Reference no: EM133604508

Apple Farm Owner

You are the owner of a you-pick apple farm about 20 miles outside of Macroville. The farm is about 40 acres, and the orchards take about 30 acres of the total space. The remaining space is open field. You would prefer for it to be used, especially with more diverse crops to attract pollinators for your apple orchards. One problem you have on your farm is at the end of the harvest season there are many "ugly" apples still on the trees. The fruit falls and creates a layer of decomposing, vinegar-smelling apples for the next growing season when blueberry pickers come in late May. If only you had people who could use the "un-sellable" fruit. It might even serve as a tax break if you could donate it. Too bad you don't have the man-power to pick it all.

Corporate Lawyer

You are a corporate lawyer. You spend your days in your very beige office, negotiating contracts between entities that have completely lost their humanness in your perspective. You remember when you were in college and how fulfilling it was to think about social issues and to do small acts to work on those issues. You'd like to participate in your community of Macroville, but where could you plug in? Where could you even go to find out who would need your skills? The main place you go to socialize is the Macroville Brewery and Snacks, where many of your young professional friends meet up in the evening. You wonder, how can my friends turn our community of professionals into something more meaningful than just getting together for drinks and snacks?

Director of Macroville Preschool

You are the Director of Macroville Montessori Preschool. You have noticed that you have lost several potential students when parents ask about your diversity. Your student population averages 95% middle/upper SES, Caucasian. You want more diversity, but have no idea how to attract it. It would even be worth it financially to offer scholarships to increase diversity in order to retain the families who seek it. Another issue you are facing the chaos that is inevitable with you high child to adult ratio. You don't have the budget for more employees, but it would be great to have people just to read to one child at a time, or play simple games with them.

You try to feed your students organic snacks as often as financially feasible, especially the fruits and vegetables that have the highest concentration of pesticides: blueberries, strawberries, apples, and peaches. Applesauce is a preschool favorite, but organic applesauce is exorbitant. Too bad.

Administrator in the Macroville University College of Social Work

You are an administrator in the Macroville University College of Social Work. Your student body has expressed interest in geriatric social work and macro advocacy. Like most Colleges of Social Work, you don't really know where to send them for macro advocacy practicums. For the students interested in geriatrics, you usually send them to the day center, but the practicum opportunities are filling quickly there. Recently the State cut funding dramatically for your University. Classroom space is tight, especially in the afternoons when students want to take classes. You are tasked with coming up with alternative spaces for social work classes to meet. It would be an added bonus if the macro class could be housed in a location rooted in an "at-risk" neighborhood.

Director of Macroville Women's Shelter

You are the Director of Macroville Women's Shelter, an emergency housing and transitional living space for homeless women. You have a few clients who qualify for Disability and Medicaid, but don't have the cognitive capacity to make steps toward self-sufficiency. These clients have been in the Shelter for almost 10 years. They are aging and the staff at the Shelter are feeling less and less confident that they are able to take care of their increasing health needs. Many of your clients need something to do during the day to help them avoid people/places/situations that have contributed to troubles in the past. The Director thinks something outside of town would be great; sunshine wouldn't hurt either. Perhaps they could even learn a skill. The Shelter has a commercial kitchen. How could you use it during non-meal-prep times?

You have found the Macroville community is highly discriminatory in many ways of people experiencing homelessness. You think it would help if the community understood the root issues and assets your client population has. If only you had the man-power to do an advocacy campaign.

The asset-based community development ideas and practice framework, while consistent with social work values, are contrary to many social service delivery structures and macro practices. Services are often designed without fully considering or utilizing the assets already in place.

In many ways, the network of relationships to share strengths and resources to meet needs is a community's greatest asset. Leveraging the existing community web in the planned change process can often be more sustainable and work toward the goals of empowerment and social justice.

Now that you've created your own asset map of all the characters, reflect on why you think the partnerships you made will benefit Macroville.

In the activity, several tangible and intangible assets were shared across this community. How did the activity expand your ideas of assets that could be utilized in a planned change process? Or, if it didn't expand your ideas, how can services make better use of the assets already in client communities?

Describe an example of a service organization (any type: clinical, advocacy, basic needs, justice, health related, etc.) that in some way strengthens networks of relationships to leverage community or organizational assets, integrate content from at least one source from the module/related to this module and provide an appropriate APA citation.