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Social Captial and Learning Communities

New Hampshire Charitable Foundation. Yellow Wood Associates, Inc. worked with the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation on the integration of social capital into their grant-making process. The work involved facilitating the Social Capital Multiplier Group, researching social capital applications used by other foundations, and developing and testing a social capital assessment tool. Following up on work initiated by Robert Putnam and associates at Harvard University, this project also worked with six grantees of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation to evaluate the extent to which their work contributed to creating social capital.

Rural Community Capacity Building Learning Cluster. Yellow Wood Associates, Inc. surveyed members of the Learning Cluster to determine the variety of approaches being used to build rural community capacity, resulting in a report entitled Community Capacity Building, What Is It? for the Aspen Institute. Results are of interest to communities, practitioners, funders and policy-makers. The Principal of Yellow Wood Associates, Inc. is a participating member of the Aspen Institute’s Rural Community Capacity Building Learning Cluster. Members of the cluster include experienced rural development practitioners from around the country.

World Bank Workshop. Invited by the World Bank to participate in an international workshop on “Indicators and Methods to Measure Participation, Demand Orientation, and Local Organizational Capacity in Community Driven Projects.” Yellow Wood Associates, Inc. represented the work on community capacity building developed by the Aspen Institute’s Learning Cluster on Rural Community Capacity Building, and contributed experiences gained through training citizen groups in participatory evaluation of the Empowerment Zones/Enterprise Communities in the US.

The Role of Social and Environmental Capital in Landscape Protection. Yellow Wood Associates, Inc. prepared a chapter for a book on the role of social and environmental capital in landscape protection with the support of the Community and Rural Development Institute of Cornell University (CARDI).

Reflections and Visions on the Learning Community-The Community Development Society Annual Conference Reflections and Visions on the Learning Community-The Community Development Society Annual Conference. Yellow Wood Associates, Inc. presented two interactive workshops on promoting learning communities through measuring progress toward community goals. The learning process requires a continuous cycle of action reflection action. Participants learned how to distinguish a goal from an activity, and to develop meaningful indicators and measures of progress toward community goals. Cornelia Flora of the North Central Regional Center for Rural Development and Janet Topolsky of the Aspen Institute were co leaders of these workshops.

Keynote Speaker: New Mexico Rural Economic Development Forum Keynote Speaker: New Mexico Rural Economic Development Forum. Ms. Ratner, Principal of Yellow Wood Associates, Inc., spoke on the topic of "Creating Learning Communities" to an audience of economic development practitioners and elected officials. The focus of the forum was "Build Community Capacity: Tools for Vitalizing Our Rural Economies." The forum is an accredited program of the American Economic Development Council.

Keynote Speaker: Northeast Sustainable Communities Project Annual Retreat 1997 Keynote Speaker: Northeast Sustainable Communities Project Annual Retreat 1997. Ms. Ratner spoke on the topic of "Creating Learning Communities" to community development practitioners in six communities who have been working for four years to promote community sustainability.

Heartland Center for Leadership Development. Presented workshops on “Making Indicators (That) Matter: Using Citizen Learning Teams to Keep Community Development Ongoing and On Track” and “Creating and Sustaining a Learning Community of Rural Development Practitioners” at the Cultivating Community Success: Strategic Lessons from Community Assessment conference of the Heartland Center for Leadership Development in Lincoln, Nebraska.

University of Minnesota Extension Service. The University of Minnesota Extension Service Business Retention and Expansion Program selected Yellow Wood Associates to develop a tool to test the theory that building social capital in communities while focusing on community economic development goals will increase the probability that business retention and expansion will occur. Yellow Wood Associates will use a modified version of a network analysis tool developed several years ago to assess the effectiveness of the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund’s work with business clusters. One version of the tool will be used with community leaders and another with business owners.

University of Minnesota Extension Service. The Leadership and Civic Engagement Program of the University of Minnesota Extension Service selected Yellow Wood Associates to work with a team of Extension professionals to create an interactive tool to measure social capital in Minnesota communities. Social capital refers to social networks and norms of reciprocity and trust that facilitate cooperation for mutual benefit. Extension professionals hope to use the tool to help community groups examine the links between social capital, civic engagement, and vital communities, as well as to assess the effectiveness of Extension’s work in building social capital.