Leveraging the Community Assets to Support Military Families

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Jessica: Hi, thanks for listening to the Practicing Connection podcast. I’m Jessica and my co-host Bob is here as well. Today we’ll be talking about using a tool from community development, the Community Capitals Framework, to inform your work with military families. Later on, we’ll share a practice to help you utilize the Community Capitals. Hi Bob, how are you?

Bob: I’m doing well. Thanks, Jessica. It’s good to be with you. I’m excited to talk about Community Capitals Framework. It’s been something that has been part of community development for a long time. It’s a great framework for taking that asset-based approach, which we often talk about, strengths-based or asset-based approaches to development. I recently read a book that actually draws a lot from asset-based community development and applies that to the concept of agile leadership.

The book is called Strategic Doing and the authors take concepts like identifying assets and linking and leveraging assets, along with ideas from the agile method of project management, if you’re familiar with that. Then they frame those as leadership skills that can help us navigate complex challenges by strengthening our shared skills for collaboration. It’s really interesting. There’s a lot of crossover with our work on the Practicing Connection initiative. It’s been validating a little bit. [chuckles]

It also surfaced some different skills and strategies that we might want to bring to our work. When I say that, I mean our work as the Practicing Connection producers and team, but also our work as military family service providers. Really great book and really enjoyed it.

Jessica: I want to dig back into that. I read that book a while ago and enjoyed learning about the concepts, but hearing you describe it the way you’re describing it makes me think I should take another look and maybe feature some of the practices here and there on the podcast, maybe. I’ve actually been digging into a book myself. Lately, I think I’ve been talking about a lot of yard work on this podcast [laughs] and television shows. I’ve been digging into Adrienne Marie Brown’s book, Holding Change.

Right now I’m reading a part about fractal facilitation. I’m a facilitator and love facilitating. She talks about how most group changes happen in small ways. We’ve talked about this before, about change happening in fractals. What she says is that every practice, ritual, and action a group takes is, as she puts it, a small-scale way to grow or shrink its own realization of its espoused mission and values. An interesting part of this for me is that what you might think of as a baby step or a small scales change might actually feel like it’s a huge change to someone else.

If I think something’s really small, you might be like, “What are you talking about, Jessica? That’s way too scary. That’s way too huge of a change.” It doesn’t surprise me and I feel like it’s something that some of us maybe intuitively know, and yet we gloss by that a lot. It was a really good reminder to remember to do some perspective-taking when it comes to group work.

Bob: That sounds awesome. I haven’t read Holding Change yet. I’m looking forward to doing that. I’m a big Adrienne Marie Brown fan. Thank you for this great recommendation and insight into Holding Change.

Jessica: We’d love to hear what’s inspiring our listeners. Please share what’s inspiring you by clicking the send us a text message at the top of the description of this episode. When you click the link, your text messaging app will open up and you’ll see a seven-digit number and the words “do not remove”. Type your message after that and click send. Don’t remove that number or we won’t receive your message. To protect your privacy, we won’t see your phone number and we can’t text you back, but we’ll share your feedback in a future episode. If you’re listening on a computer, you can email us at practicingconnectionatoneop.org. Let us know what’s inspiring you now.

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All right, Bob, let’s dig into this. The Community Capitals Framework is what we’re here to discuss today. It was developed by Jan and Cornelia Flora, two well-known names in our world, the community development and organizing world. It’s a systems approach to understanding and fostering community development. The framework identifies seven key types of capital that contribute to the health and resilience of communities. These capitals include natural, cultural, human, social, political, financial, and built capital.

You can think of it this way. Families face different challenges and of course, military families face some unique challenges which can be difficult to tackle alone. What if we could tap into the strengths of the entire community to address those challenges? That’s what the Community Capitals Framework can help us do. Today we’re going to explore each capital and how you can use this framework to think strategically about collaboration and resource utilization.

