I recently came across this excellent resource for issues and information about strategies and policies of inclusion in classrooms.  The Centre for Studies in Inclusion Education have developed the Inclusion Charter and offered, among other things, these Ten Reasons for Inclusion:

HUMAN RIGHTS

1 All children have the right to learn together.
2 Children should not be devalued or discriminated against by being excluded or sent away because of their disability or learning difficulty.
3 Disabled adults, describing themselves as special school survivors, are demanding an end to segregation.
4 There are no legitimate reasons to separate children for their education. Children belong together -- with advantages and benefits for everyone. They do not need to be protected from each other.

GOOD EDUCATION

5 Research shows children do better, academically and socially, in inclusive settings.
6 There is no teaching or care in a segregated school which cannot take place in an ordinary school.
7 Given commitment and support, inclusive education is a more efficient use of educational resources.

SOCIAL SENSE

8 Segregation teaches children to be fearful, ignorant and breeds prejudice.
9 All children need an education that will help them develop relationships and prepare them for life in the mainstream.
10 Only inclusion has the potential to reduce fear and to build friendship, respect and understanding.

Diane Bosisto made this short documentary about the sense of belonging that her local community centre builds:

As we worked through the Bandwidth For Belonging Research data, recordings and stories we have saw several patterns emerging and several key findings that we feel are most critical to consider. Here they are:

Key Findings/Learnings from the research (not listed in any particular order):

1. The Language of Belonging – There is work to be done improving the way we talk about belonging. 6 words that define Belonging for people across the workshops/country include (in order of resonance):
a. Connectedness
b. Respect
c. Understanding
d. Acceptance
e. Trust
f. Safety

2. Young and Unique – “Belonging is about complexity because of our diversity.” Young people want to be understood, it takes time to understand them. Generalizations and assumptions are particularly unhelpful. Patience and understanding require time and intention to know each other....

3. Young and vulnerable – facilitating belonging requires skills not yet easily attainable if they are even available. Facilitation around this topic is particularly challenging with particular dynamics that require careful preparation. For example, people who have lacked a sense of belonging can either force the conversation back to the problems, even complaints, they have about other people/systems rather than speak to assets, opportunities and solutions. This speaks to the deficits versus assets mentality that is pervasive not only within care systems but in individuals as well. Also, a challenge exists when talking about belonging especially if people face multiple barriers to belonging – e.g. have a disability, is a person of colour, sexuality/gender differences, immigrant/refugee, aboriginal, etc.

4. Young people are looking for, but too rarely finding, that they are a part of something. A sense of belonging can be built quickly with some particular tools – we saw this happen in the workshops. And yet that sense can also be fleeting moments that don’t last. The feeling of belonging can be momentary even though the fostering of that feeling takes time and intention. We heard many stories about building the sense of belonging through common experiences, shared goals.

5. Childhood experiences are our foundation for a sense of belonging. Ages 1-16 approx. seem to the most critical for establishing our sense of connectedness, for establishing our self-worth, etc. What happens with family, friends, at school where people are engaging with you or not guides us to finding a sense of belonging later in life.

6. Belonging in a box – structured activities can work. Belonging can come from structured fun activities and activities in which the group has a common goal. E.g. Games, sports, camps, festivals, special events, conferences, community centre programs, baking night, non-disability activities…all of these are about shared experience in structured setting with a consistent group of people. BUT not everything needs to be forced! Random friendships, cultural and other affiliations can also give a sense of belonging.

7. Internet technologies have a long way to come. Seems that there are very few if any opportunities with the internet. If anything, it can be a way to meet people before they “see” them – i.e. avoiding pre-judgments based on appearance, etc. Also internet can be used as an outlet for communication blogs, forums of expression.

8. Story-telling builds connectivity, understanding and belonging. The importance of story-telling in building connection within a group was reaffirmed.

9. Schools are maybe the most critical sites of belonging. Schools and curriculum were referred to over and over as both opportunities and possible barriers to that sense of belonging. Inclusive, non-segregated education is critical for self-awareness and understanding others. Teachers should be skilled at engaging students in dialogue on difficult subjects, predisposed and comfortable talking to kids with disabilities and asking them direct, honest and necessary questions. Teachers should be ambassadors, moreover advocates for a sense of belonging for each and every young person in their class/school.

10. Independent Living Resource Centres (ILRCs) or other community-based centres can be hubs of belonging in their communities. We saw that at least 4 of the ILRCs we worked with foster a sense of participation that nurtures people feeling they are a part of something. However there is also a danger that these centres segregate themselves from the non-disabled portion of communities. As an indication ILRCs were not helpful in drawing young people without disabilities to our workshops.

