If community is defined by the sum of its parts, the parts are people and their relationships that foster trust, engender civic engagement, and promote opportunity. Social scientists have coined the term "social capital" to capture this idea. A key consideration in the development of social capital is not only how strong our relationships are among people we know, but how strong our relationships may be among people with whom we have less in common. This concept of social capital matters because:
- Our sense of community and quality of life is informed not only by economic and environmental factors, but also by the nature of relationships within a community.
- Communities that have higher levels of trust, civic engagement, associational and volunteer involvement--i.e. social capital--tend to perform better economically and have higher quality of life
- Greater levels of social capital also tend to make a community more resilient and responsive when faced with adversity
The handout Social Capital: Cultivating Community Connections in Maine (712kB PDF) provides a summary of MaineCF's work with social capital. It can help nonprofits understand how they already add to social capital and how they can work with their present programs to increase their role in developing social capital.
The Social Capital initiative page provides links to the results of the 2000 and 2006 social capital surveys in the Lewiston-Auburn area.