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Progress Report, May 2nd 2016 Section one: on the ground Nepal The Chepang are a tribe of mountain farmers in Nepal and a minority in most of the Village Development Committees (VDC). Although most of them are illiterates our online assessment couldn’t take place. Peter Effenberger (photo with Chepang below) from the small NGO One World alc used a small questionnaire and managed to ask 528 Chepang.

The surprising result, that has been mentioned in reports on Nepal yet e.g. by Göteborg University (Sweden), is that their major economic good is at the same time their major gift outside the family: giving food and water. The Chepang now produce herbals for biological cosmetics in Switzerland and Germany and are supported by the Federal Ministry for Development of Germany.

Afghanistan

50 Afghan Facebook friends for Alexander Dill and scores for the town of Herat were the outcome of cooperating with Farooq Nadim from the department of Urban Planning at the University of Herat, Afghanistan. His posting on Facebook inspired 71 scores for Herat. With 7,69 for hospitality Herat is among the world’s best bigger towns in hospitality.

Taquir Azam, intern at our institute reports, scores are much worse in Kabul. We will now assess all 34 provinces and include the refugees in Switzerland and Germany. Here is our version in Dari: https://trustyourplace.com/?lang=dari

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Tanzania While Dar es Salam’s social climate is only estimated around a score of 5, helpfulness, friendliness and hospitality score around 8. (photo: market of craftsmen in Dar es Salam) Several qualitative statements are worth to be quoted and may help to understand the Social Capital of Tanzania:

‘Your question on trust is inaccurate. Tanzania has a high level of personalized trust, but generalized trust is low. While the former is helpful for making happy people, the lack of the latter is a problem for social policy making. Mixing these issues up may seriously bias your results and may lead you to make inadequate recommendations for social policy making.’ ‘The social capital in Tanzania is to a large extent based on personal relations, family, clan, ethnic group. Social security systems are in place

but only for a small fraction of the population and with a limited scope of support.’ To assess the rural provinces of Tanzania we will spread a offline questionnaire such as in Nepal.

Cambodia By the cooperation with the Pannasastra University of Cambodia, Department for Economic Statistics, a first assessment happened in 2016. Cambodian provinces and their Social Capital assets:

f Austerity measures 6.77 (worst: 4.2) Friendliness 8.33 (worst 7.00) Social Climate 6.54 (worst: 5.4) 0.85 Standard deviation (average: 1.52)

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Explanation: While Battambang had the best score for accepting austerity measures to finance public goods (6.77), Kampong Cham scores by outstanding friendliness (8.33). Phnom Penh with a score of 6.54 is among the big cities worldwide with the best social climate. In Kandal the climate is only 5.4. Takeo in general shows a lower score but the standard deviation to assess friendliness (7.42) is only 0.85, half of the average in Cambodia. With an average of 6.16 for trust the results of the study ‘Democracy in Cambodia’ from 2014 – quote: ‘The 2014 survey found general societal trust to be extremely low in Cambodia’ cannot be confirmed. In opposite 6.16 is an internationally compared high score. In Kampong Cham 7.0 is at the level of Japan or Scandinavia. Further a film team from the Berlin Film School made 22 interviews on Social Capital. A 5-minutes-interview on Social Capital in Cambodia with Professor Pahlaj Moolio, Co-Dean of the University is available on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfyI8Amqh1A

The Pannasastra University (photo) decided to conduct the assessment of all 24 Cambodian provinces with their students within the coming semester. So Cambodia will be the first country to having a complete Social Capital Assessment online, mobile and offline for illiterates and people without digital access. Applications for support have been made at the Asia Foundation, the German Reconstruction Bank KfW, the German GIZ, the German Konrad Adenauer Foundation and the Swiss Development Cooperation. Assessment in Khmer: https://trustyourplace.com/?lang=kh Brazil

The 46 inhabitants of the small rural community of Quatinga Velho in rural Sao Paulo, Brazil, have passed a Social Capital Assessment offline. Their major gift to the community is to caring about the neighbours plantation. 30 per cent are dedicating 100 per cent of their time voluntary to their community. Our partner was Bruna Augusto Pereira from the small NGO ReCivitas (photo). We have current results from big Brazilian cities such as Rio de Janeiro, Bahia and Sao Paulo with dramatic figures.

