Relationship building: the art, craft, and context for mobilizing the social capital necessary for systems change

Abstract

Much has been written about the importance of relationship building and collaboration in community and policy change work. Yet, we know little about the process of successfully building relationships in this context. The Northeast Iowa Food and Fitness Initiative (FFI) is one of nine Kellogg-funded community change initiatives targeted at increasing access to healthy food and fitness activity. Using data collected from interviews of FFI leadership team members, we deconstruct the relationship-building process to focus on the iterative nature of social capital development and the impact of this process on generating additional assets in cultural, human, and political capital to create a spiraling-up process. The resulting merging of bonding and bridging social capital into generative social capital fashions resilient ties that span boundaries and expand the radius of trust.