Community Capital

By: Michelle RobersonAbby MacGill

Hannah GuerrettazJulie McLaughlin

Community Capital

• Banked good that helps build trust between various groups within a community.

• Community capital is known as social capital. • social capital- the networks, norms and trust

that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit.

• Community capital is a public good.• Where social capital exists, people can come

together to understand what needs to be done and work to accomplish needed tasks.

L.J. Hanifan

• L.J. Hanifan coined social capital in 1916.

• He defined it as good will, fellowship, sympathy and social intercourse.

• He believed that social capital benefited the community as a whole as a well as the individual who received it.

• Dear Abby,Through my experiences as an educator, I have

seen communities thrive and fail. I have also witnessed the reasons for their success or failure. I expressed what I had seen in a pamphlet on what came to be known as community capital. “The community as a whole will benefit by the cooperation of all its parts, while the individual will find in his associations the advantages of the help, the sympathy, and the fellowship of his neighbors.” (Harvard professor Robert Putnam) Community Capital is very important to me because I believe in making our community a better place. I know that if we as a community invest into the children, and in the businesses then we as a community will become better area.

Yours Truly,L.J. Hanifan

Robert Putnam“Working together is easier in a community blessed with a

substantial stock of social capital”

• A political scientist and Harvard professor.

• Has done the most to focus modern day attention on it.

• Bowling Alone, his highly successful book, ensured that social capital not only showed up in academics but among people in international development within foundations, including the White House.

Tying Social Capital to Democracy

• Helps alleviate poverty and sustain human and economic development.

• Regions with successful governments have the tendency to thrive with strong traditions of the involvement of the community. (ex: voter turnout, newspaper readership, and memberships to community clubs and societies)

"There is no such thing as a "self-made" man. We are made up of thousands of others. Everyone who has ever done a kind deed for us, or spoken one word of encouragement to us, has entered into the make-up of our character and of our thoughts, as well as our success."

---George Matthew Adams, philosopher