For the first time ever, seven community partners have come together to commission a Central Florida Social Capital Study.  Social Capital is a way of conceptualizing or measuring how connected people are to one another.  It is a measure of the health of a community’s social fabric that exists when people enjoy strong connections to family, friends, neighbors, and civic institutions.

On December 7, 2005, these partners will collectively present the results of the Study to the community at large.  The partners include Central Florida YMCA, Community Foundation of Central Florida, Heart of Florida United Way, myregion.org, Orlando Regional Chamber of Commerce, and the University of Central Florida Metropolitan Center for Regional Studies.

Robert Putnam’s path-breaking work, Bowling Alone: Collapse and Revival of the American Community, describes how civic ties in American society have weakened over the past several generations. The result in many communities is a shortage of social capital.

The Central Florida Study was commissioned in part because so many people currently living in the region have moved here from somewhere else and the results give us an understanding of how current residents view "community."

This is important because communities with high social capital are communities where people know and take responsibility for one another, are active in civic projects and organizations, and bind themselves together to get things done. When social capital declines, the quality of education is threatened, public safety suffers, philanthropy weakens, economic development lags, and civic institutions become less responsive.

The Institute for Social and Behavioral Science at the University of Central Florida served as the information-gathering agent for this project.  Utilizing the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey created by the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, they conducted telephone surveys of 1,400 representative households from Brevard, Lake, Orange, Osceola, Polk, Seminole and Volusia Counties. The results will be used to create a regional action plan to cultivate social capital within Central Florida.