Week #11: Reading Blog - Kylee

Spiraling Up- Mapping Community Transformations with Community Capitals Framework

 

​This article was very interesting to me as I currently live in a rural community.  The article began by discussing the National Rural Funders Collaboration (NRFC) in 2001 call for “reversingthe pattern of neglect and disinvestments in rural America.” This call to action brought together three not for profitorganizations to collaborate as the Home Town Competitiveness(HTC). HTC was one of five collaborations formed and funded by the NRFC to work on rural development.  The three organizations that made up the HTC were Heartland Center for Community Leadership Development, RUPRI Center for Rural Entrepreneurship, and Nebraska Community Foundation.  While each of the organizations brought different skills to the plan they worked collaboratively toward common goals.  The organization’s leaders had connections to Nebraska, had worked with one another in the past, and had reputations of being effective.  As the three groups became one under HTC they had already established high levels of bonding and bridging their own social capital.

​The HTC formulated a four part plan to aid in the area of rural community development.  They wanted to increases philanthropy by directing rural wealth transfers to community foundations, include community youth in roles of leadership, philanthropy, and entrepreneurship, increases local leadership in the community and strengthen local economies by building on local assets.  The NRFC began the funding for the project.  NRFC as well as the HTC, used the Community Capitals Framework (CCF) to document and analyze how community capitals were used in transforming a community that was spiraling downward toward a “spiraling-up” in the community.  Spiraling down and Spiraling up are situations that correspondto the theory of cumulative causation.  Basically, if things are going downhill then they will continue to decline.  Vice Versa spiraling up, represents the idea that if assets are gained and growth occurs it will affect other areas of life and continue to positively change.  

​The CCF offers a way to analyze community and economic developments from a systems perspective and allows for an understanding of how different capitals interact and effect one another.  The NRFC analysis includes seven capitals including: natural, cultural, human, social, political, financial, and built capitals.  This article focused on human, social and financialcapitals and how they affected one another in one of the first rurally explored communities of Valley County, Nebraska.

​Through the analysis of the CCF, HTC identified social capital as a starting point for community change in Valley County, Nebraska.  Before jumping right in HTC reviewed data and identified that the Valley community had population decreases and concerns of underemployment of individuals in the area over the years.  The community had established an economic growth council but little growth was happening.  The community welcomed the chance to work with HTC.  HTC worked with the community and community leaders.  Together they established strategies they wanted to work toward to improve their community.  They agreed that they would worktoward leadership development, entrepreneurship, youth, and wealth transfer.

​As HTC and the community worked toward their established goals through training and education the community began to witness an increase in social, human, financial and cultural capitals.   As leadership grew and expanded they were building their social capital in their community.  This in turn also began bridging the human capital with others in the community including youth.  Youth were encouraged to participate and programs were created with the local high school to sustain this growth in the community.   As community involvement increased and people became interested, moreinvolved, and attached to the community their cultural capitalincreased.  Local business and community stake holders began investing in the community, increasing the financial capital.  The financial and social capital was also affected by investors and relationships that were formed with businesses outside of the community to assist in sustainability.  While the focus was on increasing social, human, financial and cultural capitals the positive outcome from increasing each area affected other areas of capital as well.  This assisted in growth for the community as a whole. 

​Two main impacts came from the analysis of this project using the CCF.  The first is HTC facilitated the growth of the social capital to engage the community and form partnerships.  The CCF also uncovered the importance of transforming the community’s perception in to a more positive view.   

​The CCF allows for communities to be studied in a more systematic and holistic way.  It enables us to see the interactions of different capitals that the CCF established and how they affect one another.  This information also assists in providing and problem solving strategies for change.  Through the study of HTC we can see that the flow of assets positively affected theinvolvement and commitment in the community.  

I thought this study was interesting.  I think it definitely shows the correlation and link between different areas of the community.  It was also a good example of how each aspect of a community can directly affect one another for better or worse.