01/08/2022
Last week, Lisa Martello Hart sent me a copy of an article by Sean Van Der Wielen which appeared in the Great Southern Herald on Wednesday, 27 July. This is the same newspaper that reported on the beautiful landscape drawings of the Aboriginal children of Carrolup back in the […]
19/03/2022
As some of you know, John Stanton and I visited Kojonup in February at the request of Lisa Martello-Hart, who wanted us to meet various Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people in the community and also discuss the Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) approach. Lisa had been talking with us for […]
16/03/2022
Here, I share the results of John McKnight and Cormac Russell’s deliberation about what is distinctive about an Asset-Based Community Development process. ‘The primary goal of an Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) process is to enhance collective citizen visioning and production. This paper discusses each of four essential elements […]
15/03/2022
I wanted to introduce you to an amazing healing resource which appears on a page of The Center for Mind-Body Medicine (CMBM). ‘The CMBM was founded in 1991 by James S. Gordon, M.D., a Harvard-educated professor of psychiatry and family medicine at Georgetown University Medical School and former […]
10/03/2022
I first became interested in Aboriginal culture and in Indigenous healing after reading Judy Atkinson’s wonderful book Trauma Trails: Recreating Song Lines – The Transgenerational Effects of Trauma in Indigenous Australia. I developed the educational initiative Sharing Culture which aimed to help Indigenous peoples heal from historical trauma. That website […]
10/03/2022
Members of the Kojonup community have been developing a project, based on an Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) approach, to enhance the social and emotional wellbeing of the community, with an emphasis placed on empowering and connecting youth. Kojonup is the town closest to Carrolup Native Settlement, so the story […]
08/03/2022
In his recent Kindle book Asset-Based Community Development: An Incomplete Guide, Cormac Russell describes eight touchstones of Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD). He points out that whilst all eight Touchstones rarely appear together and do not represent a step-by-step guide to community building, they do show up regularly in ABCD […]
07/03/2022
The most common approach to ‘helping’ communities has involved focusing on the community’s needs, deficiencies, and problems. This depersonalising approach disempowers and often causes other forms of harm to community citizens. The alternative path to community development, Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD), focuses on a community’s assets, capacities, and abilities. Significant community […]
04/03/2022
John Stanton and I headed down to visit Lisa Martello-Hart (Australiana Artist and Children’s Book Author) in Kojonup on Thursday, 17 February. We were invited to learn more of what was going on in the town and engage in various discussions with key community members that focused on […]
04/03/2022
Here is another compilation of links to my blog posts on The Carrolup Story that are related to key themes or people. This complication focuses on the work of Emeritus Professor Judy Atkinson, the remarkable lady who first inspired me to work in the field of trauma and the […]
03/03/2022
While John and I were in Kojonup recently, I talked about the Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) approach to creating inclusive, bottom up, community-driven change. The ABCD approach was first developed by John McKnight and John (Jody) Kretzmann, along with their associates in the USA. They set up the Asset-Based Community […]
17/02/2022
The process of colonisation and its devastating impact on generations of Aboriginal peoples provides the backdrop to the story of the Aboriginal child artists of Carrolup. In this blog post, I provide links to 15 of my previous blogs on The Carrolup Story relating to various elements of […]
16/02/2022
I was due to visit Kojonup with John in late October last year, but had to pull out due to illness. One of the aims of the planned talks was to highlight the legacy of the Carrolup Story, in relation to how it speaks to today about trauma, […]
14/02/2022
John and I will be heading down to Kojonup on Thursday to have a variety of discussions about a new project we have been developing with children’s writer and illustrator Lisa Martello-Hart. This is a community-driven project that aims to use community members, the knowledge of world-leading experts, […]
13/02/2022
One of the aims that John Stanton and I have for The Carrolup Story project is that it will inspire the development of new community-based initiatives that enhance the wellbeing of individuals, families and communities as a whole. We always hoped that The Aboriginal children of Carrolup and […]