11. Work with parents and siblings is currently undernourished. For example, some parents feel isolated when they have children with disabilities and that carries over to a lack of sense of belonging at home. Also, the reference of manuals, curriculum, programs that help family members learn and grow will lead to belonging for people with disabilities.

12. Talking about belonging is novel. No one usually talks about it even though we all know it is a basic human need. Only really talked about if someone is feeling, or is perceived to be, isolated and/or lonely. There is no proactivity and little intention in making belonging happen – it either just happens or doesn’t and if it doesn’t it’s a problem to be fixed with programs, etc.

13. Ambassadors of belonging are waiting. There were, at each session, a small number of participants that felt a great deal of passion about this subject and expressed interest in continuing the work. We shouldn’t lose track of these people.

The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University keeps a list of organizations that are working on building social capital in one way or another. I have copy and pasted the current list below, but keep an eye on their website for further updates.

Assist Social Capital was established in 2002 to help promote social capital building in Scotland.

There is an interesting site called SocialCapitalInc. (SCI).They focus on increasing social capital in Woburn, Dorchester and Lynn, MA and aim to expand elsewhere. Learn more here. An article by founder David Crowley called Social Capitalism Starts at Home, explains the motivation for his approach, which is reaching more and more citizens.

WeAreWhatWeDo.org has an interesting and graphically arresting book Change the World For A Fiver that describes 50 actions that could help change the world. Almost half are social-capital friendly; the remainder are environmentally-friendly. For a list of the actions click here.....

National Name Tag Day? Joseph Porcelli, founder of Neighbors For Neighbors in Boston, borrowing an idea from Seinfeld, is trying to start an epidemic of name tag usage as a way of getting people to meet their neighbors and others who live in their city. It's been a tough road initially as this Fox25 piece details, but it's been getting press. More information about the effort available here.

Workplace/Business/Economic
[see the Technology section for many internet companies using social capital.]

Some businesses now have a Chief Networking Officer (CNO) to manage their social capital. For example, Brainswork in Austria, OpenBC, NetBridges/TEN, etc. See this Q&A with one CNO.

BALLE (Business Alliance for Local Living Economies). Laury Hammel, BALLE co-founder says that people crave the face-to-face encounters and connections that people experience when they shop locally. Hammel says that "studies show that when you go to a farmers' market, you have 100 times the number of conversations you have in a grocery store." (NYT, "Making a Profit and a Difference, 10/5/06) Article also describes the community-minded White Dog Cafe in Philadelphia. White Dog Cafe founder Judy Wicks has said that we need to reinsert relationships back into business as they historically were. "We need to know who grows our food and bakes our bread and makes our ice cream, know who brews our beer, know who makes our clothing, and know who builds our house. These economic relationships form the traditional foundations of healthy and happy community life."
BALLE has also set up a search engine in Bellevue, WA that lets you search for products but it lists them in order of which providers are most geographically proximate to encourage you to buy as locally as possible.

- HUCTW (also a chapter on this in Putnam/Feldstein's Better Together)
- United Parcel Service (also a chapter on this in Putnam/Feldstein's Better Together)
- Southwest Airlines (whose social capital building strategies are articulated in The Southwest Airlines Way (2005) by Jody Gittell)
- Local currencies and a description of some local currency efforts; such efforts require the trust on the part of holders of the currency or scrip that others in the community will honor this.
- Freelancers Union
Most of the micro-lending organizations that first started with the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh utilize social capital principles of trust to other group members to make sure that fellow entrepreneurs repay their loans. Those micro-lending organizations have spread worldwide to Latin America through Accion, and to the United States though Accion USA and through others' efforts like the U.S. government and foundations.
- other groups are trying micro-insurance schemes to do the same thing for insurance that micro-lending did for finance. See for example: The MicroInsurance Center's evaluation of microlending for disaster protection.
- eRideShare.Com offers a carpool listing service for commuters traveling in the same direction. It offers a way to save gas and build social capital with others. [iCarPool.com does similar things.]
- nTag supplies interactive badge (hardware developed by the MIT Media Lab) to promote greater social interaction and connections at corporate meetings and conferences.
- Kiva connects venture capitalists with third-world projects through PayPal. Description of their efforts here. (See also a 3/27/07 NYT article on Kiva and GlobalGiving by Nicholas Kristof called "You, Too, Can Be a Banker to the Poor")
- Zopa - online communal lending pool; not clear that this leads to more social capital
- Daylo (neighborhood community buying and selling site)

- Best Buy corporate has experimented with a system where workers can completely set their hours, provided they meet specified results. Management claims that productivity and morale has soared. Hear an NPR story here (7/19/06).


