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practice exercise asset mapping

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Getting Started

In the previous workshops, you identified a need in your local community as well as a stakeholder who helped you assess the need. You developed a statement summarizing the need and proposed a plan for addressing it.

In this activity, you will complete an asset map identifying resources that already exist within your community. You will identify the social issue you will target in the community. Consider what people already do and where people can already go within the community to meet the need. You will need to think broadly about the assets and resources that exist in the community. Think also about other institutions, programs, self-help groups, businesses, citizens, or others who may already be meeting the need. You will need to draw upon these resources as you develop your own plan for community change. They may have important insight and understanding about their needs.

Upon successful completion of this assignment, you will be able to:

  • Explore injustice and oppression within the social environment at local and global levels. (PO 3)
  • Develop knowledge of social work and other multidisciplinary theoretical frameworks to engage, assess, intervene, and evaluate communities and organizations. (PO 6, 7, 8, & 9)

Resources

  • Textbook: Generalist Practice with Organizations and Communities
  • Article: School Counselors and Collaboration: Finding Resources Through Community Asset Mapping
  • File: Practice Exercise Worksheet: Asset Mapping.pdf

Background Information

As described in Generalist Practice with Organizations and Communities, identifying assets within the community or organization helps the macro social worker build on the work that other programs, self-help groups, businesses, citizens, or others are already doing to meet the need. The Griffin and Farris article notes that asset mapping is an important tool for identifying local individuals, physical structures, natural resources, institutions, businesses, or informal organizations, like self-help groups, that currently play a role in helping to meet the needs of the community. The article explains that community asset mapping reflects a movement towards helping people build relationships within communities and recognize their power in solving their own needs.

Asset mapping is informed by the theoretical perspective of empowerment and the strengths perspective in social work practice. These perspectives challenge a deficit model of intervention by arguing that communities and the people living in them are more than their problems, diseases, or pathologies. They are already in the process of solving their own needs and have a variety of programs, self-help groups, businesses, and interpersonal resources that can be drawn upon to help meet those needs.

The role of the macro social worker is to use these resources and to help the community recognize its own power and strength in resolving these issues. The asset map in this activity is an inventory for you to begin to think about what already exists within the community or organization that can be strengthened.

Instructions

  1. Review the rubric to make sure you understand the criteria for earning your grade.
  2. In your textbook Generalist Practice with Organizations and Communities, read Chapter 6, “Implementing Macro Interventions: Agency Policy, Projects, and Programs,” pages 205–256.
  3. Review the article “School Counselors and Collaboration: Finding Resources Through Community Asset Mapping.”
    1. If you are not logged into the IWU OCLS, you will be prompted to enter your login and password to access the article.
  4. Download the Practice Exercise Worksheet: Asset Mapping file. On the worksheet, do the following:
    1. First, brainstorm and list the various economic, educational, political, religious, and other associations in your community. Think broadly about every single institution, program, self-help group, business, citizen, or informal association that may already be meeting the community or organizational need.
    2. Then, group the assets around the circle according to the type of resource.
 
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