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The role of community participation in protected areas has long been debated. Sweden is in the process of establishing two new National Park, of which one is located on the island of Gotland. In order to figure out the best approach to management of the area, it is important to listen to the residents. Through a qualitative study, I have therefore investigated whether residents would like to be included in the Park implementation and management, along with how the National Park could help Gotland reach its sustainability agenda by 2040. The findings show that communities are eager to be included in the National Park project, but also that Region Gotland should revise the way they address regional development.

Includes bibliographical references / BACKGROUND: People with disabilities encounter major barriers that prevent them realising their right to health in South Africa. Health committees are legislated structures for community participation in health at a local level. This study investigated how health committee members understand and practise their role in community participation and how this advances the right to health for persons with disability. METHODS: A qualitative study was conducted with three health committees in the Cape Town Metropole in the Western Cape province of South Africa purposively selected for the study. Three facility managers and eight health committee members took part in focus group discussions and semi-structured interviews, supplemented by participant observations of committee meetings. Additionally, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 2 disability activists. These methods were used to gain a rich understanding of health committees’ roles and practises in relation to persons with disabilities. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. RESULTS: The main research findings were: (i) health committees did not prioritise disability on their respective agendas; (ii) persons with disabilities were not adequately represented on health committees; (iii) health committees exhibited poor understanding of disability barriers relating to health; (iv) lack of egalitarian values led to persons with disabilities not trusting the health committee, and distrust amongst health committee members; lastly (v) health committees augment health facility operations instead of fulfilling their governance and oversight function. These factors may have contributed to health committees not helping to advance the right to health for persons with disabilities. CONCLUSIONS: Health committees should include mandated representation of persons with disabilities, whilst addressing marginalisation directed toward persons with disabilities on committees. Training of health committees, as well as networking with disabled organisations, could help improve their limited understanding of disability. Health committees should consider addressing disability a human rights issue, which critically involves community mobilisation, raising awareness around issues of disability and promoting agency amongst persons with disabilities to claim their rights.

Student Number : 8906043R - MSc research report - School of Architecture and Planning - Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment / This study engages with community participation in post-apartheid South Africa, in an attempt to discern participation approaches that might enhance development in the upgrading of informal settlements within the Metropolitan Cities. The research attempts to come up with an intervention strategy that incorporates participation of Community- Based Organisations, Community leaders and society into informal settlement interventions in South Africa. It reviews the South African framework and structures for informal settlement community participation (including civic organisations, other community-based organisatios, and elected statutory representation). It then examines to what extent lessons from the International literature review 2003 study conducted by Thabelo Nethenzheni may be relevant to the South African situation.

School feeding programs enhance the efficiency of the education system by improving enrollment, reducing dropouts and increasing perseverance. They also have the potential to reach the poor, directly making them an effective social safety net. In many low-resource countries, school feeding programs are designed to protect children from the effects of hunger. Unfortunately, the continuity of such programs is threatened by over-reliance on external funding. Given the patterns of withdrawal of external support, countries that rely on donor funds to implement such programs need to develop plans that will move them from external to localized support. It is well documented that programs that involve community members are self-sustaining. Regrettably, even though community members are involved in school feeding programs in Malawi, their participation is restricted to food storage and preparation and doesn't include decision making. Thus the transition plan for Malawi has to deliberately involve community members and influence them to take ownership of the school feeding programs. This dissertation explored the use of Social Marketing, a strategy for influencing behavior change that applies traditional marketing techniques to persuade a target audience to adopt, adapt, maintain or reject a behavior for the benefit of individuals, groups, or society as a whole to plan school food programs in Malawian primary schools. Using focus groups and individual interview techniques, I carried out a qualitative study at a primary school in Malawi where the community has initiated a school feeding program with the aim of understanding the barriers and benefits of supporting such an initiative from the community members' perspective. The results show that the cost of producing food, particularly the use of chemical fertilizer, is the main barrier whilst ensuring that all children regardless of social-economic status have access to a meal at school is the drive behind this initiative. The Social Marketing campaign therefore focuses on promoting the use of eco-san toilets whose output is humanure in this school community so as to minimize the cost of producing food to ensure sustainability of this initiative.

