In rural Kenya, over 200,000 community groups provide support to members but are isolated and lack outside resources to fight poverty. Linking social capital is thus essential: NGOs and churches, for example, provide support for community groups to give poor people a voice and boost their economic opportunities. Capacity building over time helps to engender trust and partnership. Myrada, an Indian NGO, delivers microfinance to the poor and acts as a broker between poor people's organizations and commercial banks. By mobilizing bonding social capital, Myrada has formed credit management groups, with representatives on regional federations - to enhance bridging social capital. The credit groups hold accounts with commercial banks and gradually gain the confidence and skills to court formal institutions (linking social capital). Five years on, group members are totally independent and more than capable of managing the accounts themselves. Peasant federations in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru, for over thirty years have been linking community-based groups with shared economic, political, or cultural interests - a unique form of social capital rooted in social relationships and shared identities. The federations also use the social capital embedded in community groups to create linking social capital - reflected in interactions with government agencies, civil society organizations, and markets. The linkages in some cases have:

• increased regional capacities to manage natural resources

• increased access to external financial and technical resources

• increased participation in decision-making on local development issues

• improved relationships between local groups and government

• prompted removal of barriers to market access by adding value to rural products, increasing product quality, and establishing links to new markets