Faith-based
- Saddleback Church (also a chapter on this in Putnam/Feldstein's Better Together)
- Christian cost sharing groups in which thousands of people join together to meet not only financial, burdens like medical healthcare, but also spiritual and emotional burdens. [See for example, the Melbourne Florida-based Christian Care Medi-Share Program, Samaritan Ministries, or Blessed Assurance Bulletin.]
- Habitat for Humanity
- Valley Interfaith (also a chapter on this in Putnam/Feldstein's Better Together)
- Greater Boston Interfaith Organization
- Ten Point Coalition
- Mission Mississippi (also described in the Bridging Social Capital section below) organizes inter-racial events and helps spur inter-racial friendships to show the unity of people in God's eyes.

Technology
Meetup.com that makes it easy for people to find others locally who share their interests and want to meet monthly. Software makes it easy to find a time and place.

Craigslist (also a chapter on this in Putnam/Feldstein's Better Together)

Wikipedia.org (an encyclopedia created collectively by users). [Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger, in implicit recognition of the difficulty of creating encyclopedias democratically, is launching a new effort Citizendium that will launch in 2007, staffed by experts. For more read this blog entry.] The NYT notes that since 2004, courts have used wikipedia definitions in more than 100 judicial rulings.

Second Life -- a virtual reality world, parallel to ours, in which millions of Americans live an alternate life through avatars. Politicians and businesses sometimes use Second Life to test out ideas and gauge social reaction. [Other massively multi-player online games include World of Warcraft, EverQuest, City of Heroes, and The Sims Online, although Second Life is the only one almost exclusively created by the users themselves.]

Community mapping
Urban Tapestries. is a cross between GIS systems, knowledge mapping and sharing
Wikicities
Wikimapia
Platial
Bakerfield site that has community members locating potholes. Other examples, here and here.
Google Maps Mania that has some examples of interesting community maps

Slashdot.org (a very interesting on-line posting for nerds that uses rules to enforce community norms of honesty and reciprocity, including enabling members to vote on the usefulness of each others' postings). A partial description of the design of slashdot moderation can be found here and a more thoughtful analysis of Slashdot's moderation system appears here.

iFind is a new application developed at MIT to make it easier to locate friends on MIT's campus. The software enables one to hide one's identification, but otherwise can locate people with a precision of about 20 feet.

Chapter-based/franchising peer-to-peer organizing projects
Paul Resnick, one of the smarter folks on thinking about the intersection of technology and organizing, thinks that chapter-based/franchising projects may be the 'killer app' for organizing local communities through peer-to-peer chapters. Read his posting. Examples are:
Princess Project (that organizes dress giveaways for inner-city girls that don't have resources to buy prom dresses)
BarCamp
PBWiki

Yahoo groups

- livejournal

Evite (which makes it easier to invite others to social events) or Sendomatic
- or Eventful which enables users to search for local events and 'demand' an event, that may convince performers or others to offer it.

flash mobs or smart mobs.

Social Network Software
- Visiblepath
- LinkedIn
- Friendster
- SpokeSoftware
- Ryze
- Zero Degrees
- Tribe.net
- Facebook
- MySpace (especially for links around music)
- Eons (also called MySpace for Baby Boomers -- it aims for the over 50 crowd)
- Gather.com (which is sometimes referred to as MySpace for grownups)
- Yelp (for recommendations about restaurants or bars)
- SelectMinds (for business networking)
- Five Across (for business networking)
- Bebo
- The Well
- Orkut (by invitation only)
- Tacit (designed to unlock knowledge tapped within organizations)
- theSquare
- Classmates Online (to reconnect with school classmates)
- Two Political Social Networking sites
: HotSoup (started by KSG Institute of Politics Fellow Ron Fournier)
: Essembly (which connects people who share beliefs on specific issues)
YorZ - gives individuals a finder's fee for filling headhunter requests through their social networks.
- Fundable' lets groups of people pool money for fundraising and group purchases
- Snapvine (most popular teen social networking site in Fall 2006)
- Wallop (a more exclusive social networking site)
- Geezeo and Wesabe offer financial advice through social networks

Amazon is currently beta-testing Askville which "enable[s] knowledge creation by allowing users ask questions that are then answered by other users in exchange for [building their] reputation within the system." (Described by Cameron Marlow on Overstated.) Experts can earn a currency redeemable on Questville starting early in 2007.

