A few years ago, I heard a man named Peter Benson ask a different question: instead of just looking at what goes wrong with kids who get into trouble, what if we looked at what is right with kids who grow up without problems?

Benson and his colleagues have plumbed the depths of that question for over a decade now. A preacher's kid from Duluth, Minnesota, Benson learned about compassion and making a difference from his dad. His instincts for social change blended nicely with a love of interdisciplinary work. When he became president of the Minneapolis-based Search Institute in 1985, Benson refocused the organization's research agenda around trying to figure out how kids thrive in a complex world.

What the folks at Search have come up with is something very interesting called "developmental assets." No, not the financial kind. It refers to those important life ingredients that all kids need to grow up happy, healthy, and successful.

Search has worked with 1,000 communities across the nation to ask one million 6th-12th-grade kids what those ingredients are and how many of them they have. The assets have been distilled down to a list of 40, half of which are characterized as external (family communication, clear rules, community involvement), the rest are more internal (engaged in learning, values honesty and integrity, has a positive view of the future).

On average, the kids surveyed have just under half of the 40 assets. The exact mix varies by community, but a few trends hold true across the country. Sixth graders have more assets than 12th graders. Girls do better in some areas than boys. The more assets kids have, the less likely they are to engage in risky behaviors like alcohol and drug use. The more assets kids have, the more likely they are to be successful in school and maintain good health. And here's the really good news: you don't have to be a parent to build assets in kids. In fact, the more positive adults of all kinds in a kid's life, the better.

When Search Institute started spreading this information around, so many people were enthusiastic about it that Benson had to do more than just research. So Search Institute launched its Healthy Communities/Healthy Youth Initiative to help communities intentionally build assets in their youth. Over 650 communities in the U.S., Canada and, more recently, Mexico have projects underway that bring together a creative and enthusiastic mix of families, schools, organizations, governments, and agencies to find new ways of doing what's right for kids. Of the 40 asset-building states where such projects are running, 24 of them are happening statewide. Most are co-led by the youth themselves.

Some of these projects include:

Assets for Colorado Youth
Backed by a $10 million grant from the Colorado Trust, ACY has taken the lead nationally in combining asset building with a meaningful multicultural approach in its mission to transform social institutions on behalf of kids.

Portland, Oregon's Take the Time for Kids
This initiative is successfully working with local media to develop youth-oriented reporting that goes beyond sports and crime, as well as teaching adults in the community how they can support kids in simple, everyday ways.

Essex, Vermont's Community Helping Inspire People to Succeed (CHIPS)
Essex was one of several communities that recently won a $50,000 Jostens Our Town grant to further develop its successful asset-building efforts.

One of the things I like best about asset building is that it's not the flavor of the week for solving kids' problems. This work is, in fact, at its best when combined with other already-successful efforts. It's highly companionable with America's Promise, for example, and Peter Benson even served on AP's advisory committee with Colin Powell. The national YMCA has recently committed to infusing asset building into all 2500 of its branches in 10,000 cities.

I also like that asset building doesn't even require money, just that we begin looking at kids in a different way, talking to them, getting to know their names, just smiling at them on the street. When my own son has trouble at school, we no longer focus on just what went wrong, we look at all the things he's doing right and fashion a solution based on that. Peter Benson calls this "using our head and heart and research and wisdom" to support all children, one precious kid at a time.

:: Deborah Fisher

Deborah started rewriting Mother Goose rhymes at age five and hasn't stopped word-tinkering since. A former legal affairs reporter for Minnesota Public Radio, she thinks being able to pester people with questions for a living makes life good (for her at least). She writes from Seattle where she lives with her husband Mark, 13-year-old son Mack, and dog Prince, who all find her natural organizing skills amusing at best. [ Check out a few of her favorite goodthings ]