GYW Prosocial Community Hubs

(IdLoneliness is a global health crisis that outpaces diabetes, obesity and smoking in the US. (from Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation: The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community, published May 3, 2023) Accelerated by COVID-19, loneliness rates have only risen for American youth since 1976 and now impacts 50% of American adults. (Id.) The US Surgeon General’s Advisory outlines impacts of loneliness and isolation – physical, mental, emotional, economic – that diminish our individual and collective capacity to be a thriving nation-state. For individuals, loneliness' health impacts are comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day, causing a 26-29% increase in premature death and myriad physical ailments including strokes, cardiovascular disease and dementia. Further, community-wide are adverse impacts on civic engagement and representative governments, societal polarization, community safety, resilience in the face of natural disasters, and economic prosperity. (Id.)

Individually, weakened social connection from loneliness impacts biological, psychological and behavioral processes that worsen health outcomes. (Id.) The Advisory notes that loneliness increases physical and mental health risks; inhibits cognitive function; decreases workplace productivity and academic attainment; increases depression, anxiety, suicidality and self-harm; and, decreases self-confidence and prosocial communication skills. Leading factors in chronic illnesses, such as inflammation and chronic stress, are higher in individuals experiencing loneliness.  Decreased social connection was shown to decrease coping skills and ability to manage daily life, aggravating health conditions and disrupting brain development. (Id.) Studies also found that feelings of social isolation and lack of social connection was a primary cause for student drop-out rates at all levels of education, including medical school. (Id.) Fewer social supports also factor into chronic work stress and workplace burnout. (Id.) Loneliness' economic impacts may more gravely impact low-income and marginalized communities, as socioeconomically diverse social networks are “among the most important predictors of upward economic mobility.” (Id.)

Disconnection at the collective level hinder our ability to thrive. (Id.) In a controlled study, US communities with lower levels of social capital (“the resources to which individuals and groups have access through their social networks”) experienced higher numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths than did communities with strong social ties. (Id.) With less social connectedness, community murder rates and vehicle theft increased by 20%. (Id.) Communities with less social capital also experienced higher unemployment rates during economic recessions and less GDP growth. (Id.) Again, these impacts on low-income communities are outsized. (Id.) Longitudinal data show that social connection may influence socioeconomic mobility. (Id.) Lack of connection in systems of power and governance also leads to inequitable laws that disproportionately and negatively impact marginalized and systematically disconnected communities. (Id.) Governance disconnected from the community perpetuates antisocial policies, structural barriers and obstacles toward prosperity for marginalized communities leading to “systemic disinvestment, inequitable zoning, underdeveloped transportation systems and residential segregation that can perpetuate chronic poverty and isolate entire neighborhoods and towns from more prosperous local economies.” (Id.) Isolation fuels societal polarization, which can lead to identity based extremism and violence. (Id.) Loneliness fuels these antisocial outcomes.

GYW Prosocial Community Hubs develop a prosocial culture through intergenerational mentorship and time banking. Our model takes advantage of the resources available within any given community, specifically community spaces (e.g. schools, libraries, community centers, work spaces, restaurants, youth-serving spaces), intergenerational human capital, food and transportation. After assessing the needs and assets, we develop sustainable, human- and relationship-centered infrastructure to provide small-group enrichment opportunities that amplify each person’s strengths and increase positive outlets for economic and personal growth. Our data show that relationship-centered programs leave youth and adult participants feeling valued and confident and build their trust in our organization. 

Through hyper-local programming such as summer camps and after school programs with a civic engagement focus, we activate the community as a youth and community building space. By de-concentrating youth spaces and lowering the ratio of youth:mentors (1:3), we increase capacity for relationship building that facilitates localized understandings of real-world problems, network building, organizing plans for collective action, and exploring prosocial careers that address community goals.

These programs are malleable to meet community needs with community resources. For example, our community is experiencing an influx of youth disengagement and increased criminal involvement. To bolster support for this population at risk of greater disconnection, we developed an arts-based mentorship program that provides one-on-one support and feeds into our afterschool program. We have similarly designed a near-peer virtual mentor-tutoring program that bolsters in-school learning with one-on-one tutoring for 4-12th graders with college students.