CouchSurfing through which one can find others worldwide that might be able to offer one hospitality or that need hospitality, based on shared social networks and vouched-for individuals, and shared interests.

Tagging sites (where people can self-identify by what they link to). People can then find friends by shared links/likes/etc. [There is a 5-minute quick video tour of del.icio.us here.]
Technocrati
del.icio.us
flickr for tagging photos
fulr
Connectedy
LibraryThing
CiteULike (for academics to share, store and organize the articles they are reading)
Connotea (a site for scientists to tag articles)
Reddit
digg


WorldChanging has a site devoted to how to make our planet more livable, but some of their actions and products focus on building stronger community.

It's very small scale so far, but MySociety.org has started some interesting projects including the PledgeBank, enabling one to commit to take a certain action if others do as well. MySociety is also trying some interesting e-democracy resources such as WriteToThem or TheyWorkForYou to make it easier for UK citizens to communicate with members of the parliament.

A community-driven reuse effort like FreeCycle

There are several new efforts in the U.K. including UK Villages Online (to enable local communities to share information) and the BBC's iCan effort.

For an interesting ongoing list of things happening in the socio-technology space, see Saguaro participant Paul Resnick's thoughtful weblog.

Cellphones and social networking:
various products like Helio and EarthLink's Buddy Beacon in the Drift phone that shows on a map up to 25 nearby friends who also have the Drift phone
Boost Loopt (part of Boost Mobile, a Sprint unit) and Loopt.
Dodgeball.com which texts the position of oneself to friends but doesn't update itself automatically using GPS.
Keith Hampton, formerly of MIT, now at U. Penn, has an interesting project called Ubiquitous Network Awareness to enable users to create latent networks (people they went to school with, folks who attended a conference with them, co-workers, members of a given group) and be notified on their cell phones or laptops if such a member of one of their communities is within proximity. If the other user consents, both are given a way to instantly contact each other to get together. This could help reinforce weaker social ties or build new ones based on some shared attribute.

Collectively produced goods, like Linux software.

- eRideShare.Com (mentioned above under the Workplace section).

- The Giving Game was a game developed by a young person after 9-11 to map the impact of a good deed done to another, a la Pay It Forward (also called serial volunteering).
Netweaving aims to incorporate a Pay It Forward approach to networking. Bob Littell thinks of this as 'networking without keeping score', and connecting people in win-win relationships without thinking about 'what's in it for you'. He believes that this networking is contagious and ultimately will benefit all, including the Netweaver.

Uplift Academy, started by Tom Munnecke is interested in how one can start patterns of infectious good internationally at low cost using technology. A Powerpoint is available, notes are available and here is their Wiki site and Podcast site.

Microsoft's new MP3 player Zune may facilitate social interaction by enabling one to share music with other Zune users nearby wirelessly. But early reviews stress some problems with this sharing software. And How the Zune Is Faring So Far With Consumers --- Microsoft's Music Player Faces Tough Odds in Battle Against iPod; Early Buyers Report Loneliness (WSJ, 12/12/06, p. D1, Anjali Athavaley and Robert A. Guth) reports that in the early days there are so few Zunes out there that users can't readily use the wireless music sharing feature.

CarePages enable communities to keep connected when someone in that social network is sick.

[see also other organizations under the Community section that use technology to link communities together.]

Non-Profits/Altruism/volunteering/voluntary associations

L.A.'s Big Sunday (originally called Mizvah Day) promotes a day of service. Other large days of service are: Austin's Clean Sweep or Philadelphia's MLK Day of Service.

Cares organizations (New York Cares, Boston Cares, Hands on Atlanta, etc.) try to make it easy for Americans with busy schedules to find interesting volunteer opportunities, often in teams.

Starting with Seattle (and the Seattle Public Library), a whole series of communities have attempted to build civic solidarity and chance interpersonal conversations through efforts where all residents of the city are encouraged to read the same book at the same time. Examples of this can be found in Seattle, Portland, Chicago, to name only a few. Click here for a more general listing of these efforts.

Twin City Transplants and Metropolis St. Louis are two programs to try to integrate newcomers to the Twin Cities or young urban professionals to St. Louis.

A number of community foundations are doing things to foster social capital in their communities like the Winston-Salem Community Foundation's ECHO (Everyone Can Help Out) Fund, the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, the Foundation for the Carolinas, Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, Denver Foundation, or the Grand Rapids Foundation.

Caring Habit of the Month Adventure offers a year-round behavior-changing plan to advance caring and mutual respect by developing caring habits.