“Community participation” is a common concept in contemporary development initiatives worldwide. As an approach, it aims to include the targeted population in its planning and implementation, by recognizing the need in understanding local contexts, beliefs, and values. As such, this thesis aims to explore the possibilities, as well as limitations, of community participation, specifically in the context of post-conflict development through a case study of a development project, The Bugesera Societal Healing Initiative (BSHI), in Rwanda. This is done within the theoretical context of the anthropology of development and post-development theory. Through ethnographical inquiry into the lives of BSHI participants suffering from trauma following the 1994 Genocide, this thesis conveys the essence for development organizations in catering to the specific needs of a given local population. In turn, this is placed in a broader discourse, within the development sector as a whole, to understand the limitations and obstacles in achieving comprehensive societal transformation. It is argued that, while development initiatives driven by the idea of community participation may succeed on a local level and positively impact the targeted population, it may still leave wider political structures perpetuating issues of, for instance, poverty unaltered. In this, it seems that for these structures to be addressed, it requires a more radical approach to development in which the status quo is being challenged.

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Due to the alarming rate of global wetland depletion, the Ramsar Convention, an international wetland conservation and management treaty, was signed in 1971. As of today, 172 countries are signatories. The intricate connection of local communities, their indigenous knowledge and hence their participation in the wetland governance has been recently recognized by Ramsar to protect the community's right over wetlands and to establish the joint stewardship of government and communities on these vital resources. Ramsar Convention provides a broader framework for participatory wetland governance; however, there needs to be more clarity on how various countries understand, perceive, and adopt community participation in their national policies. The case of India, where communities depend on wetland bodies for lives and livelihoods, makes an appropriate case for similar countries in South Asia. Qualitative research methodologies are applied at various stages of the research. The participatory wetland governance proposed under the Ramsar Convention and India's national and state policies is analyzed based on the framework developed under this research. The pair of state and wetland sites are selected for detailed case analysis to understand the diversities and commonalities of the policy framework. The comparative examination between Ramsar and India and across the four sites helps to understand the policy diversions. The policy diversions from Ramsar's framework are observed in national and state policies. However, the case studies provide new insights embedded in the contextual setting to draw policy recommendations to create better opportunities for community participation in India and Ramsar Convention. The meaning of community participation in theories is prone to various interpretations in practice. This research provides a way to decipher the meaning of participation, bridge the gap between theories and practice, and propose practical and achievable community participation in wetland governance.

Magister Commercii - MCom / The purpose of this research study is to explore the variables that contribute to improving the process of recruiting and retaining rural doctors within the South African context. The aim is to explore rural doctors’ perceptions of the role which the rural community can and ought to play in respect of the latter process. A basic recognition is that the emphasis on the Mainstream Approach (which elevates health workforce planning and management as well as market-related interventions and solutions) cannot exclusively achieve the desired result of effective and efficient recruitment and retention of rural doctors. The ‘active’ role which communities can and ought to play in the recruitment/ retention process, is an overlooked and neglected aspect within the South African research and healthcare service-delivery context. Even though the notion of collaborative management and governance of human resources within the health sector is generally mandated from a policy and legislative perspective, the practical manifestation and implementation thereof remain limited or at best piece-meal. An alternative governance model with reference to the humanresources- in-health system outlines the Partnership Approach advocating the need for the establishment of practical working relationships, amongst an identified range of multiple-stakeholders. This study examines the notions of ‘passive’ vis-à-vis ‘active’ community participation equated to the Utilitarian and Community Empowerment/ Development Perspectives continuum. The study introduces the ‘Principle of Balancing Model’ as well as the notion of a ‘hybrid perspective’ as key underpinnings of an efficacious rural-doctor recruitment and retention process.