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Social Capital Development
People in the developing world, particularly in rural areas, often miss out on economic, educational, and personal growth opportunities because they are isolated from the social networks that can help them maximize their potential. While migration, television, cellular phones and the Internet have steadily increased exposure to non-local ideas and contacts, translating communication tools into new relationships that enable concrete growth can be a challenge. Even those in urban settings may not have what is necessary to be ‘networked’ effectively; not enough, at least, to generate tangible value as it applies to their own socio-economic status or level of engagement with their polity.
‘Social capital’ can thus be defined as how relationships are leveraged to achieve both personal and community goals, with its index of measurement contingent upon the ‘closeness’ ICTs engender between and among citizens, government, and the players in their own economy. In an isolated community, people will have difficulty generating meaningful encounters with entities outside their immediate circles, directly limiting that which a person can achieve to the very limited capacities found within that community. This limitation results in isolation that constrains exposure and the ability to purchase goods and services at global prices, sell products and services to a global market, and gain the skills required to participate in a global economy.
A rural community, and even more so in a developing country context, is usually characterized as a social network with strong homogenous links; in other words, a group of people very similar to one another and whose bonds are tightly knit. Social science and economics have demonstrated that most opportunities for growth come through the creation of heterogeneous linkages, or the opposite of a traditional closed communities, where people different from each other have an opportunity to share knowledge and trade their respective areas of competency. Development efforts must thus take into account the critical role played by the creation of the communication infrastructure that cements social capital, which in turn drives more advanced, prosperous communities.
Herein lies the unique service offering of Alexius: a working approach capable of incorporating formal and informal social networks within the context of development projects, establishing the vital social linkages (i.e., supplier-client links, mentor-mentoree links, worker-capacity builder links, colleague-to-colleague and friendly competition, inter-production associations, inter-business/organization-government links, etc.) that can unlock the potential for growth and innovation that lies within, everywhere.