VolunTourism.org promotes trips that combine travel/tourism with volunteering. [Others are Globe Aware, Projects Abroad, Global Volunteers, Travel to Teach, i-to-i MeaningfulTravel, Cross-Cultural Solutions, Geekcorps, Visions in Action, and Idealist, to name a few.]

Education/Youth/Families

Move the Mountain Leadership of Ames, Iowa uses allies and social capital to help individuals escape poverty. Program inspired the The Circles Initiative (in Bonner County, Idaho) [See "Circling around an end to Poverty' by Cassandra Cridland in the River Journal, 1/10/2007.]

The Centre for Social Action, De Montfort University, School of Applied Social Sciences, in Leicester (UK) issued the Young People and Social Capital pamphlet (2006) that describes how UK youth utilize social capital to manage risk decisions and bring in new resources.

The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University in Sept. 2006 launched Family Day: A Day to Eat Dinner with Your Children.

GenerationEngage aims to get college-age youth (not in college) to be involved civcly.

- Tuition discounts for those who pursue extra-curricular activities (William Woods College)
- Philadelphia Experience Corps (also a chapter on this in Putnam/Feldstein's Better Together)
- Do Something (also a chapter on this in Putnam/Feldstein's Better Together)
- Youth Venture

- A new organization called The League engages youth in co-opetition (friendly competition about who can be more cooperative) around service to community. Youth work with coaches who embed the service in learning about philanthropy and the service is quantified on a school basis and standings let schools know who is winning.

National Service Programs, such as:
- Citizen Schools
- Jumpstart
- City Year
- Teach for America

- City On A Hill Charter School (Boston)
- Big Brothers, Big Sisters
- other mentoring and e-mentoring efforts (such as MentorNet, YouthTrust's e-mentoring, and others)

- an article on Families 2.0 describes various social capital building efforts among parents including Baby Loves Disco that has family-friendly mega-parties in cities across the U.S., Moms Rising (that aims to build a social movement among moms).

Incarnation Camp. David Brooks described it in Slate as a Connecticut Camp that "takes kids from all over the New York area—some rich and some very poor—and integrates them, and gives them a place where they can develop lasting bonds....Mostly it's a place where children can step off the achievement treadmill and mature in the ways that really matter—meeting different sorts of people, confronting fear, facing hardship."

National & Global Youth Service Day, formerly National Youth Service Day, annually gets millions of Americans (and now global citizens) involved in doing community service, by partnering with government and non-profit groups.

Government/Trust/Politics
- City of Portland (also a chapter on this in Putnam/Feldstein's Better Together)
- Seattle Dept. of Neighborhoods, Neighborhood Matching Fund
- Minneapolis Neighborhood Revitalization Program
- KidsVotingUSA
- Sustainable Seattle
- Front Porch Alliance, Indianapolis (but no longer active)

For Clinton and Obama, a Common Ideological Touchstone (Wash. Post, 3/25/07, Peter Selvin) about their common roots of interest in Saul Alinksy-style community organizing. (Clinton turned down a job offer from him, Obama accepted.)

- The Common Interest (started in Idaho) aims to forge centrist common ground on important political issues over the more extremist views of special interests and partisan politics. In their first year, 3 out of 4 initiatives were passed.

- Vets4Vets helps link Iraqi vets together and get them involved politically.

- Information Works! profiles Rhode Island schools on various characteristics including parental involvement (under the Engaging Families section).

Drinking Liberally is a chapter-based progressive group that meets in bars and discusses politics.

There are various efforts afoot to try to increase citizen participation in government or the quality of decisions reached:
: citizen's jury [wikipedia definition here] where a group of random members of a community meet to hear evidence from experts and ask them questions about an important policy or community issue and then after hearing all the evidence and deliberating, reach a collective decision about the right action. Juries do not increase civic participation more broadly but probably lead to more informed decisions that are more immune from lobbying and political influence.
deliberative democracy, and deliberative polling (started by James Fishkin) . See also Deliberative-democracy.net

Think Vermont (part of Vermont's Dept. of Economic Development) in their 2007 Growing Vermont's Next Generation Workforce Report evaluated the factors that drew college graduates to communities, with social capital being one of 6 asked about. It wasn't the highest factor, but 83% of college students surveyed said that social capital was important in very important in their decision of where to locate.

