My Co-operative Adventure

To the Teacher

A fundamental first step to starting a new venture is knowing the community in which the business will operate, in particular the community’s assets and needs. Within a community, one will find businesses, government agencies, community organizations, and institutions. A combination of these tends to bring the greatest growth and sustainability to communities.

Asset mapping is taking an inventory of all the good things about a community. By grouping a community’s businesses, government agencies, organizations, institutions and features by the type of asset brought to the community, and identifying the citizens and needs served by each asset, students can begin to identify ‘voids’ or unmet needs in a community. A group of citizens might then consider forming a business to offer products and services that would fulfil these unmet needs.

Through a teacher-led community asset mapping exercise, students will learn the value that their community’s businesses, government agencies, community organizations, and institutions bring to its citizens. This exercise sets the stage for Lesson Four, where students are asked to identify a need that has yet to be met for a group of citizens in your community and Lesson Five, where they will propose a co-operative venture for fulfilling that need.

Pre-assignment Discussion
1. To prepare the students for the community asset mapping exercise, the teacher leads a short discussion that builds student understanding of four key concepts.

Community

• Is a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common.
• Are the people of a municipality or district considered collectively, especially in the context of social values and responsibilities.

Needs are things that are wanted or required. Needs can include:

• The basics: food, water, shelter and clothing.
• Beyond the basics: education, sanitation, acceptance, safety, sense of belonging, love, friends, family, self-esteem, communication, well-being, faith, hope, economic security, freedom, order, leisure/relaxation, healthy environment, transportation, etc.

Assets are those entities that are valuable to a community’s citizens; citizens want to keep and build upon their assets, in order to sustain their community for future generations. Assets can be:

• Economic: businesses owned individually, in partnership, or collectively by group of people. Can be locally owned or owned by investors who live in another community, province or country.
• Social/cultural: hobby and sports clubs book clubs, playgrounds, religious institutions/places of worship.
• Service (government or citizen driven): community clubs such as Guides/Scouts, Kinsmen/Kinettes, Lions, Royal Purple, Canadian Legion, Rotary, or hospitals, schools, chambers of commerce, food banks, regional colleges.
• Natural: such as parks, walking and bicycle paths, lakes, rivers, hills, mountains, game preserves.

Asset mapping

• Combines community interests and creates a “common cause”.
• Believes in identifying what you have as the starting point for determining what you still need.
• Is a form of discovery; there are far more assets in the community than most people realize.
• Acknowledges that thriving communities are a sum of many valuable parts.

Student Assignment
1. Individually, or in small groups, students are given 5 sticky notes and asked to jot down five businesses, government agencies, community organizations or institutions found in their community, each on a different sticky note. If your community is a city, you may want to focus on the neighbourhood your school is in to make the exercise manageable.

2. On a large version of the Community Asset Mapping Template posted on the wall, students/groups are invited to post each of their sticky notes within the asset category that they feel is most fulfilled by each business, agency, organization or institution they’ve identified. It is quite possible that a few could be placed in more than one category.

3. Once all sticky notes are posted, students are asked to reflect on the list and to add any additional businesses, agencies, organizations and institutions that have been missed.

4. Through teacher-led questioning and discussion, students identify the group of citizens and the needs fulfilled for these citizens by each agency, business, organization and institution they have posted.

Questions that can lead students to this discovery are:
• What group of citizens are primarily served by each business, agency, organization, and institution we’ve listed? E.g parents, youth, business owners, children, seniors, all, etc.
• Based on our earlier discussion of a ‘need’, what needs are fulfilled for these citizens by each business, agency, organization, institution we’ve listed?

Bridging
1. Through closer study of the community asset map and through teacher probing, it is likely that the students will identify needs of specific groups of citizens (such as seniors, youth, single parents, others) that have yet to be fulfilled.
Questioning that can lead students to this realization are:
a) When looking at our community in this way, are there any surprises?
b) What groups of citizens, and their respective needs, appear to be absent from this map? For example, if we were to consider:

• High school students as a group of citizens, what need(s) do you feel are yet to be filled?
• Newly immigrated families, what need(s) might they have that are yet to be filled?
• Young parents?
• Elderly people?

c) Do you see any other gaps?