The origin of festivals in Taiwan comes from the concept of ¡§community infrastructure establishment¡¨ launched by Council for Culture Affairs in 1994. ¡§Community infrastructure establishment¡¨ takes communities as target and live them up by arts and culture events in order to promote their culture industries. This concept also draws a blueprint of various kinds of festivals or activities at different time around the whole island. Arts and culture events which combine local histories, culture, industries and tourism not only revitalize local industries but also level up the entire social environment. Further more, the model of international communication and ¡§Community infrastructure establishment¡¨ will become reality through promoting such events. However, the qualities of culture events held in Taiwan these years declined due to their fancy outward displays with poor inward statements. Such phenomena reflect the rough decision-marking process and no interaction with communities. When the financial supports from government shrink year after year, what should we do to take the challenges from long-term operation of festivals as well as culture events? This case study focuses on the project of ¡§Dream Parade¡¨ in Hsichih, Taipei county, and compare it with the ¡§Fremont Solstice Parade¡¨ in U.S., ¡§Hsinkang International Community Festival¡¨ in Chayi county, and ¡§Utopia¡¨ in Taichung city. Through analyzing these three cases, we can find two major characteristics that make the ¡§Dream Parade¡¨ an adaptable model. First, it follows the concept of ¡§Community infrastructure establishment¡¨ and accomplishes it by stepping in community with arts and culture as well as developing an interface for all residences. Second, the administration from enterprises takes place of government fund and takes the leading role to enlarge community participation. The researcher of this study also participated in the project of ¡§Dream Parade¡¨ as program specialist and tried to set up a model for running international festivals associates with local communities. The actual experience derives the following conclusion: tracing back to the original meaning of ¡§community¡¨ and regarding communities as the most important part of the model mentioned above, the operation of festivals will truly become the way to connect the international society.

During the process of community empowerment, resident participation has always played a significant role. Issues such as how to enhance residents¡¦ intention to get involved in community activities are consistently taken into discussion. Previous studies have revealed that community participation can be carried out by the integration of community awareness. However, most of these studies were generally focused on the exploration of inducement and strategy, rarely examining from the perspective of psychological decision-making factors such as behavior model, changing factors and efficacy. Therefore, the purpose of the study is: first, to understand the relationship between Sense of Community and Social Capital; second, to testify the influence of Sense of Community on Collective Efficacy and Self-efficacy; third, to explore the impact of Social Capital on the perspective of Theory of Planned Behavior; finally, to combine the related perspectives from Sense of Community, Social Capital, Social Cognition and Theory of Planned Behavior to develop residents community participation behavior model. The research variables of the study include Sense of Community, Norm Value, Neighborhood Interaction, Trust, Collective Efficacy, Self-Efficacy, Subject Norm, Attitude, Behavioral Intention and Community Participation. The research objects of 572 valid samples are community residents from 10 community development associations in Kaohsiung City. Questionnaires were collected and analyzed with Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to examine and explain each variable that influence residents¡¦ intention to participate in community. The results indicated that all the 11 assumptions present positive correlations. It is found that the Sense of Community presents great impact on Collective Efficacy, Norm Value and Neighborhood Interaction. Collective Efficacy also has strong influence on Self-Efficacy and Attitude. The result of the study based on the theories of Sense of Community, Social Capital, Social Cognitive Theory, and Theory of Planned Behavioral is considered as acceptable model as the development of resident community participation model reaches ideal standard on the index of Mean Root Square Error of Approximation (MRSEA). The research not only fulfills the purpose of study, but also provides concrete strategies for further studies. It also presents positive effect for Self-Efficacy and Collective Efficacy application on Social Cognitive Theory.

Diss. Stockholm : Stockholms universitet, 2006.

