The Purpose of the Red Hook Sharing Network-An Asset-Based Community Approach

The purpose: To enable Red Hook residents to share the best ideas, trade their financial and human capital, talents, skills and knowledge to solve problems, and build their community from the ground up. There are (1) things that need fixing, there are (2) poor people in the community with the talents, skills and abilities to fix them, and there are (3) ways to discover these people and empower them to fix their community, thus connecting them with pathways of work-and by extension, financial stability. Most importantly, paying or assisting struggling residents in need of help in return for their community services acts to add value, not only the the residents but to the wider community. If we can use a pool of neighborhood funds (from the local church and neighborhood association, for example) to pay ten struggling, in-need Americans to renovate an impoverished section of a neighborhood, employing their skills and labor for a third of the price of a corporate contractor or unionized government service, then value is created from within the community, and peoples lives are more stable.