Participatory democracy has been Jim Diers’ preoccupation and his career for the past 34 years. In his work with grassroots community organisations and with government and other large agencies, Jim has found ways to get more people engaged with their community and more involved in decisions that affect their lives. 

Jim moved to Seattle after graduating from Grinnell College in 1975 with a major in Colonialism and Nationalism in Third World Development. For six years Jim worked as an Alinsky-style community organiser in the low-income, racially diverse neighborhoods of Rainier Valley. Bringing people together to take action on issues ranging from dangerous intersections to nuclear power plants, Jim helped the South End Seattle Community Organisation grow to include 25 member churches and neighborhood organisations. Its annual meetings drew as many as 800 people.

Jim spent the next six years with Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound where he organized medical center councils to review budget and quality-of-care issues from a consumer perspective. He also helped members organise special interest groups: the Senior Caucus, the Nuclear Awareness Group, and Partners for Health, an organisation with a sister clinic in Managua, Nicaragua. Jim also organised­ and reinvigorated the cooperative’s annual meetings, which attracted as many as 3,000 members.

In 1988, Mayor Charles Royer appointed Jim to direct the City of Seattle’s new Office of Neighbourhoods. Jim was reappointed by the subsequent mayors, Norm Rice in 1990 and Paul Schell in 1998. By the end of Jim’s 14-year tenure, the four-person Office had grown into a Department of Neighborhoods with 100 staff.

The Department’s mission is to decentralise and coordinate City services, strengthen communities and their organisations, and work in partnership with these organizations to preserve and enhance the neighbourhoods. The Department manages 13 Little City Halls that provide basic services to citizens and serve as meeting places for neighbourhood organisations. It supports about 400 community self-help projects each year through a $4.5 million Neighborhood Matching Fund that was recognized by the Ford Foundation and Kennedy School of Government as one of the most innovative local government programmes in the United States. Another programme of community empowerment involved 30,000 people in the development of 37 neighborhood plans. The Department also manages the City’s historic preservation programme, a P-Patch Program of 75 community gardens, and a leadership training programme. In 2000, the Department received the Full Inclusion Award from the American Association on Developmental Disabilities for its Involving All Neighbours program and a Best of the Best Award from HUD for its Cultivating Communities programme.

In 2001, Jim was named Public Employee of the Year by the Municipal League of King County. That same year he was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Law from Grinnell College.

After leaving the Department of Neighborhoods in 2002, Jim Diers worked for a year as Interim Director of the Delridge Neighborhoods Development Association, for three years as Executive Director of the South Downtown Foundation, and for five years as Director of Seattle Community Partnerships for the University of Washington.

Currently, Jim teaches courses on community organising and community development at the University of Washington. Jim also speaks, conducts workshops and provides technical assistance to communities and agencies around the world as a faculty member of the Asset-Based Community Development Institute and as the author of Neighbor Power: Building Community the Seattle Way which is available in English and Chinese editions.

Cormac Russell

Cormac Russell is a faculty member of the Asset Based Community Development Institute at Northwestern University, Chicago. He is also an associate faculty member of the National College of Ireland where he serves on the Board of Studies which developed Ireland’s first Degree Program in Active Citizenship for Social Change. He is a qualified civil and commercial mediator accredited by Friarylaw and the ADR Group, a Communications Therapist and Clinical Psychotherapist.

 
Cormac is the Managing Director of Nurture Development which has offices in Dublin, Ireland and Nurture Development Africa (2008), with offices in Nairobi, Kenya. Nurture Development was established in Ireland in 1996 to provide training, research, community building, facilitation and conflict mitigation services across Europe to the public, private and community sectors. Over the last decade, Nurture Development has worked with state agencies, local governments, community groups, businesses, NGOs, and other agencies to develop workable and cost effective solutions to some of the most pressing social and economic challenges of our time.

Cormac has worked as a consultant with a number of major physical and social regeneration projects including the Dublin Docklands Development Agency, Ballymun Regeneration Limited, St. Teresa’s Gardens Regeneration Board, and Cherry Orchard Regeneration Board. He is currently working in partnership with the University of Limerick on an asset-based community empowerment initiative focused on the largest regeneration project Europe has ever seen.

