asset development is the fostering of developmental assets that can support children and adolescents in becoming healthy, caring, productive, and successful adults. The Search Institute framework described in this section identifies 40 assets and links adolescents’ reported access to those assets with both behaviors that increase risk and “thriving indicators.”

Assets are divided into eight categories. Four are external (support, empowerment, boundaries and expectations, and constructive use of time), and four are internal (commitment to learning, positive values, social competencies, and positive identity).

The research summarized in this section found that adolescents varied widely in the number of assets they reported. The framework emphasizes not only how many assets are available to young people, but which assets appear strong or less available within a particular community.

Asset development is a community enterprise that demands commitment from people throughout the community, from school and civic officials to businesses, institutions, organizations, community members, and young people themselves. Because asset development has to be seen as a shared community responsibility, the effort should be inclusive and participatory, helping to foster community ownership. It should be focused on the actual needs of the particular community and emphasize the positive – proactively building assets rather than simply reacting to problems. The effort should also be community-wide.

• A foundation in both empirical research and theory.
• Community ownership and diverse, broad-ranging input stemming from a participatory process.
• An emphasis on positive asset development that can make challenges affecting young people seem more possible to address.
• The ability of each community to design asset-building solutions that fit its own needs.
• The ability to analyze data in multiple ways and across different populations.
• An emphasis on long-term social change.
• The capacity to address a broad range of issues.
• The possibility of increasing community cohesiveness.
• The emphasis on what supports young people also contributing to the health of the community.

Potential disadvantages or limitations of the asset development approach:

• Limitations in how representative the original research sample was of all young people and communities.
• An assessment alone may provide limited guidance about exactly how to develop particular assets.
• Formal assessment and analysis may require outside expertise or resources.
• Statistical limitations that may make detailed analysis difficult for small communities or schools.
• No guarantee that asset development alone will address immediate problems.
• Questions about how developmental assets function across different young people, ages, and life circumstances.

In sum, the potential benefits of focusing on developmental assets may outweigh the limitations for many communities, but those limitations shouldn’t be ignored.

Although each community’s approach to asset development will be different, based on the needs and resources of the community, there are some basic steps that can be used to structure the process:

• Someone has to take the initiative.
• Form a coalition or other group to introduce asset development and the idea of an asset assessment to the community.
• Once the community agrees to pursue asset development, work out the logistics of the assessment.
• Implement the assessment.
• Analyze the assessment results.
• Communicate your findings to the community.
• Plan your next steps.
  • Convene a diverse, inclusive, and participatory planning group, representing all sectors of the community, including young people.
  • Determine what assets you’ll focus on.
  • Do your research.
  • Develop a strategic plan for building assets.
  • Design an action plan.
• Present the plan to the community.
• Implement your initial action plan.
• Continue to monitor, evaluate, and adjust your action plan.
• Continue to form and implement new action plans and maintain the gains you’ve made.