For over a century, researchers have studied methods for revitalizing urban communities. Many studies show that entrepreneurship plays a vital role in sustaining valuable resources that are necessary for community development. The current study adds to previous research by identifying factors that are related to self-reliance and lower crime. I analyze data from the 1991 National Race and Politics Study, which explored attitudes on various issues related to community development and politics. My findings indicate that jobs, more say in government decisions, and hard work are significantly related to self-reliance, while small business, neighborhood organizations, care for the homeless and job training are significantly related to lower crime. These results support the work of previous researchers by showing that crime and neighborhood organizations play important roles in community development. The study goes a step further to identify additional attitudinal variables that are related to self-reliance and lower crime. These results should assist policy makers in determining what factors may help revitalize urban communities that suffer from high levels of unemployment and crime. / text

The present study investigates the instructional and organizational strategies used by participatory action research (PAR) facilitators at the Summer Youth Research Institute of the Institute for Community Research in Hartford, Connecticut (US), a six-week program that engages urban multi-ethnic teenagers in youth participatory action research (YPAR) for social change. During the last three decades, PAR has proven to be a very effective methodology for creating sustainable solutions to social problems by involving community members in the process of identifying, investigating, and collectively resolving them. In particular, YPAR provides young people with the opportunity to study social problems that affect themselves and their communities. Through experiential learning, YPAR allows youth to understand that structural injustices are produced, not natural, and can be challenged. Youth discover spaces for hope and resistance and become agents of change for their own communities. While recent years have witnessed an increased effort from researchers and practitioners alike to apply PAR approaches to various fields within community and international development, little has been written addressing educators about the designing and implementation process of a curriculum in PAR methodology. The present exploratory ethnographic study aims to address the theory-practice gap of PAR literature, which offers only a limited number of case study analyses of the facilitation and implementation process of PAR projects, and offer advice for PAR facilitators which is currently lacking.

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D. Tech. Drama / Environmental degradation and climate change are issues of significant global interest in the twenty first century. Though there is widespread acknowledgment that natural disasters often stem from causes and foundations which may be difficult to explain, scientific evidence is beginning to emerge of human influence on global climate change and ecosystem destabilization. Development and environmental studies researchers are of the opinion that solutions to environmental problems also require input from social science and the humanities because the environment itself is naturally subject to sociological variables, especially in the interaction between people and the environment. A multi-disciplinary approach for engaging environmental issues has given rise to environmental humanities and other applied disciplinary perspectives. There is global concern about environmental issues and their impact on development, however in the field of communication and applied media there is inadequate amplification of how the environmental problems hamper the development of many societies, especially in developing countries. The mainstream media is the established communication network for environmental and other education campaigns, such as radio, television, and newspapers, yet its impact appears stifled by the absence of cultural relatability and participatory requirements. Development communication researchers have determined there is an opportunity to use alternative media channels and a participatory form of communication which is effective at sensitisation and conscientisation of the populace, especially indigenous peoples in rural locations, towards environmental issues. The dramatic arts have been identified as a creative and strategic communication field capable of addressing this problem in environmental communication and development advocacy. This research explores the role of theatre and performance in integrating cultural resources through communal interaction, education and social change. The accessing of the catalytic role of cultural resources in development communication using theatre is tested in a local context involving people-led participatory activities for creating awareness about the environment. This research is therefore an assessment of a practical applied theatre exercise for mitigating environmental problems.

published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

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No description available.

This is an exploratory study, employing the livelihood approach as a tool to understand how the Zibambele programme approached rural poverty alleviation. The livelihood framework is used to understand the relationships between Zibambele workers’ and officials from the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Transport. The Vulindlela Area, one of the Zibambele sites, was chosen for assessment. The livelihood practices of Zibambele workers’ and attitudes of Zibambele officials towards the implementation the programme were sought out and captured. Qualitative methodology shaped the research design. Zibambele workers’ made up the main sample of this study, while officials from the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Transport were key informants of this study. Focus group interviews were conducted to capture data from the main sample and key informants. The grounded theory technique was used to analyse data. Data was analysed through identifying themes and building on the relationships between themes, to develop an explanation of how the Zibambele poverty alleviation programme is implemented. This study finds that the Zibambele programme is based on an economic approach to poverty alleviation due to the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Transport’s ‘top-down’ approach in implementing the Zibambele programme and Zibambele workers rising expectations of the programme. The study concluded that the livelihood approach was a valuable tool in understanding and explaining the Zibambele poverty alleviation programme. / Thesis (M.Soc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2010.

Whether in the rich Western countries, or the Southern Hemisphere developing countries, street trading is a socio-economic phenomenon which provides employment to millions of poor and marginalised communities, allowing them to survive despite socio-economic and political constraints. Well aware that their empowerment cannot come or be initiated except by themselves, they find in organising an empowerment will-power which triggers collective action toward influencing change of institutional practices and processes which often marginalise and put them under unnecessary pressure. In this environment, street traders’ organisations’ role tends to be limited to meeting the direct causes of their current concerns as crises arise and therefore leave in the oblivion deep causes which lead to their marginalisation. Weakened by their constituencies’ economic situation, they often fall into fatalism and often become easy-targets and victims of non-inclusive municipal processes. By organising and building strong organisations they are likely to emancipate themselves from exploitative practices and processes and to claim a share in matters concerning their interests as equal stakeholders without any discrimination or exploitation but for the sake of empowering disadvantaged communities. Therefore the choice of this study was instructed by the feeling that empowered street traders’ organisations in Durban-CBD can play a major role towards the integration of street traders in the city socio-economic framework. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2009.

By 1994 education in South Africa had collapsed (TRC, 1998; CCOLT, 1996). In response, South Africa's first non-racial government initiated a wide ranging School Reform (SR) program. However, almost a decade after the reforms commenced there have been very few substantial changes in the majority of South African schools: The Education Rights Project (2003a) and the South African Human Rights Commission argue that SR is failing the majority of South Africans. This thesis explores an alternative, School-Community Development (SCD), that integrates school reforms with programs that draw members of the school's neighbouring community (the "school-community") into the process of changing schools. I argue that SR is an inadequate response to the problems that confront schools. Using the case study method I show that SR is enhanced when integrated with locally developed social, cultural, economic, and school development programs. The thesis makes two contributions to the literature. First, the thesis challenges the "simplistic solutions to educational problems" (Anyon, 1997, p. 12) that constitute SR. Second, the thesis presents a materially grounded critique of SR in South Africa that evokes the "multiple voices" (Sayed, 2002, p. 32) from the four case study schools. Accordingly, our understanding of "making change work at the micro level", a neglected area of South African educational research (Sayed and Jansen, 2001, p. 7), is enhanced.