The Youth as Social Indicators!

As mentioned in earlier blogs, the levels of health and education of the youth in a community often reflect the level of social capital in that community. There are many approaches that are helpful to a community selecting indicators that are most suited to its needs, often these indicators focus on the most sensitive aspects of the community. Youth and adult education is the corner stone in any community and therefore the quality and availability of education in a community is essential to its economic and environmental well being. Education creates a forum where the children are brought together under one purpose, to gain insight and form tools and to apply these and tools to their own lives and to their communities. Recently, the Saanich school district has realized a 3.1 million deficit and their educational funding for schools on the Saanich peninsula. It is unsure how this funding shortfall will affect students and their achievements because there is a lag time between the affects of the quality of education and the graduation achievements. This may not seem to be characteristic of a social indicator, but the varying affects of education based on quality is felt across all generations of the community. A better educated community as a whole will often provide the organizational skills and insight to invest and grow social capital in the community. Seeing as a person's education begins early in their lives, serious monitoring and funding must be realized to maintain a quality level of education in the community. This is how we can measure the potential for growth of social capital in a community.