Welcome To Community Building

Accelerating Change Through The Spirit of Community

Community Building Institute (CBI) teaches the skills and principles of Community Building and provides opportunities to experience the transformative power of true community. 

Community Building was founded in part, on the vision of M. Scott Peck, MD. and is considered to be a highly experiential process that removes barriers to communication while unlearning ineffective attitudes and behaviors.

Headquartered in Knoxville, Tennessee with locations throughout the US as well as Germany, Czech Republic and with more coming soon CBI offers workshops, events, consultation, and facilitator training worldwide. CBI provides free introductory talks and workshops to qualified community, government, and nonprofit organizations. 

Who We Partner With

We work with government and community leaders, service providers, companies and leaders searching for cost-effective methods to significantly enhance the quality, efficiency and outcomes of a broad range of programs – from government agencies, first responders, healthcare providers, schools and universities, faith-based organizations, correctional institutions and nonprofit agencies to social justice advocacy,  job skills, literacy, recidivism, computer training, parenting skills, and more.

Leaders and providers face similar challenges and struggles. Are any of these familiar to you?

• You run or oversee programs and services that improve the lives of people they serve, but the larger trend line for breaking the cycle of poverty, crime and violence that disproportionately affects the most vulnerable remains unchanged.
• You work with and on behalf of people groups that experience significant disparities in life expectancy, infant mortality, physical and mental health, high school completion, employment, and other social determinants of health and quality of life.
• You deal with one or many urgent and pressing issues such as:

• Lack of engagement of fathers in the lives of their families
• Increased risk for youth who are aging out of the foster care system
• High unemployment and the need for effective job, literacy and skills training
• Increased violence amongst youth
• Earlier incarceration and involvement with the juvenile justice system
• Increased costs of incarceration
• High rates of recidivism for adults and youth
• Racism and social justice
• You are aware of evidenced-based practices and use them to guide your decision-making. At the same time, you share in the struggle to find truly effective methods that impact key criminogenic and other success factors that are difficult or unrealistic for traditional curricula-based programs to address (such as changing unproductive attitudes and behaviors, developing prosocial skills, healing trauma that often drives unproductive behavior).
• You are experiencing tighter budgets and time constraints. You need to do more with less. You have little time or funds to add extra anything. The focus is on significantly enhancing rather than replacing existing programs.
• You are an expert in your work and the needs of your programs, staff and clients. You are open to new methods, but only if they are integrated in a collaborative way that utilizes your wisdom and experience and fits your unique situation.
• You are facing increased competition and tension between providing agencies – and are aware of the need for increased collaboration, trust, alignment, and coordination.

To be successful with Community Building methods, client communities and organizations generally:

• Are deeply committed to improving the health, self-sufficiency and success of families, youth and adults
• Are results and measurement oriented
• Are willing to share their expertise when integrating and adapting new methods into existing programs and services
• Value evidence-based practices and the importance of targeting key success and criminogenic factors (unlearning and practicing new attitudes, skills, behaviors)
• Understand the value of experiential as well as traditional curricula-based methods
• Focus on developing local/internal resources and capacity-building in order to sustain impacts and ensure cost-effectiveness
• Understand the importance of collaboration, and coordination and alignment of efforts
• Are interested in reducing costs where applicable

Our most successful clients are found where leadership has a sincere interest in significantly impacting outcomes in justice-driven and social service programs, while also improving provider collaboration and cooperation.

In addition to government, social service and criminal justice programs, we also have extensive experience using Community Building working with businesses and religious and spiritual organizations and institutions.

Next Steps

Now that you know more about Community Building Institute and the challenges we help clients and individuals address, we’d love to learn more about your work. Contact us HERE to arrange a call or meeting with us.