Friday, March 24, 2023

Talking about social capital

I was invited to participate in a chat on Twitter this week, hosted by the Christensen Institute, using the hashtags #SoCapChat_CI  and #EconomicMobility.  Their goal was "to help connect the people/organizations who are discussing social capital and economic mobility".  Click on the links and scroll through the Tweets that were posted and you'll gain an understanding of what was discussed. 

As I participated, I shared ideas from my own collection of social capital articles on this blog. Below is one example. During the chat I posted a Tweet to my friends at @NodeXL and asked if they would create a graph showing participation.  Below was the result. You can view the graph as this link. 


This graph shows that 116 Twitter users participated in the chat. If you zoom in you can see who these people are and who they connected with. 

I think expanding networks of adults supporting youth in high poverty areas is important and that organized, volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs are one strategy for doing this. I created the graphic below in the 1990s to visualize the type of support network that such programs might provide.


Unfortunately too few people who lead youth programs include the idea of expanding social capital in the information they share on their websites.  Too few youth program representatives were in this week's chat, and too few donors, policy-makers and/or business representatives were participating.  

Hopefully a chat like this will be repeated every few months and more people from the ecosystem will show up on NodeXL maps.  I'll try to help make that happen.

Below is one of my concept maps, showing intermediaries who support youth serving programs in Chicago. 


Each node on the top half of this concept map includes links to the organizations shown.  I follow all of them on social media and participate in virtual events that they host.  I try to generate deeper conversations, such as one I had yesterday with a team from Northwestern and the Chicago STEM Co-op.  

Ideally there would be on-going chats hosted by these groups on Twitter and NodeXL type maps would show participation of multiple organizations from my concept map in each of these chats.  In addition, while many are now hosting face-to-face meetings, I urge them to add virtual components.  One reason is that COVID is not over for many of us. A second, is that I feel each participant in a virtual meeting has a closer connection to the speakers and to other participants.  In a room of 100 or more that is not happening. 

Chicago will have a new Mayor after the April election.  I've been sharing posts on Twitter, inviting the two candidates to look at strategies I've been sharing and incorporate those ideas in their own plans. 

I have been sharing these ideas since the mid 90s.  Maybe in the coming months and years we will see evidence that staff from the new mayor are looking at this blog and borrowing the ideas.

One piece of evidence would be chats about "how to help kids in Chicago" on Twitter, with NodeXL maps showing participation from a broad section of city leaders and citizens.

I'm available to help mentor that process.  Connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or Mastodon (or all of them). See links here. 

If you want to help me continue this work, visit this page and use PayPal to send a small contribution.

Thank you for reading. 

7-19-2023 update - read this new research report about mentoring, social capital and philanthropy. Download report at this site. 
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