Each Prosocial Community Hub is part of a larger network of Hubs through Grow Your World. This creates capacity to share administrative infrastructure and creates a network of support among staff and communities to share learnings, workshop problems and brainstorm solutions with diverse perspectives. Through this network, communities can builds bridges and connections further than neighborhoods, increasing participation in diverse communities. Our structure strategically embeds diversity as an asset, opening doors to collaboration, resource sharing, and networking opportunities that foster individual and collective thriving.

We will implement also time banks to provide Grow Your World participants access to one another's skills as a means of valuing time given to Grow Your World in the form of workshops, skills trainings, and mentorship. A time bank, housed online, allows people within a time bank to exchange time as a form of currency; time given to Grow Your World would provide "hours" the recipient could then "cash in" for desired services, such as dog walking, a ride to the airport, mowing a lawn, etc. The time bank tracks exchanges similarly to a bank account. Exchanges do not have to be mutual and can be "banked" until the recipient is ready to "spend." Time banks are localized within a community, similar to “Buy Nothing” groups (which allow neighbors to share no-longer-needed objects with one another). Through skills sharing, time banks will facilitate communities to reconnect and build social ties outside of structured experiences through GYW's Prosocial Community Hub, which can lead to ongoing community cohesion and collaboration.

Our solution is a network-building approach that capitalizes on intergenerational human capital in any given community, specifically targeting youth (8-18), college students and young adults (18-28), and adult community members (28+) to fulfill mentor/mentee roles suited to the needs and strengths of their age. We strategically target diverse populations (race, lived experience, spoken language, socioeconomic status) as a way of reconnecting community to reduce physical, mental, emotional and economic harms caused by disconnection. 

Our longterm vision is for programs like this across the state and country. These programs have the capacity to connect communities intergenerational, capitalizing on the strengths and skillsets of humans at all ages. Through these connections, we foresee the following outcomes:

1. Improved mental health indicators

2. Decreased substance disorder within the community

3. Decreased violence and crime within the community

4. Increased participation of community members of all ages in local programs and community initiatives

5. Increased community-wide activation of resources and increased quantity of community-wide resources

6. Increased community-led change and response to expressed community needs

7. Increased navigation of community to meet needs

Through building more capacity for collaboration across sectors, ages and backgrounds, we foresee a longterm outcomes of more effectively building intersectional solutions to local and national problems in diverse stakeholder settings.

Grow Your World has a unique history of building collaboration across sectors to fill gaps in programming (past projects include virtual, near-peer mentor-tutoring during COVID-19; intergenerational arts-based mentorship for youth who are justice-involved, justice-impacted and at risk of disconnection). Our organization was co-founded and is co-led by women of diverse backgrounds who belong to various privileged and marginalized communities and have benefited themselves from access to opportunities through relationships. We are bilingual (Spanish-English) and operate from an abundance model, knowing that diversity makes us stronger and more able to name the needs of our community and develop creative solutions that capitalize on community strengths, capacities and goals. We work closely with organizations, parents, youth, college students, universities and the business community to collaborate and improve community cohesion, understanding that when the outcomes of the most marginalized are better, so are those of the rest of the community. 

Our organization uses restorative approaches to resolve conflicts, interpersonal as well as systemic. Restorative approaches allow us to make space for all perspectives with the recognition that we need all voices to see clearly the issue at hand. Through conversation that holds space for all people’s needs and understandings, we are more quickly able to co-create solutions that capitalize on the community’s strengths and assets. Through this process, we are also able to naturally de-prioritize perspectives that have had an outsized impact on outcomes.

An abundance-based community building system is well suited for Grow Your World's expertise. We are a nonprofit, allowing us to remove barriers that separate us in ways governmental entities cannot. We hope to see our program grow nationally and internationally.

Building effective relationships with local governments to help them shift systems of governance to be prosocial and inclusive, capitalizing on community wisdom and human capital to accomplish small and large scale initiatives that improve individual and community outcomes.

