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501c3 organization

WHO WE ARE

Coastal Bend Community Empowerment helps citizens reclaim their communities. CBCE shifts the power for the wellbeing of stressed and distressed neighborhoods and communities from service organizations and agencies back to the communities themselves. CBCE is the coach, trainer, friend, and catalyst who helps communities to discover what they care about, to mobilize their collective assets through citizen-driven action in order to set their own goals, to realize their own shared hopes and dreams, and to evaluate their own success. 

WHAT WE BELIEVE

We believe all communities are capable of thriving by mobilizing their own assets to do what matters to them, and that relationships are their most important asset.

WHAT WE DO

CBCE organizes communities around their own shared vision and collective strengths to create citizen-driven change that matters to them.

 

CBCE coaches and trains other local organizations, agencies, and departments to use the same inside-out, citizen-driven approach for empowering communities. 

OUR FOCUS

CBCE focuses on development, not just charity and relief, or just social services. Our saying is, “Give a man a fish, you will feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime. Teach a community how to fish together, they will reclaim their pond.” Here is the differences between development and relief or social services. 

COMMUNITY BUILDING MODEL

  • Focus on ASSETS

  • Build from OPPORTUNITIES

  • INVESTMENT Orientation

  • Emphasis on ASSOCIATIONS

  • Focus on COMMUNITY

  • Goal is EMPOWERMENT

  • Power comes from RELATIONSHIPS

  • PEOPLE are the answer

  • People are CITIZENS

SOCIAL SERVICE MODEL

  • Focus on NEEDS

  • Respond to PROBLEMS

  • Emphasis on AGENCIES

  • Focus on INDIVIDUALS

  • Goal is SERVICE

  • Power comes from CREDENTIALS

  • PROGRAMS are the answer

  • People are CLIENTS

HOW WE EMPOWER ORGANIZATIONS

to Build Community Capacity

CONCEPT TRAINING

 

A basic understanding of Asset Based Community Development, including:

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  • A strategy to address the seven basic needs found in every community: physical, vocational, environmental, social/emotional, the need for power and control, the need for collective voice, and psycho-spiritual needs.

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  • ​The difference between relief, individual betterment, and community development approaches and when each is most appropriate. 

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  • How approaches that “do for” a community can undermine an empowerment effort, and how to shift to a “do with” approach. 

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  • How to narrowing the scope of the development effort to a specific geographically defined group, neighborhood or sub-group of a school or neighborhood. 

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  • A basic understanding of the six types of assets found in every neighborhood: individuals, associations, institutions, physical environment, methods of exchange, and culture. The roles each plays in a development effort. 

SKILLS COACHING

 

An overview of the four capacity building processes: Listening, Leadership Development, Team Building, and Partnership Development – specifically:

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  • How to conduct a listening project to discover the hopes, dreams, gifts and talents of the community. 

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  • ​The three components of an effective leadership development process: one-on-one coaching, peer to peer communities of practice, and on-going training through learning cohorts. 

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  • The four CARE practices for effective team building: create safe space, ask self-awakening questions, reflect collectively, and enact the next faithful step. 

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  • How to build partnerships that can help sustain a community-defined, constituent-driven community development effort. 

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