Building Strong Community

Asset-based Community Development on Redneck Gone Green Episode 38

Howdy folks,

This Tues, May 7, 2024 April Doner will be our guest on Redneck Gone Green to discuss Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD). April is a community connector,  artist, and mother who is passionate about igniting the intersection between re-weaving neighbor relationships, strengthening local economies, and healing / reconciling inequities and injustices. Originally from Grant, FL, April has studied and immersed herself in social change and community work since the age of 15. 

We broadcast live at  6pm Eastern 3pm Pacific every Tuesday. You can join us here on Youtube. You can also join us on Rumble.  Please subscribe to our Rumble channel and keep an eye out for when we post our livestream 24 hours before our broadcast. Our writings, podcasts, and video streams are always free. But if you join as a paid subscriber you will be invited into the studio for a post-show conversation with David, Daniel and the rest of the Redneck Gone Green crew.

Asset-based community development (ABCD) is a grassroots approach to community building that focuses on identifying and leveraging local strengths and resources rather than deficits. It emphasizes the inherent capacities, skills, and assets within a community, including its people, organizations, and natural features. ABCD encourages residents to take an active role in shaping their community's future by collaborating, sharing knowledge, and mobilizing resources to address challenges and pursue opportunities. It fosters a sense of empowerment, ownership, and resilience among community members, leading to sustainable development and vibrant, inclusive communities where everyone's contributions are valued and utilized for collective progress.

April is a practitioner of this technique, and  joined the ABCD Institute as a Fellow in 2010. She currently serves as a Steward at the ABCD Institute at DePaul University and, while not practicing neighboring in her own neighborhood, she trains, coaches, and consults both organizations and community groups in Asset Based Community Development. As an artist, April documents local resilience and group processes using creative mediums including writing, photography, video, and live art. Since 2020, she has curated content for the Abundant Community website. 

April is currently transitioning from Indianapolis to Chicago and while working to map and weave practitioners and movements of post-capitalist cooperative economics, asset-based community-led change, and other liberatory change models. April serves as the co-Chair of the ABCD Institute’s Communications Team and as a member of the Resist and Build Network’s Narrative and Planning Circles. View her writings and media appearances here, and her portfolio of art and photography here.

Onward to the world we deserve,
David Cobb (he/him)
Why I put my pronouns in my email signature

April Doner
Raised among the woods and swamps of Grant, FL ​April is a connector, storyteller and artist whose greatest joy is learning, celebrating and connecting the capacities and good work of neighbors. Her grandmother Polly Williams and mother Kathy Doner both inspired her early on as gifted connectors. April’s early explorations of community, neighboring, economy, and equity included neighborhood roving and, later immersing herself in intentional communities and activism as a teenager.

She encountered the social change framework Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) while earning her Bachelor’s in Sociology at New College in Sarasota, Florida.  She then spent four years learning and applying models of community and social change including ABCD at SCOPE, a small civic engagement nonprofit.  Here, she redesigned and led SCOPE’s Neighborhood Initiative with the mentorship from ABCD Co-Founder John McKnight. Her work was later highlighted in McKnight & Peter Block's book, The Abundant Community.  

April was named a Fellow with the ABCD Institute in 2010. After leaving SCOPE, she co-founded Uprise Art Collective to support and connect artists while also making art more accessible locally. She also built community in her neighborhood and covered community-based stories as a writer for the online  magazine This Week in Sarasota.

In 2013, April moved to Indianapolis to join and learn from the transformative work of De’Amon Harges, Mike Mather and the neighbors and members of Broadway United Methodist Church. She considers this period her “grad school” in asset-based organizing. From 2018 to 2021, April led a national team of ABCD Stewards in providing coaching, evaluation and documentation for 24 libraries and museums in asset-based community engagement as part of the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services’ Community Catalyst Initiative. 

Currently, April consults, practices, and conducts workshops as a Steward of the Asset-Based Community Development Institute and co-chairs the Institute’s Communications Team.  She works locally with the grassroots nonprofit Kheprw Institute, serves on the Narrative and Planning working circles within the Resist & Build Network, and actively practices connectorship in her neighborhood. She also curates content for Abundant Community.com. She is transitioning from Indianapolis to Chicago with her 6 year old daughter Sophia and two cats, Solomon and Dahlia.

View her writings and media appearances here, and her portfolio of art and photography here.