Bridging Brown County: Captivating Social Capital as a Means to Community Change

Abstract

As our communities strive to support community change efforts for survival and vitality, the importance of social capital has become evident in leadership development. Many researchers and practitioners realize that tapping into the inherent power of relationships and social networks is crucial. This paper provides an overview of the design and evaluation of Bridging Brown County, a countywide community leadership development program that was explicitly designed to build social capital as well as human capital. By integrating social and human capital constructs into the program design, impacts have been measured in domains of other community capitals. The results of the impact study provide insight into developing and measuring the success of community leadership programs.