Community-based tourism (CBT) has become an important facet in the quest for sustainable tourism. CBT is a term that has been subjected to different interpretations in the academic literature. In the field, CBT continues to be supported as an approach to improve the livelihoods of local people in communities participating in tourism. With growing interest in the sustainable livelihoods approach to development, tourism researchers have begun to examine tourism as a livelihood strategy. However, there remain few case studies that have connected the sustainable livelihoods approach and tourism. More specifically, there is limited empirical evidence exploring community-based tourism as a livelihood strategy for rural communities. This research employed an exploratory mixed methods approach to investigate community-based tourism from a livelihoods perspective. The case of the Commonwealth of Dominica was examined to address the following objectives: i) to assess the approach to the development of community-based tourism on the island of Dominica; ii) to analyze residents’ perceptions of the impacts that tourism has on their community from a livelihoods perspective; and iii) to evaluate the degree of success (or failure) of community-based tourism development in Dominica. The research findings revealed that community-based tourism is a valued component of Dominica’s national tourism strategy. Since the early nineties, community involvement has been an implicit policy in the tourism development process. More recently, government-funded initiatives have provided assistance to communities across the island to develop, implement, and market community tourism products. Additionally, this research suggests that the livelihood asset pentagon presented in the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework for Tourism (Shen, Hughey, and Simmons, 2008) is an effective organizational tool for assessing the impact of tourism on communities. Future research should be directed at applying the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework for Tourism in more diverse contexts to ensure its validity and applicability. Furthermore, there is a need to develop a comprehensive Community-based Tourism Framework to assist in the monitoring and evaluation of community-based tourism projects in the field. The main conclusion drawn from this study is that the island of Dominica is on a successful path for developing community-based tourism and it has the potential to yield a number of ‘best practice’ scenarios for the Caribbean region and the globe a like.

Environmental Education is becoming increasingly important as human populations expand into wildlife habitat, often resulting in human/wildlife conflicts. Meadow Creek British Columbia has experienced a long history of conflicts with grizzly bears resulting in significant bear mortalities. This qualitative research investigates human attitudes and behaviours relating to human/grizzly bear coexistence in this area. Twenty eight participants with diverse values contributed to in-depth interviews and a focus group that revealed perceived barriers and potential solutions to human/grizzly bear coexistence. Results show increased attitudes of tolerance since mid-2000s and that on-going support is needed to enable bears and humans to coexist. This research suggests coexisting with grizzly bears in Meadow Creek may serve to improve the linkage function of this area, making coexistence important to local grizzly populations. This work may be a useful study for communities in areas of high human/bear conflicts or in linkage areas between threatened populations of wildlife.

<p>Ethiopia is exercising decentralisation of the health system and thus this study assesses lessons learned about the experiences of the decentralization of institutions in heoretical terms. The problem investigated in this study concerns the lack of institutional capacity to effectively provide services, lack of transparency, responsibility and accountability. Decision making is also very remote from the people with regard to resource allocation and public health service delivery. The scope of this study covers the Southern Nations, Nationalities and People&rsquo / s Regional State of Ethiopia and its relationship with the Cheha District in the area of health service decentralization. The objective of this study was to identify fundamental elements of decentralization of health institutions and the impact on the performance of the health system at local government level in the Cheha District in Ethiopia.</p>

<p>The study introduces and puts forward Sector Policing as a model to expand Community Policing and to broaden the scope of crime prevention. It also demonstrates how Sector Policing can be utilised to decentralise policing and deepen community participation.</p>

<p>This research endeavours to identify existing participatory structures and explore the role of local government officials, community representatives and other role players in the housing delivery process in Joe Slovo / indicate opportunities for the participation of beneficiaries in the housing process as well as the extent and nature of community engagement / highlight existing barriers to effective community participation and other problems related to housing delivery in Joe Slovo / draw general conclusions within the framework of the government&rsquo / s housing policy / and provide recommendations to policy makers, urban planners and other stakeholders. Consequently, this research employs qualitative methodological tools as they are most appropriate in the collection of this type of data. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with local officials, and observations were used to gather critical information. In addition, secondary data, with a special focus on newspaper articles, were used.</p>

