The fifth Annual Asset-Based Community and Youth Development Leadership Forum, entitled "Community Assets in Real Time" was held on December 6, 2007, at the Hoagland-Pincus Conference Center in Shrewsbury, MA. The program focused on developing strengths-based leadership in New England and New York for community activists, project leaders, practitioners, scholars and citizens. Tom Dewar, Ph.D., a faculty member of the ABCD Institute who has helped train community organizers from all over the U.S. and Canada as well as Australia and Southeastern Europe, gave the keynote speech on "Achieving Real, Relevant Community Change Projects." Dr. David S. Weed, coordinator of the Healthy City Fall River initiative, served as a panelist and workshop leader on Generating Deep and Wide Citizen Commitment to Healthy Community Project Goals. "The Northeast Assets Leadership Conference focuses on projects that mobilize the positive assets of a community to bring about change," noted Dr. Weed. "This approach has been at the core of the Healthy City initiative in Fall River," he added. For further information about the Healthy City initiative, contact Dr. Weed at 508-324-2411.
 

(Top row, left) Dr. Dewar points out that non-profit organizations are much more powerful community actors when they are not exclusively focused on needs, problems, and deficiencies but are effectively connected to the resources, or assets of the local community. (Top row, center) Community Health Associate April Cabrera from the Southeast Center for Healthy Communities sits next to Fall River's Youth Services Coordinator Christian McCloskey and America's Promise Fellow Ine Ogagan, center, all of whom exemplify the assets-based approach to youth development. (Middle row) Massachusetts Partnership for Healthy Communities Director Peter Lee introduces David Weed at the morning workshop on Generating Citizen Commitment in which participants from across New York and New England worked in small groups to generate ideas on how they could follow Fall River's lead. (Bottom row, center) Northeast Assets Leadership Project Director John E. Walker addresses conference participants during lunch prior to the afternoon workshops. A second day of advanced assets training labs was held at the Crown Plaza Downtown Hotel in Worcester.