GrowingChange makes a difference in the individual lives of participants, as well as in the community as a whole. Youth cohorts are much less likely to be incarcerated and more likely to attend a college or trade school after participating in the program. These include Terrence Smith, who says that after being involved with GrowingChange, he can “handle himself in pretty much any situation, is more mature” and can become a “solution in his community, rather than a statistic.” The program’s model of youth leadership, prized by founder Noran Sanford, is a best practice for developing adolescents’ executive function and encouraging pro-social skills.

In such a large, urban community, the team faced challenges gaining attention as a top priority. Participation with the Opioid Response Project helped them better define their task force and the issue they were working to address. That focus helped them get more attention at the county level. The team was also quite large and composed of busy community leaders, so they benefited from the structure the Opioid Response Project provided. “We needed a system for holding us accountable for follow-through,” said Beaton.

Local government leaders are on the front line, helping their communities navigate a health and
economic crisis whose duration is uncertain. The ncIMPACT Initiative’s COVID-19 survey sought to track
how these elected and appointed leaders viewed their early COVID-19 world—and the actions they
were taking to respond.

Leveraging the Secret Sauce of Relationships to Improve Reentry Outcomes: The Value of Social Capital VIRTUAL TRAINING WEBINARS If you work with individuals returning to their communities from incarceration, you know the relationships you help participants develop inside and outside … Read more

Families in Transylvania County and the surrounding area benefit from the work of Get Set Transylvania. With a high concentration of resources and strong support network for young children, the initiative encouraged some families, like that of Kadie Sanders, to move there after driving over one hour for a year to take advantage of the programming.

Making new connections and sharing resources are the primary benefits from the Forsyth team’s experience with the Opioid Response Project. “We need new ways to rethink how we work,” said project manager Amanda Clark, a health educator with the Forsyth Department of Health. “There are resources out there but finding out what works well and how to implement new ideas can be a challenge. This project helped connect us, bringing the right people to the table to tackle big issues in new ways.”

A $25.3 million Community Connect Grant from the USDA’s Rural Utilities Service in 2010 made it possible for a collaborative partnership between the counties and Country Cablevision to install fiber optic cables in Mitchell and Yancey Counties. Mitchell and Yancey Counties now have over 97% of homes and businesses connected to high-speed fiber optic broadband, with speeds up to 100 megabits per second for homes and 1 gigabyte per second for businesses. These are some of the fastest speeds in the state, competing with metro areas like Charlotte and Raleigh.

Principles Undergirding Social Capital Approaches According to our expert advisors, before individual practices are put in place, certain principles – referred to by those involved as ideas, convictions, or values — need to exist in programs first. They should be … Read more

  Social capital refers to connections, networks, or relationships among people and the value that arises from them. It can be accessed or mobilized to help individuals succeed in life. It produces information, emotional or financial support, and/or other resources. … Read more

The Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust asked the ncIMPACT Initiative to conduct a study of possible strategies to improve health outcomes in North Carolina with an emphasis on influencing the drivers of those outcomes. The ncIMPACT team focused on qualitative … Read more