This literature review was conducted to help design the Community Garden Social Impact Assessment Toolkit. The toolkit is a participatory evaluation toolkit that community gardens use to assess the impact a community garden has on building social capital. The literature review has two sections. Section I reviews the key pieces of literature that define social capital. The section also reviews the forms, distinctions, and limits of the social capital concept. Section II reviews the most relevant research literature on social capital and community gardens.

This literature review played three roles in developing the toolkit. First, the review provided the toolkit with a conceptual foundation for social capital. Second, the review informed the interview guide that was used with community garden stakeholders. The stakeholders provided important input into the toolkit’s development. Third, the review was used to develop the reflection exercise questions within the toolkit. To make the toolkit accessible to a wide and diverse audience it is absent of the phrase “social capital.” Instead the toolkit uses the language that captures the essence and meaning of social capital, as defined by the literature.

• Author: Keith Miller
• Published: 2012, CURA, Univ of Minnesota
• Intended audience: Gardening Matters, community gardener organizers
• Goals / purpose: To collect background information necessary to develop a "Community Garden Social Impact Assessment Toolkit."
• Methods - How would someone know they could trust this?
  • Section I reviews the key pieces of literature that define social capital, while Section II reviews relevant research literature on social capital and community gardens.
• From 1 (not very well)–4 (very well), how well does this source of food knowledge:
  • Engage an adequate range of perspectives and types of knowledge? (1)
  • Translate between diverse perspectives? (1)
  • Address conflicts across perspectives? (1)
  • Generate useful information for those affected by the issues addressed? (1)
  • Include an adequate range of relevant stakeholders throughout the knowledge-creation process? (2)
  • Help users of this knowledge source learn from each other? (1)
  • Allow users of this knowledge source to put what they learn into action? (1)
  • Consider the larger context as necessary? (1)
• What is useful, meaningful, surprising, or a problem? Questions?
  • Seems the intended audience is community garden organizers, but it's written in a way that would appeal to academics.
  • Needs to be coupled with Community Garden Social Impact Assessment Toolkit by the same author; this is only the lit review and doesn't include anything actionable.

• What do you think could or should be done with this source of knowledge?
• What has already been done?
• How should we keep track of what this knowledge does as it circulates in the world?
• What connections would you like to see made to other information / people / organizations?

See http://www.cura.umn.edu/publications/catalog/npcr-1348 for this and other resources from CURA.