Communities/Neighborhoods/Crime
- Miner County, SD
- Social Capital, Inc. is working o increase social capital in Woburn, Dorchester, and Lynn, MA, and plans to expand elsewhere. For a description of what motivated David Crowley to start this effort read his piece Social Capitalism Begins at Home (National Civic Review, Winter 2005).
- Tupelo, MS (also a chapter on this in Putnam/Feldstein's Better Together)
- Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (also a chapter on this in Putnam/Feldstein's Better Together)
- Lawrence CommunityWorks has undertaken to enhance community organizing in poor, majority-Hispanic Lawrence, MA by strengthening social networks. An interesting case study on their efforts highlights their approach: the multi-door Family Asset Building efforts and NeighborCircles; the case study also uses network terminology, such as in LCW's focus on community 'weavers', 'bridgers' and activating latent ties, and discusses the 'horizon' of the networks.
- NeighborsForNeighbors (NFN) is a group in Jamaica Plain (a Boston, MA neighborhood) to build more local social capital, both for crime-fighting purposes and other uses. They are looking to expand to other Boston communities and then potentially more broadly.
NFN sponsors social activities, has launched a community tree planting effort and are now trying to start an epidemic of name tag usage as a way of getting people to meet their neighbors and others who live in their city. It's been a tough road initially as this Fox25 piece details, but it's been getting press. More information about the effort available here.

Front Porch Forum (based in Burlington, VT but with ideas that could spread elsewhere)

- In Colombia cites on holidays and Sundays, they have ciclovias, closing the roads to automotive traffic and opening them to walkers, bikers, rollerbladers and others in a major community building activity. In Bogota alone, they close almost 70 miles of roads.

- Online neighborhood groups:
- i-neighbors
- e-Neighbors.com
- rBlock
- NeighborhoodLink.com
- MeetTheNeighbors.org
- dodgeball.com (which uses WiFi to connect residents in a 10 block area using instant messaging)
- Craiglist (although this is done at the level of community, not city block).
- another version of this that doesn't limit the neighborhood as much is local2me that enables you to share e-mails with people in a certain geographic distance from your zip code.

- Restorative Justice programs where victims and perpetrators of crimes work through together the appropriate way of attempting to make the community whole through restitution, community service, etc.
- MyTown where youth learn about their communities through oral histories and interviews and then offer walking tours to others.
- National Neighborhood Day
- CreativeTampaBay is initiating a series of community conversations in their World Cafes on how to increase local social capital.
- Raytown (in the Kansas City area) has developed a strategic plan for community building, called Raytown Reaching for Tomorrow where “social capital” development through neighborhood groups is a key component. For more information contact Tim Truesdale, community development director for Raytown, (816) 737-6059.
- Project for Public Spaces has resources, case studies, tools, lists of good public spaces, etc. See for example this discussion of what makes for successful public spaces. One of their criteria is social capital-related (Sociability) and others are "Access and Linkages", "Comfort and Image", and "Uses and Activities".
- It's not precisely about social capital building, and the motivation can be more self-centered, but the local currency or community currency movement (e.g. Ithaca Hours), and efforts like Time Dollars can effectively build stronger local links among citizens. [Time Dollars founder Edgar Cahn has an interesting piece on the hidden economy that is driven by social capital called It's The Core Economy Stupid.]
- Leadership Philadelphia has started a Pay It Forward, Philadelphia project in 2005-2006 to try to both use grassroots civic change and civic leadership to create an epidemic of trust. An editorial in the Philadelphia Inquirer and column by Jane Eisner describe the project. For example, they have sent out 2 million notes with electrical bills to encourage Philadelphians to get involved in Pay It Forward. They have also started the Connector Project to map the individuals in Philadelphia that knit the community together, described in this Philadelphia Inquirer column: Center Square - 101 who can connect the dots (Chris Satullo, 10/15/06).
- Community Foundations: Various community foundations are doing things to build more local social capital and you can read about that in the non-profit section.
- Some community Internet sites aim to spur social capital in geographic areas by posting articles written by citizen journalists and having community bulletin boards, such as FresnoFamous, Greensboro101, OneKCvoice, and multi-city sites like Backfence.com, and YourHub.
- The World Bank has a video about Roca, Inc.'s experience in Building Social Capital Through Peacemaking Circles (although sound quality is not that great).
- The Minneapolis Center for Neighborhoods offers convenings, tools that high increase neighborhood capacity, a clearinghouse for sharing best practices on civic engagement and information on neighborhood-friendly policies.

- NCORP (National Council On Readiness and Preparedness), a non-profit, has formed ReadyCorps to involve citizens in localized emergency preparedness, whether for terrorism or natural disaster.

Nourishing "Nuestras Raices" -- "Our Roots" in a Troubled Old City (Neil Peirce, 5/4/06) highlights a Hispanic urban gardening group in Holyoke, MA that is generating income for poor Hispanics and building social ties and trust. Other recent Neil Peirce columns available here.

