Building social capital and strengthening social networks among members of low-income communities has been recommended as a potential pathway out of poverty. However, it is not clear how network-strengthening interventions and community-based programs interact with pre-existing networks and power structures. We examine the impact of one such intervention in ten low income communities in the Philippines. The intervention is a standardized program of a faith-based organization implemented in thousands of communities in multiple countries. It brings together low-income individuals in each community for 16 weekly sessions about health, income generation, and Christian values. An important but yet unmeasured goal of the intervention is the strengthening of social networks among the participants. We measured the social networks before and after the intervention and analysed their changes both separately and jointly for all ten communities with temporal exponential random graph models (TERGM). We modelled the post-intervention network structures conditioning on the pre-intervention networks, pre-intervention node attributes, and attribute changes through the intervention. We found social engagement (measured by social visits to others) to moderate most consistently the effects of the intervention across the ten communities. Those who were more socially engaged consistently strengthened their networks through the intervention. By contrast, some network mechanisms strongly diverged between the communities. In particular, religiosity was positively associated with gaining social links through this faith-based intervention in some communities and negatively in others. Similar communities may in some aspects react to the same intervention in opposite ways—a phenomenon that should be further explored through studies of larger numbers of comparable networks.

已建议在低收入社区成员之间建立社会资本和加强社会网络，这是摆脱贫困的潜在途径。但是，尚不清楚加强网络的干预措施和基于社区的计划如何与现有的网络和权力结构相互作用。我们研究了这种干预措施对菲律宾十个低收入社区的影响。干预是一个基于信仰的组织的标准化计划，该计划在多个国家的数千个社区中实施。它将每个社区的低收入人士聚集在一起，每周进行16次有关健康，创收和基督教价值观的会议。干预的一个重要但尚未衡量的目标是加强参与者之间的社交网络。我们测量了干预前后的社交网络，并使用时间指数随机图模型（TERGM）分别分析了所有十个社区的社交网络变化。我们在干预前网络，干预前节点属性以及通过干预进行属性更改的情况下，对干预后网络结构进行了建模。我们发现社交参与（通过对他人的社交访问来衡量）能够最一致地缓和十个社区的干预效果。那些更加社交的人通过干预不断地加强了他们的网络。相反，某些社区之间的网络机制存在很大分歧。特别是，在某些社区中，通过这种基于信仰的干预，宗教活动与获得社会联系正相关，而在另一些社区中，消极影响与获得社会联系正相关。在某些方面，相似的社区可能以相反的方式对相同的干预做出反应，这一现象应通过对大量可比网络的研究来进一步探索。