Mobilizing Assets

Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) is a promising approach for supporting community development in refugee communities. This paper explores the feasibility and effects of a data-driven asset mapping system as a community building tool in a refugee camp. Guided by participatory community building methods, We push the bounds of established ABCD methods by engaging community participants throughout the entire process of designing and collecting, but also managing, analyzing, and potentially applying the asset data. We use mixed methods, which include field notes, surveys, and focus groups to investigate whether asset data can be mobilized by the community itself, rather than by staff, to address its challenges and, if so, possible strategies for community members to utilize such data. Our three findings include: 1. refugees in our study had the capacity to collect and up-and-download asset data, 2. However, they lack technical and statistical skills to utilize the data most effectively and 3. Nevertheless, the process of collecting data contributed to a sense of community at the classroom level. Based on these findings, we offer several recommendations for use of data-driven ABCD in low-resource contexts.