Olajumoke Banjo
Olajumoke “Jummy” Banjo is Senior Director of the Alliance for Social Trust at the Aspen Institute, where she works on strengthening social trust and fostering healthy public dialogue.
Interpersonal Trust Tracks Civic Engagement More Closely Than Institutional Confidence
Pew Research Center’s analysis groups Americans into four patterns of civic engagement, and finds that the clearest divide among them is not confidence in government or national news but trust in other people. Elisa Shearer, a Pew senior researcher, said the survey cannot establish whether trust leads people to participate or participation builds trust. Practitioners on a panel convened by the Alliance for Social Trust and the Pew-Knight Initiative argued that reliable relationships, meaningful opportunities to act and visible results can help strengthen civic connection.
Communities Build Trust When They Control Their Own Stories
Community storytelling builds trust only when people retain control over whether a space is safe, how their stories are shared, and what follows from being heard, argue Claire Maracle of Words of the People, Amy Saidman of Story District, and Jeremy Williams of Freedom Dreams Foundation. Their approaches differ—from consent-centered Indigenous-language gatherings to coached public performances and community-led media production—but each rejects treating testimony as extractable content. For Williams, the governing principle is that stories move at the pace of trust, not production schedules.
Eleven Collaborations Win $4.5 Million for Community Trust-Building
The Alliance for Social Trust and Allstate present the 2026 Trust in Practice Awards as an effort to fund and publicize trust-building as a practical discipline, not a civic sentiment. Tom Wilson says the awards are meant to show how trust can be designed into community engagement, while awardees describe that work as listening before acting, relying on local knowledge, building culturally accessible relationships, and sustaining repeated acts of connection under real community conditions.
Trust-Building Was Framed as Funded, Measurable Community Work
The 2026 Trust in Practice Summit highlights present trust-building as practical civic work that needs funding, tools, measurement, and local leadership, not simply a sentiment to be restored. Hosted in Chicago by the Alliance for Social Trust in partnership with Allstate, the summit convened more than 250 leaders and announced $1 million, $500,000, and $100,000 awards to 11 nonprofit collaborations across 10 states. Speakers argued that institutions should support community leaders, measure trust at a local level, and focus on the ordinary problem-solving through which trust is built.
Social Trust Requires People to Extend Trust Before Expecting It
Olajumoke “Jummy” Banjo, senior director of the Alliance for Social Trust at the Aspen Institute, closed the 2026 Trust in Practice Summit by arguing that social trust begins with people willing to extend it before they can expect it in return. In conversation with NPR’s Jenn White, Banjo framed trust-building as long-term, community-embedded work: less a matter of formal programming than of vulnerability, sustained relationships, and commitments whose benefits may not be visible for decades.
Trust in Practice Awards Fund 11 Local Trust-Building Collaborations
The 2026 Trust in Practice Summit, convened in Chicago by the Alliance for Social Trust with the Aspen Institute and Allstate, presented trust-building as practical local work that requires funding, measurement, institutional listening and community relationships. Speakers including Daniel Porterfield, Tom Wilson and others argued that pluralism and institutional trust depend less on national messaging than on leaders embedded in communities, while the summit’s awards and Trust Map were offered as tools to support that work.