General stores can build social capital as the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation's discussion of the Cantebury Country Store evinces. The Barnard General Store (Vermont's oldest operating store, founded in 1832) hosts its Karmic Cafe each Monday evening in the summer. Local amateur or professional chefs cook their favorite international dishes. The store rearranges shelving to accommodate 24 people; some come with friends and others come to meet locals.

Social Circles Canada has started social circles (in Victoria) to improve health. They call it a new kind of health club. They also offer a blog here.

Community or National Service
Service learning: The Corporation for National and Community Service has a "service learning" efforts (Learn and Serve America). Many service learning projects (that integrate service into educational curricula) can effectively build civic habits and skills, and build social capital if they are team based. Useful resources on service learning can be found at Learning in Deed, the National Service Learning Partnership, and the National Service Learning Clearinghouse.

[see other effective national service organizations under the Youth section.]

Environmental
- Tree People which uses neighborhoods to collectively care for the planting and caring for of urban trees.
- Urban watershed systems or more information here on urban watershed programs that link citizens together in order to collectively retain more of the water in urban areas from storms.
- E-bird.org, a program run out of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which uses a citizen-collected database to monitor what is happening with various bird species; there is a Massachusetts version of this called the Mass Audubon e-bird program.
- Charles River Watershed Association, Charles River Water Quality Monitoring which uses a citizen-collected database to monitor water quality.
- Mass Water Watch Partnership lists Massachusetts-based citizen efforts to monitor watershed quality and New England Regional Water Program lists New-England based citizen-monitoring efforts and the Cooperative Extension Service has a listing of programs U.S.-wide.
- Southern Appalachian Man and the Biosphere has the Southern Appalachian Volunteer Environmental Monitoring (SAVEM) program to provide citizen-based monitoring of the ecosystem.

New Urbanism/mixed use housing
- HOPE VI is an interesting project of the Department of Housing and Urban Development to develop mixed income neighborhoods in the sites of former run-down neighborhoods. The sites have some subsidized and some market rate units and try not to have any differentiation from the exterior as to which units are which. They are developed roughly on New Urbanist principles (walkability, space for interaction, etc.).

- Congress for the New Urbanism

The arts
- Gallery 37
- Liz Lerman Dance Exchange (also a chapter on this in Putnam/Feldstein's Better Together)
- Roadside Theater
- Cornerstone Theater
- Swamp Gravy
- Freestyle Union/Artist Development Institute (started by Toni Blackman)
- Baltimore Museum of Art or Cleveland Museum of Art are doing things to bring the community into their museum and the museum into their community. See other examples of what museums are doing here.
- Philadelphia Mural Arts Program
- Project Row Houses
- Village of Arts and Humanities
- Elders Share the Arts
- the Social and Public Art Center
- for a description of other community-based arts efforts see the Community Arts Network.
[ New Creative Community (2006) by Arlene Goldbard has lots of examples.]

Leisure/Media
- Missoula Carousel
-BBC has a description of the intersection of social capital and public television called Watching Alone.
- PBS has done some experimenting with how local stations can build more social capital. For a description of some of these examples, see the latter pages in this CPB report that highlight stations like KCTV (Amarillo, TX), NH-PTV and KEET-TV in Eureka (which among other things did Our Schools, Our Solutions; or Teen Vote 2000).
- Hedrick Smith's Seeking Solutions (1999) that discussed approaches that seemed to be working on issues like stopping teen violence, confronting hate crime, building community, and coupled this with community dialogues.
- HBO's Legacy program (2001) discusses a poor family and their struggles to get off of welfare. The MacArthur Foundation helped fund the distribution of the show to community-based organizations (like churches) around issues raised in the film.
High Impact Television and the TV Race Initiative aim to produce rich character dramas that spark public discussions.
- Celebrating Solutions highlights social-capital building successes nominated by community members.
- Pew Center for Civic Journalism

International
[see measurement section on what international governments and research centers are doing on measuring social capital.]

Social Support
Alternatives, an organization that builds bridging social capital between 600 individuals with developmental and psychiatric disabilities in Central Mass and the surrounding communities.

The Council on Quality and Leadership issued a Social Capital Index (Spring '06) on the extent to which organizations are strong on bonding (linking people with disabilities together through services and support) or bridging (facilitating the inclusion of people with disabilities into the broader society).

