Psychological well-being and healthy communities: Women as makers of relational well-being by social street strategies

Abstract

This paper presents a Social Street experience born of the perception of a lack of solidarity among neighbors and the desire to create a new neighborhood model. The goal was to explore the Social Street phenomenon through the relationship between individuals and their community. Furthermore, the goals include promoting the awareness of the critical issues of the territory to activate empowerment and change, analyzing the effectiveness of Social Street through the study of social networks, and investigating differences in social participation and in social cohesion. The most relevant result is that gender emerges as a context variable because Social Street members are mostly women. In fact, the role of women is relevant in structuring relational contexts and improving community networks and relationships.

Keywords:

• Health community
• relational well-being
• social street
• women