Bob: Let’s start with social capital, and that is the connections and relationships within a community. That’s what social capital is. For military families, building a support network is essential, as you guys know. As a service provider, you can understand and assess the existing social capital in the community to inform that. Are there strong neighborhood associations, local support groups, nonprofits serving military families, social clubs, or strong online groups that you know of?

By connecting families to these networks, you’re not just providing immediate support potentially, but you’re embedding them into a broader community that can offer ongoing assistance. One great example of this is the Stronghold Food Pantry that was started by Monica Bassett at Fort Leavenworth. We discussed this in an interview with Monica in a previous episode. The pantry not only provides essential food sources to military families but also fosters a sense of community and belonging.

Through the Stronghold Food Pantry, Monica leveraged social capital by creating a space where military families could connect, support each other, and build stronger community ties. The pantry’s success wasn’t just about the food, although that was very important, but it also came from strengthening the social fabric of the community and building that social capital.

Jessica: I love that example. This also makes me think of our episode with Nicola Winkle called An Ecosystem of Military Family Support. In this episode, Nicola emphasized how social capital was central to building an interconnected ecosystem of support for military families. By fostering relationships across various organizations, military and civilian alike, this network created a web of support that addressed the diverse needs of military families, ensuring that they had access to the resources and connections they needed at every stage of their journey.

I’ll roll right into financial capital and political capital. Many families face financial challenges, but resources can be scattered across different organizations. Who else in your community cares about providing access to financial resources? For example, are there any existing coalitions working to influence policy and streamline access to financial support for families? Which leaders can you connect with? In our episode about establishing a transitional early education program for families at Malmstrom Air Force Base, we saw how financial and political capital played a role.

The base worked closely with the local education providers at the Great Falls Public School District and community leaders to improve access to quality early childhood education for military families. This collaboration didn’t just provide immediate educational benefits, it also strengthened the overall well-being of the community by investing in the future of its youngest members.

Bob: The next two capitals are human and cultural, and they’re closely linked. Human capital refers to the skills, knowledge, and health of individuals, and cultural capital encompasses the shared values, traditions, and practices within a community. When you collaborate with educational institutions, healthcare providers, and cultural organizations, you’re tapping into both human and cultural capital. Again, in the example of the Malmstrom Air Force Base, it illustrates this by partnering with local schools and early childhood programs.

The base not only enhanced human capital by providing essential educational services, but also respected and integrated the unique cultural aspects of military life, ensuring that these services were relevant and supportive of military families. Actually, going back to the episode with Nicola Winkle, the culture of military families, their shared experiences, values, and resilience was central to that collaboration’s success in Arizona. The network of organizations that were involved recognized that military families bring unique cultural strengths, such as adaptability, a strong sense of duty, and deep understanding of service.

By acknowledging and integrating those cultural aspects, the organizations were able to create services that truly resonated with military families, making the support they offered more effective and meaningful. For instance, programs were tailored to address the frequent relocations and deployments that military families experience, ensuring that support systems were flexible and responsive to their specific needs. This focus on cultural capital not only made the services more effective but also strengthened the trust and engagement between military families and the service providers, leading to more meaningful and lasting support.

Jessica: Next, let’s talk about built capital, the infrastructure that supports daily life, such as roads, houses, schools, hospitals, the fun stuff like sewer and water, and of course, internet access. What are the needs and what are the assets in your community around the built capital? By collaborating with local governments and other community leaders, you can advocate for the creation or improvement of infrastructure that meets the needs of the families you serve, including your own.

In Tampa Bay, the Chamber of Commerce brought together leaders from the military, business, government, and nonprofit sectors to address a number of quality-of-life issues affecting military families, including working on a project to create ferry service to MacDill Air Force Base, which would reduce commute time for service members. It’s a great example of working together to enhance the built capital of a community. You can learn more about what’s happening in Tampa Bay in the latest edition of OneOp’s PowerUp magazine, and we’ll provide a link to that in the show notes.

