Social Innovation

 

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Definition of social innovation

Many european cities and towns are exhibiting rising levels of social exclusion and the concept of ‘social innovation’ in urban development, focuses on the processes aimed at countering it.  Social innovations are new social practices that aim to meet social needs in a better way than the existing solutions, resulting from - for example - working conditions, education, community development or health. These ideas are created with the goal of extending and strengthening civil society.

The term ‘social innovation’ has three core dimensions: 

• the satisfaction of human needs (content dimension); 

• changes in social relations, especially with regard to governance (process dimension); 

• and an increase in the socio-political capability and access to resources (empowerment dimension).   

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This blog addresses all three dimensions in the context of getting to know your core identity and valuing the community where you live; its origins, how you came to be and what you can do to improve things for future citizens. As a process it all starts with ancestry.  Knowing, recording, and preserving your family history impacts you, your family, and future generations of people you will never know. Family history is more than pedigree charts, censuses, and birthdates.  It can shield you against adverse life experiences by giving you an understanding of who you are by creating your own narratives about yourself and helps establish your unique, authentic core identity.  For example,family narrative researcher Robyn Fivush found that sharing family stories contributes to young peoples’ emerging sense of self, both as an individual and as a member of a unified family. Adolescents who are able to recount specifics and details of family stories have higher self-esteem and greater resilience.  Family stories give us a sense of belonging and create a core identity with place that can be a great source of empowerment in an age of rapid change. This puts the concepts of ‘belonging’, ‘place’ and ‘change’ at the centre of educational narratives to cope with social innovations for living sustainably.  

Place and placement of individuals guide the narrative. Family stories directly impact how we see ourselves because they give us an idea of where we come from and how we fit into history. We are a combination of the culture, history, and traditions we inherited from our own families.  The more we discover about our past, the greater a connection we feel to our ancestors. As we record our own history we open the opportunity for future generations to connect with us when we are gone.  Connecting with members of our family past and present by learning their history fills an innate need in each one of us.  The single most important thing you can do for your family may be the simplest of all: develop a strong family narrative that can be added to by future generations.

Family 'glue'.

What is the glue that holds a family together? What are the elements that make some families effective, resilient, happy?  The last decade has seen important  breakthroughs in knowledge about how to make families, along with other groups, function more effectively. Research has reshaped our understanding of family dinnertime conflicts, discipline and difficult conversations. These innovations have come from trendsetting programs in Silicon Valley and the military, who have introduced techniques for making teams, including families, function better.  The family dimension began from an observation of Sara Duke, a psychologist working with children, who noticed something about young people with learning disabilities.

“The ones who know a lot about their families tend to do better when they face challenges”

The Duke-Fivush measure, called the “Do You Know?” scale, tests the idea by asking children to answer 20 questions.  Examples include: Do you know where your grandparents grew up? Do you know where your mom and dad went to high school? Do you know where your parents met? Do you know an illness or something really terrible that happened in your family? Do you know the story of your birth?

Duke and Fivush asked those questions of four dozen families in the summer of 2001, and taped several of their dinner table conversations. They then compared the children’s results to a battery of psychological tests the children had taken, and reached an overwhelming conclusion. The more children knew about their family’s history, the stronger their sense of control over their lives, the higher their self-esteem and the more successfully they believed their families functioned. The “Do You Know?” scale turned out to be the best single predictor of children’s emotional health and happiness.

The terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre provided the opportunity to reassess the stress responsiveness of their subjects and once again the ones who knew more about their families proved to be more resilient to the 9-11 experience, meaning they could moderate the effects of stress.

Why does knowing where your grandmother went to school help a child overcome something as minor as a skinned knee or as major as a terrorist attack?  It is thought that the answers have to do with a child’s sense of being part of a larger family,  Every family has a unifying narrative and those narratives take one of three shapes; the ascending family narrative ie things got better year on year: the descending narrative ie things got worst year on year: and the oscillating family narrative ie there were good times and bad times.

Children who have the most self-confidence have a strong “intergenerational self.” They know they belong to something bigger than themselves.  Leaders in other fields have found similar results. Many groups use what sociologists call sense-making; the building of a narrative that explains what the group is about.  Successful human enterprises of any kind, from companies to countries, go out of their way to capture their core identity. They preserve core, while stimulating progress.  The same applies to families.  Indeed it has been  recommended that families create a mission statement similar to the ones companies and other organizations use to identify their core values.  The military has also found that teaching recruits about the history of their service increases their camaraderie and ability to bond more closely with their unit.  

Decades of research have shown that most happy families communicate effectively. But talking doesn’t mean simply “talking through problems,” as important as that is. Talking also means telling a positive story about yourselves. When faced with a challenge, happy families, like happy people, just add a new chapter to their life story that shows them overcoming the hardship. This skill is particularly important for children, whose identity tends to get locked in during adolescence.

The bottom line: if you want a happier family, create, refine and retell the story of your family’s positive moments and your ability to bounce back from the difficult ones. That act alone may increase the odds that your family will thrive for many generations to come.