Our solution is innovate in its simplicity. We cater to a core human need (connection) and using technology as a tool to facilitate relationship. Our solution creates a container that has unlimited implications for collaboration that can lead to individual, community, national and global productivity and wellbeing. Our relationship-building model could transform the way we think about immigration, border control, education, policing, community safety, governance, climate resilience and more. It could have a transformative impact on capitalism, allowing us to move toward life-sustaining economic models that no longer prioritize growth over wellbeing.

Over the next five years, we would like to be in over five states across the east coast of the United States and in at least one other country to test and hone the viability of our model locally and internationally.

Our goals those of the US Attorney General's Advisory:

• Cultivating individual health and well-being across physical and mental health and educational and economic outcomes. This enables individuals to be happier, more prosperous, and to contribute more fully to society.

• Strengthening community health, safety, and prosperity by cultivating social cohesion and social capital within and across communities. This enables communities to overcome adversity and thrive.

• Building resilience for the next set of challenges such as natural hazards, pandemics, and safety threats. This enables society to withstand unanticipated crises through stronger recovery and resilience.

• Advancing civic engagement and representative government by fostering a more engaged citizenry. This enables policies and programs to better reflect the will of a community and its individuals. 

As we grow internationally, we will continue evolving the goals with greater global perspective.

Currently we measure impact by asking all participants if participation:

- improved/reduced mental health and emotional wellbeing

- improved/reduced academic success and feelings about future professional thriving

- improved/reduced grades and other desired outcomes

- increased/reduced sense of connection to local community

- increased/reduced sense of impact on local community

- increased/reduced feeling supported by local community

- increased/reduced feeling support for family system by local community

• # of organizations and individuals a young person and/or their family identifies as a resource that alleviates stress and/or increases wellbeing

• # of hard-skills a person possesses (list provided)

• # of soft-skills a person possesses (list provided)

• # of stressors a person is experiencing and level of stress (list and scale provided)

• # of stressors a parent/caregiver is experiencing and level of stress (list and scale provided)

• Open-ended space for qualitative experience is provided

The core technology that powers our solution is human relationships. These are facilitated by myriad and evergrowing technologies based on what humans have evolved and created to increase connection and decrease time spent on administrative tasks.

Diversity and Inclusion Policy

Grow Your World believes that we are better together and that a community built among people with different abilities, experiences and backgrounds make us stronger as an organization and beyond. As an organization, we are committed to evolving our organization’s practices to promote diversity, equity and inclusion. When issues arise, we take a restorative approach, addressing organizational practices with the goals of developing systems and structures that increase accessibility and removing barriers to inclusion and healthy participation. 

Grow Your World does not and shall not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion (creed), gender, gender expression, age, national origin (ancestry), disability, marital status, sexual orientation, or military status, in any of its activities or operations. These activities include, but are not limited to, the appointment to and termination from its Board of Directors, hiring and firing of staff or contractors, selection of volunteers, selection of vendors, and providing of services.

Grow Your World is an equal opportunity employer. We shall not discriminate and will not discriminate in employment, recruitment, Board membership, advertisements for employment, compensation, termination, upgrading, promotions, and other conditions of employment against any employee or job applicant on the basis of race, color, religion (creed), gender, gender expression, age, national origin (ancestry), disability, marital status, sexual orientation, or military status, or for any other discriminatory reason.

We are a youth-centered community building organization that capitalizes on the existing resources in the community and those beyond it to mutually and sustainably thrive. 

We see potential to seek funding for our work across sectors (business, government, school districts, foundations, individual donors), as this work touches all facets of community. Given the multi-site nature and focus on collaboration and connection, we see methods of fostering "sister sites" that meet each other's needs through asset sharing (e.g. funding, tutoring, mentoring, internships, training, jobs). These exchanges have the capacity to by bi/multi-directional, building trust and strengthening the capacity of the network.

Our organization has collaborated with fellow organizations, sharing resources (staff, funding, volunteers, space) to develop our Prosocial Community Hubs in new locations. Funding from COVID-19 Federal ESSER Grants have been invaluable, as have receiving grants from Z. Smith Reynolds ($30,000), Grable Foundation ($20,000), Triangle Community Foundation (20,000), Town of Carrboro COVID funding ($16,200) and individual donors have made our program possible to this point.