Bob: Finally, let’s talk about natural capital. Everyone can benefit from access to natural spaces, parks, trails, other outdoor recreational areas. These spaces can have big impacts on physical and mental well-being. Working with environmental organizations and local governments can help protect and enhance these natural assets, making them more accessible for all families. I know that military installations have been part of that, protecting these natural assets and fostering environments and habitats for all kinds of different animals on land that is owned by the military.

There are therapeutic benefits of connecting with nature. Some healthcare providers are issuing nature prescriptions, a recommendation to spend time in nature to improve a patient’s health and well-being. The OneOp webinar, Reconnecting with Nature, Health, and Wellbeing for Military Communities, talks about these nature prescriptions and how military family practitioners can help their clients in accessing and experiencing the personal and community resilience-enhancing attributes of the natural capital in our communities.

Jessica: All right, I think we’re ready to share the practice, or just about ready, actually. I have a few notes. Before we share the practice, I think it’s important to note that one of the most powerful aspects of the Community Capitals Framework is its emphasis on interaction. No form of capital exists in isolation. For example, improving the built capital, the infrastructure of a community, like better access to public transportation or broadband can directly enhance the financial and human capital by providing better access to jobs and educational resources. I really want to emphasize the interactivity between the different capitals. With that, Bob, I’m going to turn it over to you to walk us through the activity.

Bob: I would love to do that, but as is my nature, I have to interject and just build on what you were saying, because it’s a great point, and there is a seminal paper called Spiraling-Up that talks about the Community Capitals Framework by Mary Emery and Cornelia Flora, who is one of the creators of the Community Capitals Framework. Really what it shows is that, just like Jessica said, investing in any one capital can lead to this spiraling up. What Mary and Neil found was that one of the capitals that has the biggest impact is social capital.

I want to bring that up because as you’re mapping these capitals in the practice we’re going to talk about in a second, it stresses how important connecting with others is to build that social capital because it can help you spiral up all those other capitals. I’m going to leave a space here for Jess, just in case, since I just stole her thunder and took over that whole point, just so I could mention Spiraling-Up, which is one of my favorite research papers out there.

Jessica: I think that was perfect.

Bob: All right, let’s get to the practice then. The practice is mapping the capitals. We’ve provided a downloadable worksheet on the show notes page. It goes along with this activity. Your first step is to go out and download that worksheet. You can just go to oneop.org/podcast to find the webpage for this episode and the worksheet will be there. Then begin by conducting a simple assessment. Keeping the families you serve in mind as you reflect on each of the capitals, identify the existing capitals in the community. What resources are abundant and where are their gaps?

Are there strong social networks? Is there a supportive political environment? What financial resources are available? Go through each of the seven capitals and think about this. When you’re thinking about your community, it is your community. If you are in a community that has a military installation, for this exercise, that installation is part of the community and might bring its own capitals and assets to the table. Once you’ve mapped these capitals, work collaboratively with other service providers, community organizations, and the families themselves to develop a plan that leverages these assets.

The goal is to create that upward spiral of positive change where investments in one type of capital lead to improvements in others, ultimately creating a more resilient and supportive environment for military families. Get out there, map your capitals. It’s a great first step to really starting any project and addressing any issue you want to address collaboratively with your community.

Jessica: I just want to add also, as you get into activities like this, I think they can feel overwhelming, but you don’t have to do all the things. Really just use this as a tool to help you think about all the different capitals that contribute to community resilience and how they might impact the families you work with. Don’t worry about having to have a hand in all of the capital improvements in the different capitals. Really just use it to help you think through and make connections and impact a small area. That’s it for this episode. Thanks so much for joining us.

If you enjoyed this episode, click the share button in your podcast app to share it with a friend. We’ll be back next week with a practice for balancing the big picture with the small. Until then, stay connected and keep practicing.

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Kalin Goble: The Practicing Connection podcast is a production of OneOp and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture, and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense under award number 2023-48770-41333.

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