Since the reintroduction of South Africa into the international community, tourism has been emphasised, through policy and public speech, as a means to achieve socio-economic upliftment and job creation. Although tourism has potential to contribute to a country's wellbeing, its implementation may introduce many complexities and potentially undesirable consequences. One way of alleviating some of the negative consequences of tourism, is through sufficiently involving communities in the tourism development and execution process. Most often the emphasis on involving local communities in tourism development has been rural based. The move to include previously disadvantaged urban communities, has been less well articulated. Local government authorities have only recently been given responsibility for both community involved tourism development and local economic development, and are therefore still formulating their approach to address these issues. Within KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) there are relatively few government projects currently concentrating on community-based tourism in urban and peri-urban areas. This project looks at one of these initiatives to build a case for sustainable community-based urban tourism. The Freedom Experience is a predominantly urban-based heritage tourism initiative proposed by the Pietermaritzburg-Msunduzi Transitional Local Council for development within Pietermaritzburg and surrounding areas. Georgetown is a previously neglected area falling within this region and is used as a case study to explore the process of participation in urban tourism development. The key stakeholders involved in tourism development within KZN are ascertained and interviewed. Difficulties and opportunities are identified for community-based urban tourism development in general, and for the case study area in particular. Due to idiosyncratic characteristics of individual situations and communities, any specified procedure for community participation, and any organization involved with its implementation, needs to be flexible. A process is, suggested, which attempts to avoid the dualistic nature of either top-down or bottom-up approaches to tourism development. It introduces a less rigid approach, which breaks from the view that decision-making needs to be conceptualised within a hierarchical context. Communication and decision-making responsibility and accountability are shared between various levels. An approach is presented, which supports small scale community and tourism development projects linking into an overarching development framework. This approach should result in sustainable development, bringing community benefits which can be immediately effective. It advocates the establishment of self-supporting enterprises which function successfully, independent of tourist demand. In this way contributing to the fulfilment of socio-economic, job creation and related capacity building objectives, without relying on an influx of tourists from a historically disloyal and unpredictable consumer base. / Thesis (M.Env.Dev.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2000.

Background: Social participation has been recognized as an important public health policy since the declaration of Alma-Ata presented it as one of the pillars of primary health care in 1978. Since then, there have been many adaptations to the original policy recommendations, but participation in health is still seen as a means to make the health system more responsive to local health needs, and as a way to bring the health sector and the community closer together. Aim: To explore the role that social participation has in a municipal-level health system in Guatemala in order to inform future policies and programs. Methods: The fieldwork for this study was carried out over eight months and three field visits between early January of 2009 and late March of 2010. During this time, 38 indepth interviews with provincial and district-level health authorities, municipal authorities, community representatives and community health workers were conducted. Using an overall applied ethnographic approach, the main means of data collection were participant observation, in-depth interviews, group discussions and informal conversations. The data was analyzed in two different rounds. In the first one we used documentary analysis, role-ordered matrices and thematic analsis (see papers I-IV) and in the second round, thematic analysis was utilized. Results: We found four themes that frame what the role of social participation in the municipality of Palencia is. The first theme presents the historical, political and social context that has contributed to shaping the participation policies and practices in Guatemala as a whole. The second theme takes a deeper look at these policies and how they have been received in the municipality of Palencia. The third theme presents data regarding the three situated practices of participation, each occurring at a different level: municipal, community and the individual level. Finally, the last theme presents reflections on what it means to participate to the people that were involved in this study. Conclusion: In the process of social participation there are two different and complementary kinds of power that depend on the amount and the kind of resources available at each level of the participation structure. Stakeholders that have higher levels of power to formulate policies will have better access to financial, human and material resources while stakeholders that have higher levels of power to implement policies will have resources like community legitimacy, knowledge of local culture, values and mores, as well as a deep understanding of local social processes. The coordination of financial, human and material resources is just as important as the legitimacy that comes from having community leaders involved in more steps of the process. True collaboration can only be obtained through the promotion and creation of meaningful partnerships between institutional stakeholders and community leaders and other stakeholders that are working at the community level. For this to happen, more structured support for the participation process in the form of clear policies, funding and capacity building is needed.