This guidebook is a roadmap to a process known as “community asset-mapping.”
It’s an odd term, but it translates to positive action. Community asset-mapping rejects the habit of describing communities by listing their problems. Too often, the neighborhoods and communities whose children are involved in the juvenile justice system are defined solely by their needs. Unemployment, drug abuse, poor and ineffective schools, crime, and poverty are often seen as defining the communities in
which many of our children live.