You can assess Brazil here in Portuguese: https://trustyourplace.com/?lang=po .

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Eritrea Eritrea still didn’t find its way to peace and affluence. The Eritrean provinces have been reduced

from ten to six today. The language Tigrinya for our assessment https://trustyourplace.com/?lang=tigrinya allows to achieve first scores by around 50’000 refugees from Eritrea in Germany and Switzerland (photo) Due to the running negotiations after visits of German and Swiss representatives in Eritrea we can’t provide first results yet. To identifying, assessing and rebuilding the Social Capital of Eritrea by a Social Capital Recovery Dialogue will be our task within the next two years.

Gaza The neutrality and anonymity provided by our institute for the Arabic version https://trustyourplace.com/?lang=arabic made it possible to achieve scores from regions in conflict such as from Syria, Iraq and Gaza. Due to the current negotiations to assessing the Gaza strip we can’t publish figures yet but comment on a recent single data we may showcase as a sample:

The scores for trust, helpfulness, friendliness and hospitality are among the best of the world and should be considered to build up bridging Social Capital with Israel, Egypt and Jordan that will help to end the conflict after more than 70 years now.

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Ukraine In Ukraine the choice for a language yet is a political matter. So in our assessment the citizens have the choice between Russian https://trustyourplace.com/?lang=ru and of course Ukrainian https://trustyourplace.com/?lang=ukr

The best social climate with a score of 6 can be found in the town and oblast 79014 Lwiw that is also named to have the highest friendliness and hospitality. In opposite the districts of Kiev, e.g. the central district 01001 (score: 1 only) as well as the districts 01004, 01021 and 01024 show the worst social climate of Ukraine. In between is the oblast 83001 Donezk .

Although the situation quickly changes, the assessment of Ukraine will be widened this summer and supported by several organizations. Of course the assessment of Donbass, Crimea and the Russian districts at the Ukrainian border such as Rostow is previewed as well. Another target group are the millions of refugees from Ukraine who left the country to go to Russia, Western Europe, Belarus, Canada and other countries.

Bavaria Featuring one of the richest, most peaceful and environmental minded countries of the world in the Social Capital Assessment is just a sample for the differences between highly developed and developing countries.. The result among 150 Bavarian villages and towns assessed was a competitive score for friendliness (6.78) with a standard deviation of 1.20 only. Hospitality was scored by 6 – significantly lower than in almost all developing countries. The individual question of our Bavarian partner, the “Bund Naturschutz Bayern”, had to face a standard deviation of 1.73. So the low standard deviation proofs how intensive the questions were balanced and tested before. The assessment shows further how individual local questions and further items – in Bavaria age and gender – could be added in an individual Social Capital Assessment: https://trustyourplace.com/?lang=german

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Bangladesh Living together with so many people under such circumstances requires enormous Social Capital. A group of computer scientists from the capital Dhaka and some other towns decided to spread the Social Capital Assessment in Bengali: https://trustyourplace.com/?lang=bn While the scores on social climate, trust and as well helpfulness, friendliness and hospitality were not astonishing, Bangladesh surprised with a 6.84 score for the willingness to invest in local cooperatives and SME. So the Bengali are real entrepreneurs and it’s worth to consider this asset. The standard deviation for this item was 1.15 only! Of course we have to deliver an offline version for rural areas and illiterates as well. But we are longing to identify the major social asset of this country in need for help through all SDG.

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Section two: meeting the The World Social Capital Monitor has been selected for 4 out of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. How will the open access survey help to achieve these goals? Up to now international surveys such as the Gallup World Poll (GWP) and the World Values Survey (WVS) are made to gather data and to aggregate them after. But the Social Capital Assessment shall directly enhance the social goods being assessed. It’s not about aggregating data, it’s about directly stimulating social goods. Maybe that’s one reason that the attention and interest for the assessment is mainly from developing countries?