He has also led a range of asset-based initiatives focused on youth, senior citizens and community safety. Having supported Dublin City Council to develop a strategic asset-based approach to community development and neighbourhood revitalisation, he continues to act as an advisor to Dublin City local government on the development of its asset based community development city-wide strategy.

Cormac has also worked with Carnegie Trust UK, the International Association for Community Development, Development Trusts Association, Novas Scarman Trust, Community Development Exchange in the UK and Landelijk Samenwerkingsverband Aandachtswijken from the Netherlands to support European trans-national collaboration in promoting asset-based community development.

His work in East Africa has involved working with ACTED, VSF Belgium, VSF Germany, Oxfam, and Practical Action in the development of an asset-based approach to drought management in Pokot and Turkana in rural Kenya. He has also delivered ABCD workshops to over 50 NGOs working in East Africa. 

The primary focus of his work continues to be on transforming countries, cities and their neighbourhoods by supporting the development of new ideas and strategies which are not needs based or funding-led, but instead use assets more effectively, promote citizen led initiatives, and build real partnership between state, agencies and citizens.

Ted Smeaton

Ted has worked in Australia, New Zealand, India and the Middle East assisting communities, agencies and governments to come up with innovative ways of stimulating community, social renewal and inclusion. He has a passion for assisting in the creation of healthy, caring, inclusive, sustainable, and just communities.

Ted is an adjunct facility member of the ABCD Institute of North Western University, Chicago and the Chairperson of the Asia Pacific ABCD Network.

Ted has a background in community work, community education, senior management and as a tertiary lecturer. His employment experience includes the role of Senior Manager for The Benevolent Society, where he established their first regional and rural program, which in five years grew from one part-time worker to a state-wide program with over 200 staff.

Ted has been instrumental in establishing nine new community-based organisations and developed a number of national programs. He has an extensive history in supporting Australian Indigenous organisations.

Ted is the author of two landmark reports on Indigenous Australia - A Voice for All and Family Dreaming. Ted was the principal consultant for the redevelopment of Indigenous Legal Services throughout Australia.

He has recently completed, in partnership with UnitingCare Australia and The Australian Ministry on Ageing, a national ABCD Inclusion Project for older people.

Mike Green is at the forefront of the ABCD movement, a renowned author of one of the most widely read publications on ABCD in practice: “When People Care Enough to Act: ABCD in Action” (published by Inclusion Press, 2007) along with Henry Moore and John O’Brien, and a senior faculty member of the Asset Based Community Development Institute. He has traveled extensively throughout North America delivering workshops and consultancy supports to hundreds of communities and agencies interested in supporting citizen led development and more inclusive communities, particularly for those on the margins of society. His present framework for practice came from three key life experiences: community organising, social work and business. As a result he has a deeply rich and diverse set of experiences in developing neighborhood resident organisations, congregation based organisations, and community partnerships to address social and economic issues, as well as being a accomplished business man. Mike is a licensed clinical social worker (M.S.W.) and family therapist and has worked in human services, public welfare, mental health and schools as well as helping to start a small public school in Denver based on ABCD principles. Much of his work is about using ABCD to address the question of building more inclusive welcoming communities; addressing the question: ‘how do marginalised clients move to being valued contributing members of the community?’ Mike’s inclusion work has a focus on two related areas: organising local residents in everyday life for inclusion of more isolated people; and helping service providers to structure themselves in a way that enables them to support these local citizen groups in their work for community inclusion. Mike’s daughter Annie is a person with cognitive disabilities who inspires his work. Currently Mike’s work is focused on several regions of North America towards developing ABCD learning communities, where a ‘group of groups’ form a circle to deepen ABCD practice and to develop more innovation by sharing the learning from each group’s local ABCD work. Mike is also working with the ABCD Institute to initiate a new North American ABCD community organiser project. Its purpose is to offer training and a learning community for developing more organisers with an effective ABCD approach to local collective action. Mike is interested in working with groups around the world to deepen ABCD practice, particularly developing more ”living examples” of innovative community partnerships with residents at the center of community action. Mike is also committed to working towards developing more ABCD community organizers. “The deepest dream of ABCD is that more and more people can come to see truly that ‘there is no one we don’t need’ and that a community without a place for everyone really has a place for no one.”-Mike Green