A unique partnership of seven regional agencies, the Community Foundation of Central Florida, Orlando Regional Chamber of Commerce, UCF Metropolitan Center for Regional Studies, Heart of Florida United Way, Florida’s Blood Centers, Central Florida YMCA and myregion.org, has led to the first-ever Central Florida Social Capital Survey which will be unveiled on December 7, 2005, at the Orlando Museum of Art.

Social Capital is a way of conceptualizing and measuring how connected people are to one another. Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone: Collapse and Revival of the American Community argues that civic and social ties in American society have weakened over the past several generations.

The Central Florida Social Capital Survey, a computer-assisted telephone survey of more than 1,600 residents of the region, was conducted by the Survey Research Laboratory at the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Social and Behavioral Sciences. The extensive survey concludes that while Central Florida is in many ways a microcosm of the nation, both demographically and in terms of stores of social capital, raising the level of social capital in the region would help promote a wide variety of positive social, political and community outcomes.

Survey results will be available on the myregion.org web site at www.myregion.org.