The impact of Social Capital on economic growth has been the first finding of Social Capital Research in 1995 by Robert Putnam. In general economic growth doesn’t increase the Social Capital that is built on non-material assets. But the transaction costs in economy heavily depend on trust, solidarity and helpfulness. Many countries spend more than 50 per cent of the total of their exports on transaction costs such as on defence, bribes, interests and commissions. Decent work is less to achieve by legal frameworks but by achieving solidarity between the rich and the poor. Solidarity is among the social goods scored in our

assessment. But helpfulness would be sufficient as well to spread decent work. Instruments of measuring inequality such as the Gini-Index are monitoring inequality by monetary income and fortune. But in many areas and countries on conflict inequalities are results of strong social networks excluding and disadvantaging others. So inequality is a social commitment supported by its beneficiaries. Only a strong and balanced Social Capital such as it emerged in Scandinavia or Switzerland leads to a sustainable reduction of inequalities. Bridging Social Capital between the classes is the only way to overcome exploitation and inequalities.

A city as well as a community need to be able to provide public goods in order to achieve sustainability. But to provide public goods the citizens have to be willing to accept taxes, contributions and even austerity measures to help to finance the public goods. Three of our questions only cover these aspects and it’s not surprising that in almost all countries – except Denmark – these personal sacrifices are not appreciated. With our tool even the biggest cities such as Manila, Mexico City, Kalkutta, Dhaka, Chongquing, Mumbai are able to identify and therefore to enhance the Social Capital per district. That peace didn’t become a single SDG shows the difficulties to even mention the need of peace in development policy. Bridging Social Capital is the key resource to achieve peace by identifying common social perceptions and goods. The Social Capital Assessment with its anonymity and neutrality reaches even conflicting parties who as well love to enjoy the social goods of their homes. To building up dialogue and contact through trust, helpfulness, solidarity, friendliness and hospitality is the major objective of our project. Without peace many of the other SDG can’t be achieved because the resources are spent on war, ‘defence’, weapons and other instruments of a lack of bridging Social Capital.

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Section three: Involving partners To building up an advisory board for the World Social Capital Monitor was a first step in 2016. Two personalities could be convinced to join the project:

.Advisory Board

Born in 1968, mathematical economist (Ph.D.) Pahlaj Moolio currently

serves as a professor for statistics and mathematics, and as an

associate dean at the Faculty of Business and Economics of the

Pannasastra University of Cambodia in Phnom Penh. The experienced

advisor served as a member of the board of trustees of Santitham

Education and Development Foundation in Thailand (2003 – 2008). In

2013 he co-authored a book “Optimization and Social Welfare in

Economics“. In 2016 he started the Social Capital Assessment in

Cambodia. An English interview with Pahlaj Moolio on Social Capital

can be found here.

Professor h.c. Dr. Horst Teltschik studied Political Science.

He served as an international political advisor for the German

chancellor Dr. Helmut Kohl during the German reunification.

Among his positions he was a director of the Bertelsmann Foundation

and Executive Board of the BMW AG. The experienced advisor is

member of the board of trustees of the German

Konrad Adenauer Foundation and of the commission for the

reunification of both Koreas.

Further proposals to join our board are welcome!

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Who we are The Social Capital Assessment is a paradigm change in the assessment of countries, regions and places. Open access, no registration and no harvesting of personal data, no questions on unilateral biased issues, no representative panel – these innovations cannot claim to be accepted by international organizations, among scholars and diplomats from the beginning. Who is driving this project?

Dr- Alexander Dill, Director

Nazmus Saquib, Technical Director and

Chief Programmer

Nguyen Huu Qui, Programming and

Design

Philip Stoll, Activist

Hanna Kribbel, Sociologist

Nicolas Gebhart, Sociologist

Viktor Dill, Filmmaker