PHASE 1
Lay the Foundation
Integrating social capital into an organization’s existing vision for college, career, and life readiness and setting explicit goals and intentions for this work will ensure every student completes their K-12 education with a robust network aligned with their needs and goals and the skills and confidence to activate it.
Most organizations often already have foundational pieces in place for helping students build social capital. These might include current strategies around work-based learning, important partnerships with employers and postsecondary institutions, or advising plans to guide students in their next step. However, these strategies can be enhanced with greater coordination and cohesion, intentional design planning, progress monitoring, and evaluation to ensure that all students are making the connection (no pun intended) among these different relationship-building opportunities.
The Cultivating Connections framework starts with embedding social capital into overarching pathways-related frameworks or theories of action, then building the case for why social capital matters for their community, followed by identifying existing assets to better understand who and what is already in place to support student social capital development, and finally mapping new opportunities to elevate new ideas for how to more intentionally and strategically do this work.
Embed Into Frameworks
What frameworks and theories of action is your organization using to ground your pathways work? This might look like a five-year strategic plan, a state-level blueprint, or vision documents like Portraits of a Graduate to set expectations for every student. Instead of creating a separate social capital strategy, use these guide posts to develop an approach that makes sense for your organization and its stakeholders. Ask yourself, where can social capital accelerate the progress toward our vision? Why is this work important to our ultimate goal? Naming social capital as a priority in your work will help others recognize its connection to bigger organizational goals.
Make the Case
Having social capital in your framework doesn’t mean everyone understands why it’s there. Spend time helping all your stakeholders—educators, parents, students, partners—better grasp the concept of social capital, what it means in your particular context, and why this work is important for organizational goals and student outcomes. Everyone can think of a time when someone helped them along their journey or where they extended a hand to someone else. Use this common experience to remind your audiences of the value social capital carries in your work to ensure students are equipped and empowered to succeed long after they’ve left you. Leadership matters – continually elevate social capital as a critical element for preparing students for their future and set the expectation that everyone can, and should, serve as champions for and brokers of student social capital.
Identify Assets
What is your organization already doing to help students build social capital? Start with an inventory of the programs, curricula, and experiences your organization is providing to students to identify where relationship-building is an expected outcome or expectation (even if not explicitly so). Which students are benefiting from these experiences? Who are your partners in this work? How can these opportunities be enhanced? Use these existing assets as a testing ground for a more intentional approach to building student social capital and launching pad for a more systemic strategy.
Map Opportunities
Once you know where this work is already taking place, explore where there are untapped opportunities to reach all or most students. What experiences do all or large cohorts of your students have? How can you expand current strategies and proven practices to provide these experiences to more students? Across your different stakeholders and partners, you may already have a rich network from which your students can benefit. Consider the people and organizations currently a part of your ecosystem and where they might be called upon to support these new opportunities.
