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The Winston-Salem Foundation has initiated a $2.5 million grantmaking initiative to increase their community's stock of social capital. Titled the ECHO Fund (ECHO: Everyone Can Help Out) and announced in October, 1999 on the occasion of their 80th anniversary, the Foundation has since awarded 20 ECHO grants totaling over $500,000. Six ECHO grants are outlined below to illustrate how foundations can partner with non-profit organizations to build social capital. [Community Highlights] [Success Stories] [Press Release] Ardmore Neighborhood Association Contact: Jane Milner $15,000 to build social capital by supporting Ardmore's process of applying to the National Register of Historic Places While numerous neighborhoods apply for National Register status by hiring a historic preservation consultant, Ardmore proposed to accomplish this complicated task primarily with volunteers. Teams of neighborhood residents are getting to know each other better while spanning their large neighborhood to photograph houses, collect oral histories, and document architectural styles. The deeper relationships that are being built are beginning to extend to transporting and feeding neighbors who are disabled, to planning a neighborhood attic sale that raised over $2,000 for the project, to starting a neighborhood e-mail list serve, and to opening their neighborhood to an affordable housing project. Now, they are planning a home tour and to decorate a Christmas tree at a hospital in their neighborhood, using the skills of their artistic neighbors. Neighborhood churches and businesses are involved in supporting these community-building efforts.
Contact: Gayle Anderson $53,000 to build social
capital through El Puente, an informal coalition of Latino parents from
the Hall-Woodward school community Habitat for Humanity Contact: Kay D. Lord $100,000 to build social capital by forming racially diverse partnerships to build houses Habitat is actively recruiting groups to join together across lines of religious, racial, economic, and age differences to work together on the common task of building houses with those who will call the houses home. For this social capital initiative, Habitat is being honored with an award this month by the Human Relations Commission. As Christians, Jews, and Muslims, black people and white people build together, they expand their relationships to include suppers together, pulpit exchanges, merged youth groups, and joint choir performances. Says Sonja Murray, Habitat's Director of Development, "A wall is so important. You focus on building that real wall, doing that physical task, every body an asset in making it happen, and other kinds of walls start to crack and fall." KUDZU Contact: Elizabeth
Carlson $6,798 to build social capital by funding a forum to promote cultural heritage tourism focusing on indigenous music of the region Kudzu is an Asian plant, imported to the South to control erosion. Kudzu now blankets hillsides, telephone poles, abandoned houses, and (myth has it) people, if they stand still too long. It is the chosen name for a diverse group of volunteers who share a common interest in the indigenous music (diverse itself in its many varieties) of the North Carolina Piedmont. They hope to cover the region (in a kudzu-like fashion) with tourists who come to seek out and appreciate the historic and contemporary musical variations found in unique juxtaposition in this region. Old-time mountain music, bluegrass, country, African American gospel, rock and soul music all have roots in the Piedmont and continue to thrive there today. Kudzu is currently lobbying for a legislative appointment of a cultural heritage tourism development officer for the Piedmont. And they are seeking a folklorist to survey, document, and write a guidebook about the region's musical offerings. They also hope to create a film archive. The social capital built within the group of Kudzu volunteers will form the foundation for economic development through cultural heritage tourism in the Piedmont. Winston-Salem Forsyth County Public Schools Contact: Jackie Hundt $5,000 to build social capital through a youth-ed dispute resolution effort at North Forsyth High School Two neighborhoods,
feuding over generations, play out their disagreements in the halls of
North Forsyth High School. When a Department of Justice research project
to discover the causes of youth violence uncovered the realization that
today's teenagers from the two neighborhoods fought without knowing the
reasons why, young minds began questioning the violent tradition. Youth
said they would end the culture where older teens taught younger males
to "play fight" so they would be prepared to carry on the tradition
once they got to North Forsyth High School. Instead, the youth sought
alternative solutions to conflict and decided to create a peer mediation
group in their high school and extend it to their neighborhoods and to
the middle schools attended by youth from their neighborhoods. Today,
Meeting Common Ground is recruiting other youths and getting trained in
mediation skills. They recently mediated their first youth conflict at
North. Contact: Florence
Corpening $36,500 to fund the Millennium Village, a racial dialogue and bridge-building project The YWCA conceived
the Millennium Village to be the umbrella for programs that work to improve
race relations and to develop appreciation of diversity. In the first
year, they have offered Raising a Non-Racist Chil" workshops for
parents and children, Sisters Undivided for women to dialogue on common
issues across lines of race, Rap About Race for teenagers to participate
in honest inter-racial discussions facilitated by trained college students,
and Face-to-Face, a bi-lingual exhibit for families and groups of children
about feelings that result when children are victims of bigotry and stereotyping.
The YW's efforts to build social capital were honored by the North Carolina
Martin Luther King, Jr. Commission.
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