Co-operatives are seen as one of the appropriate strategies for intervention in eradicating poverty in rural communities. During the financial year 2007-2008 the Department of Social Development and Special Programmes pronounced on the availability of funds in its budget for the establishment of women’s co-operatives and other livelihood community projects. The initiative of funding rural women’s cooperatives was one of the interventions to address high poverty and unemployment levels among rural women in the province. Rural women co-operatives were nonexistent in the Mbhashe area of the Eastern Cape, as a consequence, co-operatives were speedily formed in order to access funding for women co-operatives that was made available by the Department of Social Development and Special Programmes. The concern of the state initiated rural women’s co-operatives was their long-term sustainability as they were not embedded in the principles of a co-operative as autonomous association of persons who should voluntarily unite to meet their common economic, cultural and social needs and aspirations through a jointly democratically controlled enterprise. It was a top-down approach which negated inherent values of cooperation, namely self help, self responsibility, democracy, equity and solidarity. The aim of the study was to investigate the challenges faced by state-initiated rural women’s co-operatives in reducing poverty in the Mbhashe Area, Eastern Cape Province. Purposive sampling was used to select members of the co-operatives as participants. Study had an applied goal and intrinsic was the research design. Data was collected by means of focus group interviews and semi-structured interviews were used. The findings indicated that there is inadequate capacity in knowledge and skills to manage co-operatives and run a business and lack of co-operative values and principles among co-operatives. The study concludes that lack of knowledge about business, financial management and non adherence to co-operatives values and principles limit the ability of co-operatives to operate independently and succeed as businesses. / Dissertation (MSW)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / gm2014 / Social Work and Criminology / unrestricted

Magister Educationis (Adult Learning and Global Change) - MEd(AL) / This study explores the assessment practices of adult educators in Mamelodi Adult Learning Centers using a qualitative methodology. The study recognizes that assessment is an important activity within the education and training enterprise since it can be used to improve the quality of teaching as well as improve and support the learning process. The study sets out to investigate how Mamelodi adult educators conceptualize assessment; the skills levels of these educators; the nature of support and training these educators received to enhance their assessment practices; the different assessment methods employed by the adult educators to assess learners; and the educational validity and efficacy of these practices. / South Africa

Thesis (MPA. (Public Administration)) -- University of Limpopo, 2015 / Local governments are obliged by the Constitution of South Africa to deliver services and development to local communities in their demarcated areas. This constitutional mandate comes at a time where South African government entered into a new regime of government indebted to fix the ill of the Apartheid systems. The government of the post-1994 had to eradicate the inequality offspring of segregation policies of the past that resulted in most of the black communities without access to decent local government services and systems. The provision of services by local government became constrained by skills gaps and distribution across a wider community that had to be included in cascading services. The question of capacity in local government formed a critical part of the transformation of government in South Africa. Never the less local government has been swept by service delivery protest since the 2004 with a sharp increase from 2008 till current. Further pressures that indicate capacity challenges are with the inability of municipalities to deal healthy with financial resource. This challenged is confirmed by the steady poor reports by the auditor general year-in-year-out. These challenges exist where there is a concentrated financing reservations and advocacy of capacity building training programmes, which in turn shows to be failing to address capacity challenges in local government. The study investigated the effects of capacity building training programmes on municipal practitioners in selected municipalities within the Capricorn District Municipality, Limpopo province. The focus of the study is to establish the implication of capacity building training programmes on the capacity of officials to discharge their official duties in the municipalities. The study also dealt with the need for a methodological model that could be used to develop capacity building training programmes. Competency-Based Training was studied in pursuit for recommendation as a model for capacity building in local government. The study was grounded within the boundaries of the systems thinking with bias to the complex systems thinking. To fulfil the purpose of the study data was collected through qualitative and quantitative methods. Analyses were made using the Statistical Package for Social Science. The findings of the study revealed that though there are positive effects of capacity building training programmes in local government there is much to be done especial the alignment of capacity with the strategic positioning of the participating municipalities.

Sustainable urban mobility is an established target of policy making and planning in Europe. It is associated with, among others, better air quality, less noise disturbance, increased safety and quality of public space. In this regard, one of the EU Commission’s main tools to reach sustainable urban mobility, Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMP), require the explicit integration of Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E). Yet, European cities face common barriers when it comes to materialising M&E in practice. To avoid or overcome these barriers, this paper argues for integrating capacity building (CB). We draw this conclusion on the basis of experiences made during the M&E of the Horizon 2020 Project ‘Metamorphosis’. We report our experiences, rating different monitoring indicators used for the evaluation of measures transforming car-oriented neighbourhoods into children-friendly neighbourhoods in seven European cities. We then give advice on how to design and integrate CB for a feasible M&E scheme.

