As you read through the following additional social capital practices, remember there is no one-size-fits-all approach to helping participants build social capital in a human services program.  Every program has a different context with different values and goals. You, the program managers and directors, know best the population you are trying to serve. That said, here are some questions and practices that might help you.

As you read through the following social capital practices, remember there is no one-size-fits-all approach to helping participants build social capital in a human services program.  Every program has a different context and different values and goals. You, the program managers and directors, know best the population you are trying to serve. That said, here are some questions and practices that might help you.

As human service agencies help program participants take social capital activities online, it is important to be clear about the purpose for the social capital – what program-related purpose does it seek to serve?

There is a cost to social isolation, and many of us have spent our first weeks of social distancing fighting against loneliness by using virtual platforms, such as Zoom, Google Hangouts, Webex, Talky.io, Facebook groups, and Instagram as our means of being together. We are working hard to minimize our sense of loss by trading in our usual face-to-face connections for virtual ones. We are finding ways to continue building and leveraging our social capital online.

One of the ways in which economic mobility typically occurs is through advancing one’s educational status. Although our study found a clear desire for more education and training opportunities, barriers remain.

Nationally, only about 9 percent of the construction industry is made up of women, while the North Carolina Department of Commerce estimated our state’s number at 4 percent in 2017.

Place-based strategies should look to use multi-level analysis that tracks changes beyond the place.

The entire country is grappling with the changing nature of work and the resulting implications for educational and skills levels.

Enabled by new technologies, individuals are forging pathways to work that bypass the long-term institutional connections once required for career development.

Disruption in business is not new. We can all think of companies from our past that ceased to exist some time ago. Remember Kodak? What is different today is the pace of change. Established companies are here today and gone tomorrow. New companies appear today, and dominate the market tomorrow.