Bridging the Gap Between Asset/Capacity Building and Needs Assessment: Concepts and Practical Applications

In this groundbreaking text, the author examines the synthesis of two antithetical ideas-needs assessment and asset/capacity building.

At the heart of this approach is a focus on assessing the strengths and assets that communities have and demonstrating how to make those assets stronger.

The author explains the foundation of needs assessment and asset/capacity building, discusses their similarities and differences, and offers a new hybrid framework that includes eight steps for how they can be done jointly for better results.

The author then applies a checklist for judging the quality of this approach to six cases that represent real-world applications of hybrid principles.

The last chapter demonstrates how such efforts might be studied in the future, emphasizing ways findings and results from hybrid ventures can be used effectively.

A wide range of examples, tables, and figures appear throughout, with insightful discussion questions at the end of each chapter to facilitate meaningful discourse.