Mary Emery

Spiraling-Up: Mapping Community Transformation with Community Capitals Framework

This paper uses the Community Capitals Framework (CCF) to look at community change from a systems perspective. We find that social capital—both bonding and bridging—is the critical resource that reversed the downward spiral of loss to an upward spiral of hope—a process we call “spiraling-up.” Focusing on the example of a change process implemented in Nebraska, HomeTown Competitiveness, we delineate the assets invested, created, and expanded by the project. We also apply the CCF to understanding the flow among the capitals and the impact of this flow on community capacity to initiate and sustain a process of change, particularly in building social capital.

The Sustainable Livelihoods Approach and the Community Capitals Framework: The Importance of System-Level Approaches to Community Change Efforts

INTRODUCTION To better understand the nexus of poverty reduction, natural resource management, and successful project implementation, many scholars and practitioners look at system-level approaches that go beyond efforts focused on individual action or behavior. One such approach focuses on sustainable livelihoods to gain an appreciation of the decisions and opportunities available to households within a local context. A second approach widens the lens to better understand the local context and its connection to the wider world by focusing on assets related to the seven community capitals. A third approach encourages local participation and decision making in order to ensure implementation and long-term sustainability of development efforts. Each of the articles included in this issue makes use of one or more of these approaches to guide the reader in thinking more broadly and systematically about system-level impacts of community change efforts. In this special issue of Community Development: Journal of the Community Development Society, we focus on sharing examples and furthering the research related to how social equity, economic survival, and environmental stewardship can lead to sustainable practices at the household, community, and state levels. Interest in this special issue emerged from a 2007 Wallace Conference on the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach (SLA) and the Community Capitals Framework (CCF)--both designed to understand and to initiate sustainable poverty reduction or economic security strategies in the context of conserving natural resources. The symposium was hosted by the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE) in Costa Rica in partnership with Iowa State University. The symposium attracted a number of scholars as well as key funders interested in addressing the need for better approaches to development dilemmas both in the United States and abroad related to economic security and sustainability. In particular, people were interested in how work in the United States around sustainable development and that occurring internationally could benefit from adapting systems-level approaches as a way to focus both on project design and impact. The need to demonstrate greater impact and more return on the development dollar is illustrated by the fact that despite billions of dollars in investments to reduce poverty, the incidence of poverty has not changed significantly in the United States in the last four decades and by many accounts has actually grown worldwide. Similarly, efforts to effectively manage natural resources are often undermined by local needs for immediate resources. Recognizing the failure of past approaches in addressing both the upswing in poverty and the degradation of the environment, many international development approaches have moved toward initiatives that address poverty and natural resource management in the context of community and economic systems. Among these efforts, those that include participatory elements appear to be more sustainable in the long term. The successes emerging from these systems-level approaches are, however, rarely transferred to a first-world context. In the United States and other G20 nations, poverty is most often still addressed as a characteristic of individuals or families; natural resource management work is initiated as techno-centric response to a particular habitat deficit. This special issue of Community Development focuses on approaches to community change that involve systems approaches in the hope that these examples will encourage readers to consider how they might use approaches like Sustainable Livelihoods Approach (SLA), Community Capitals Framework (CCF), and Participatory Action Research (PAR) in their own research, practice, and teaching. Thus, this special issue has four goals: 1. to introduce readers to frameworks that can facilitate a systems-level approach in their work; 2. …

An introduction to the Food & Fitness community partnerships and this special issue

This special issue of Community Development introduces the Food and Fitness community partnerships and their work to increase access to healthy, locally grown food, and opportunities for physical activity, in vulnerable communities across the country. Established in 2007 and funded by the WK Kellogg Foundation, the partnerships are increasing the capacity of communities to participate in policy and systems change to positively affect their health and well-being. These articles together provide an illustration of how funders, grantees, and partners can work together to create sustainable change at the neighborhood level to ensure that all children and families are able to thrive.

Leadership as Community Capacity Building: A Study on the Impact of Leadership Development Training on Community

Leadership development programs have documented positive impacts on individuals, but there is much less evidence of long-term community impacts. To explore the relationship between leadership development and community capacity, interview data from participants in a 1987 multicounty leadership program were collected and analyzed. Community impacts were assessed using Appreciative Inquiry (AI) to determine impacts on community capacity as defined by community capitals. The findings demonstrate that participants contributed greatly to specific projects from which the community benefited. The impact on capacity as measured by the changes in community capitals is not as strong, in that the participants did not explicitly link the different projects.

The pedagogy and the practice of community visioning: evaluating effective community strategic planning in rural Montana

Community visioning is increasingly used as a community development technique in a variety of settings. Sixteen communities in rural eastern Montana participated in a multi-phase poverty reduction program from 2006 to 2008 that culminated in a community vision process. Regional workshops were delivered to community visioning coordinators at the onset to explain principles of visioning and coaching, set expectations, and provide concrete guidelines and ideas on ways to implement the program. Using a case study approach, we conducted a series of focus group interviews to better understand the usefulness of the workshops, and the changes and actions that resulted from visioning. Results show the importance of a coordinated training program prior to the visioning program in each community and how intangible outcomes, including increased trust, improved relationships, and a sense of ownership in the process, were also significant factors both during and subsequent to the visioning program.

