Developmental Assets and Asset-Building Communities examines the
relationships of developmental assets to other approaches and bodies of
work. It raises challenges about the asset-building approach and offers
recommendations for how this approach can be strengthened and broadened
in impact and research. In doing so, this book extends the scholarly
base for the understanding of the character and scope of the systemic
relation between young people's healthy development and the nature of
developmentally attentive communities. The chapters in this volume
present evidence that asset-building communities both promote and are
promoted by positive youth development, a bi-directional, systemic
linkage that - consistent with developmental systems theory - further
civil society by building relationship and intergenerational places
within a community that are united in attending to the developmental
needs of children and adolescents.