The thesis focuses on the contemporary CSDP missions of the European Union from the point of view of critical literatures on imperialism, state-building and capacity-building. State-building and capacity-building gradually became dominant approaches towards weak and failing states which are associated with the exercise of power and influence in the critical literature, e.g. in David Chandler on whose argument this thesis draws on. The thesis develops Chandler's argument by means of analysis of intervention practices in the selected cases.

Magister Artium (Development Studies) - MA(DVS) / Local governments worldwide are invariably faced with challenges of human capacity constraints, corruption, lack of operating transparency and accountability, dysfunctional ward committees, poor public participation, non-compliance with legislation and by-laws, poor prioritisation of community needs, unaligned budget processes, unauthorised and wasteful expenditure, tensions between politicians and administrators, as well as weak financial viability. A strong legal framework, clearly defining authority and accountability, backed by relevant skills development training, are necessary foundations for service delivery; however, without the appropriate training, staff performance could remain inadequate. Various countries have reached varying levels of local government effectiveness; however, all too often municipalities do not have the adequate skills required, to deliver the services needed, to ensure community development.

In this thesis, the development of a structure for use in an educational CubeSat kit is explored. The potential uses of this kit include augmenting existing curricula with aspects of hands on learning, developing new ways of training students on proper space systems engineering practices, and overall contributing to academic capacity building at Cal Poly and its collaborators. The design improves on existing CubeSat kit structures by increasing accessibility to internal components by implementing a modular backplane system, as well as adding the ability to be environmentally tested. Manufacturing of the structure is completed with both additive (Fused Deposition Modeling with ABS polymer and Selective Laser Melting with AlSi10Mg metal) and subtractive (milling with Al-6061) technologies. Modal, harmonic, and random vibration analyses and tests are done to ensure the structure passes vibration testing qualification loads, as outlined by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s General Environmental Standards. Successful testing of the structure, defined as deforming less than 0.5 millimeters and maintaining a factor of safety above 2, is achieved with all materials of interest. Thus, the structure becomes the first publicly available CubeSat kit designed to survive environmental testing. Achieving this goal with a structure made of the cheap, widely available material ABS showcases the potential usability of 3D-printed polymers in CubeSat structures.

Although many school districts provide inservice professional development to build the capacities of novice principals, some of these supports are proving inadequate in recruiting or retaining qualified leaders. Research on capacity development for novice principals is scarce, yields mixed results, and employs methodology which has invited participant response bias. Reflecting the school level, gender, and Title I experience of novice principals within a large school district in the mid-Western United States, a sample of 24 novice principals respond to semi-structured interview questions. Iterations of transcription coding, member-checking, and analysis yield findings that help school districts better understand the capacity development process of novice principals studied. Novice principals in this study identify facing managerial problems more than instructional or student-related demands. While addressing various demands they face, novice principals draw less on their knowledge or skillsets, but rely much more on their dispositional capacities. In citing sources that developed their capacities to meet these various professional demands, principals ascribe professional sources only slightly more than personal sources in having built their capacities. Further inspection reveals that the sources of capacity development are not as influential as the types of capacity-building through which administrators learn: regardless if the capacity source came from their personal lives or professional careers, principals ascribe their capacities being built primarily from experiential learning, and the constructed learning from passively observing competent models. This preference of certain types of capacity development greatly influence how new principals learn, and has greater effect over capacity development than the source of that capacity, or where the capacity gained that capacity. This held true even when considering all types of demands to which administrators apply these capacities. A principals job requires skillsets beyond instructional leadership alone. This is especially true as districts embrace an emerging conceptualization of school leadership that posits a principals influence on student learning is greatest when applied through intentional, learning-driven organizational management. In focusing solely on principal skillset and knowledge development during trainings, districts neglect the capacity domain that principals utilize most often in addressing demands, which is also the capacity domain through which their knowledge and skills are operationalized: their dispositions. Knowing that principals ascribe certain types of capacity building as the key factor in their development rather than the sources of their capacities, school districts can better embrace, systematize, and leverage these types of capacity development. Such adjustments will more directly and effectively target the capacity development of novice principals, enabling them to address the professional demands they face.

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