Most of you will go on to achieve great careers and be quite influential in your job, perhaps even bring great wealth to your family and support to the economic growth of the community, state, or nation in which you live. While this financial capacity and growth will bring great satisfaction to you, what about the issues related to building the social or human capacity of our communities – strengthening families? It takes
economic and social capacity to build strong communities.
We know from the history of Head Start in America that when we carefully invest in disadvantaged children and youth we get remarkable results, social and economic. Furthermore, we know that many programs and opportunities that could be successful
are diluted to the point that they are ineffective or disbanded completely because of insufficient funds or more often where they are placed on the list of priorities. Where are our economic and social priorities, and what are the economic and social impacts of substance abuse, school dropout rates, teenage pregnancy, divorce, single-parent families, violence, education, and child abuse to mention just a few?
Discuss these social issue topics and answer questions:
– Working parents
– Stepfamilies
– Children in divorced families
Identify how you can use your knowledge gained about these
families to enhance, nurture, or strengthen the social/human capacity of your community and neighborhood, which will in turn support it economically? Use supporting information from the text as well as additional sources (Web Link articles may be useful).