Relationship building: the art, craft, and context for mobilizing the social capital necessary for systems change

Much has been written about the importance of relationship building and collaboration in community and policy change work. Yet, we know little about the process of successfully building relationships in this context. The Northeast Iowa Food and Fitness Initiative (FFI) is one of nine Kellogg-funded community change initiatives targeted at increasing access to healthy food and fitness activity. Using data collected from interviews of FFI leadership team members, we deconstruct the relationship-building process to focus on the iterative nature of social capital development and the impact of this process on generating additional assets in cultural, human, and political capital to create a spiraling-up process. The resulting merging of bonding and bridging social capital into generative social capital fashions resilient ties that span boundaries and expand the radius of trust.

Social capital and youth development: Toward a typology of program practices

As part of our inquiry into how youth development and 4-H programming can affect the development of social capital for youth and for the community, we engaged youth in ripple mapping. Based on this information, we provide a typology of participation structures in youth development activities and the expected bridging and bonding social capital outcomes for each type. This article outlines the key factors underlying the typology and discusses strategies for using the typology to expand the impact of youth development and 4-H programming on young people and communities. It also outlines potential implications for increasing opportunities for fostering social capital leading to a spiraling-up effect for youth, volunteers, and the community.

Vocational Learning by Native Americans in the USA

For Native American Indians in the United States, initial efforts at vocational education by the Federal Government were intended to ‘deculturalize’ the students, by removing them from their place, their religion, their language and their native crops and practices. Girls were taught to be domestic servants and boys to be farm hands and factory workers in the dominant society. While the boarding schools created a degree of pan-Indian solidarity, the students and parents did their best to resist this destruction of the culture. Tribal colleges were established by the tribes themselves to relink culture with education to enhance identity and tribal integration. They have developed excellent programmes that educate their students with skills that fit the reservation and contribute to the community. This chapter identifies a ‘seven cultures’ curriculum model that informs much of the course development in tribal colleges and illustrates the effects of this model with specific examples of implementation.

Innovative measurement and evaluation of community development practices

Comments from the Editorial Office: Exploring trends in community development research John J. Green, Molly Phillips and Mary Margaret Saulters 1. Overview of innovative measurement and evaluation issue Norman Walzer, Jane Leonard and Mary Emery 2. Measuring community development: what have we learned? Andy S. Blanke and Norman Walzer 3. Measuring community empowerment as a process and an outcome: preliminary evaluation of the decentralized primary health care programs in northeast Thailand Tatchalerm Sudhipongpracha 4. Shared measures to achieve shared outcomes: lessons from Central Appalachia Shanna Ratner and Katy Allen 5. Immigrant farmer programs and social capital: evaluating community and economic outcomes through social capital theory Lisa S. Hightower, Kim L. Niewolny and Mark A. Brennan 6. Evaluating the community outcomes of Australian learning community initiatives: innovative approaches to assessing complex outcomes Jim Cavaye, Leone Wheeler, Shanti Wong, Jan Simmons, Paula Herlihy and Jim Saleeba 7. Evaluating social impact bonds: questions, challenges, innovations, and possibilities in measuring outcomes in impact investing Edward T. Jackson 8. Hitting the target but missing the point: the case of area-based regeneration Lee Pugalis

Overview of innovative measurement and evaluation issue

There is growing interest in finding ways to evaluate and measure outcomes from development projects addressing community change, especially as public and private organizations try to document positive results from their program investments. Since adverse financial trends such as high unemployment and slow growth in incomes affecting many communities and regions will continue in the near future, and opportunities borne out of these changes continue to evolve, community leaders must be able to make accurate decisions based on meaningful evaluations of past practices. Thus, development agencies, policy-makers, and funders will continually look for ways to measure and evaluate their programs. Evaluating returns to investment in the private sector is often easier than in the public sector, because outcomes are more easily measured using return on equity and other investment management tools. Measuring and documenting outcomes in the public sector, however, can be more difficult due to the complex interactions among groups and less clearly defined or agreed-upon outcomes. Public agencies often measure local economic development investments by the number of jobs created and/or retained, and the amount of private investments that occurred. These measures are tangible, and seemingly straightforward, indicators for documenting outcomes from participation in both state and federal programs, but they may also overlook other important effects. Recent research (see e.g. Flora, Emery, Fey, & Bregendahl, 2008) focusing on the importance of building community capacity indicates that investments into the less tangible areas of building human and social capital are a necessary prerequisite for many communities that want to increase jobs, local wealth, and overall prosperity for residents. Measuring the number of jobs retained or created because of a specific project or outlay of public funds is especially difficult because of other factors involved, such as changes in the overall economy or adjustments in local job markets. Recognition of these limitations has caused policy-makers and funding agencies to search for more comprehensive and accurate ways to document results and outcomes of investments in development efforts. The interest in more refined measurement and evaluation practices is part of a long-term movement by federal and state governments for more effective planning and