Bridging Social Capital
Mosaic Partnerships has an interesting effort to increase bridging social capital. It began in Rochester, NY in 2001 and has spread to Greensboro, NC. A description of part of the Rochester, NY effort, called Bi-Racial Partnerships, launched by the Mayor's Office can be found here. Mosaic Partnerships can be contacted through Idea Connection Systems (in Rochester) at 585.442.4110 (the director of Mosaic Partnerships is Dash Douglas). They are launching a program in Milwaukee in September 2006.

Billy Shore's Hinges of Hope aims to build links between wealthy and successful Americans and areas of poverty that are both depressing and hopeful as a spur to getting these successful Americans more involved in these areas.

Public Conversations which helps promote dialogues across differences has a guidebook issued in 2006 called Fostering Dialogue Across Divides. They welcome your feedback on how to make this First Edition better. [Another useful document for bridging social capital, not put out by Public Conversations, is the Concord Handbook.]

Mix It Up Day promotes once a year having school children step out of their comfort level and having lunch with people of different social groups. And this document talks about how to have a Mix It Up Dialogue.

This article of the Study Circles Resource Center talks about their efforts with Diversity Groups.

Crossing 52 (in the Winston-Salem area) is a multiracial group aims to build bridges through art, Supper Clubs, and other initiatives.

Mission Mississippi (also described in the Faith-based section above) organizes inter-racial events and helps spur inter-racial friendships to live out God's pronouncement of 'love thy neighbor'.

Baton Rouge Area Foundation and Project 35 had a Two By Tuesday program to try to get people to meet with someone of a different race, class, etc. regularly for a period of time.

Reuniting America aims to encourage more transpartisan dialogues across differences in America.

Disaster Relief
Community Partners has published the much-acclaimed

First, here is a Haiku on isolation from Haiku: One Deep Breath:

Slouching, nonchalant
my son watches others at play,
unable to approach.
-Patois

And, here is a post that includes a haiku inspired by belonging from Get Zen (the comments following are also worth the read):

children nowadays
who may have special needs
find more acceptance

I attended a special event last Fall at a local elementary school in honoring the opening of the Buddy Garden, which is a place children with special needs can participate in gardening at the school. I was amazed at how accepted and integrated these children where into the community. When I was growing up, you rarely saw children like this, they were kept behind closed doors. I'm happy this is changing. This is in gracious response to One Deep Breath. This week's topic is Belonging.

posted by get zapped at 7:53 AM
15 Comments:

Mandy said...
The son of a friend has Downs and his social life is the envy of others....
11/12/2007 9:00 AM

spacedlaw said...
Wonderful thing!
Hiding those children was never a good idea. They are so sunny!
11/12/2007 9:04 AM

Rae Trigg said...
How wonderful that children with special needs are becoming more accepted. That garden sounds like a lovely idea.
11/12/2007 9:17 AM

Crafty Green Poet said...
It is a great change, you're right!
11/12/2007 10:44 AM

susanlavonne said...
what a touching response! thank you :-)
11/12/2007 11:53 AM

Jo said...
This is so true and so right!
11/12/2007 12:44 PM

Janice Thomson said...
I used to be a MDN (Mental Deficiency Nurse) that attended kids with special needs. Most except for the bedridden ones were integrated into the schools and communities and that title is no longer in use. Nearly all the institutions are closed and I too was so amazed at how well they were accepted and cared for by the community. That's the way it should be.
11/12/2007 1:06 PM

tumblewords said...
What a lovely post! Totally inspiring!
11/12/2007 1:11 PM

paisley said...
and for that i am proud of us.....
11/12/2007 8:37 PM

Kalyan said...
a beautifully captured & composed shot...This is a lovely idea & the response is also very inspiring for these children!
11/13/2007 2:51 AM

jem said...
A valid interpretation of the prompt. I cant wait for the day when everyone and everything can enjoy a true sense of belonging in their world.
11/13/2007 4:37 AM

Lizard Princess said...
Both my husband and I work with people with special needs (he at the high school level and me in a group home) so this is a subject very dear to out hearts.
It's fascinating and sad to listen to some of my residents talk about the old days when they had to share a massive room with 50-100 other people and didn't get the kind of care they receive today. One of the ladies will talk endlessly about how very thankful she is just to have her OWN ROOM. She remembers too clearly the mistakes of our collective past.
11/13/2007 6:03 AM

qualcosa di bello said...
your haiku is *exactly* as it should be!! :)
11/13/2007 6:06 AM

polona said...
i'm glad things are changing.
well done!
11/13/2007 10:33 AM

Glad said...
This poem is so much YES!!! Thank you! And true for adults as well!
11/13/2007 10:36 AM