The Sierra Leonean Creoles, formed by a conglomeration of black returnees to Africa, arrived over the late eighteenth and mid-nineteenth century from Britain, Nova Scotia, the West Indies, and other parts of Africa. Heavily influenced by the British, their culture set them apart from the surrounding natives. That distinction resulted in critical identity problems as British philanthropy turned into colonial racism. The Rambler was a contributor to the Sierra Leone Weekly News from 1913 to 1919 and from 1929 to 1939. His work suggests that he was an energetic and informed thinker. Historians use him to support points concerning Creole and West African history, but do not examine him completely. His work, examined holistically, reveals a Creole still struggling with British abandonment, native encroachment, and Creole obstinacy while clinging to the civilizing mission. His struggle fails and eventually he dismisses the civilizing morality, subscribing instead to a racially assertive morality.

This is a Participatory Approach (PA) study done in Ghana, West Africa. We focus on two Non Governmental Organizations (NGO) in Ghana which uses a PA in their development work. Historically the development work in most African countries has been influenced by western countries, where development often was imposed from the top down, but nowadays, with PA, development seek to engage the local population in a community during the development process. Ghana has been struggling with poverty for several years, and the NGOs are of importance for the development in the country. The purpose of this study is to contribute to a better understanding of development workers’ perception of Participatory Approach and to increase the knowledge about how development workers’ at NGOs in Ghana are working with Participatory Approach. This is a qualitative research and we have used three methods in this Bachelor’s thesis. We have done six semi - structured interviews, one focus group and one field research. We had the interviews and the focus group with development workers at two NGOs. At the field research we had the opportunity to observe the development workers in action. The research questions in this Bachelor’s thesis are: - At two NGOs in Ghana, in what ways can the development workers’ perception of Participatory Approach be understood? - At two NGOs in Ghana, in what ways can the practise of Participatory Approach be understood? The development workers perception of PA, is that PA is important to get sustainable projects and to ensure ownership for all stakeholders in the development process. PA is an empowering process with focus on capacity building. The acceptance of oneself being in need is as important as the participation. Their perception about PA also include some challenges. PA is time- and money consuming , the flexibility that PA need is limited by deadlines and budgets. There are challenges related to social- and cultural values, your own as a development worker and the community’s. The contextual knowledge must be highlighted and the limitations of the organizations must be considered. Another concern is when peoples opinions are influenced by their expectaitions from what the NGOs can provide. The practise of PA is understood as a process where all stakeholders are involved from the beginning, a process to engage the community and make them active participants in every step in a development project. The development workers main role is to build capacity of the people on the field. They uses different tools to ensure participation; Stakeholder analyses, Community conversations and Key informants interviews. The practise can be understood in terms of different levels of participation and different intensity within different cycles in a development project. Depending of the role of the actor and the stage the process are going through, some actors are more active than others.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 171-178).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, 2006. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 171-178).

Thesis--Hamburg. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 345-360).

Zugl.: Boston, Univ., Diss.

Boston University. University Professors Program Senior theses. / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2031-01-02

The global health system is ill prepared to handle communicable health crises, much less effectively communicate about them, as evidenced by the West African Ebola outbreak. Although some critics have argued that the delay in international response contributed to the fast spread of the disease, others place greater blame on local cultural practices. The current study investigated how risk/crisis communication was produced, deployed, and received. This is particularly critical as the World Health Organization guidance on crisis/risk communication is not based on systematic evidence-based research Again, risk communication on communicable diseases is still relatively new and the body of research lacks both rigorous empirical evidence and evaluation research on event-specific risk communication efforts. Guided by the protection motivation theory and social mobilization theory, and using a comparative case study approach, this study sought to examine how crisis risk communication was undertaken and received in Liberia and Ghana and the implications for health crisis risk communication. Data was collected via interviews with communication and social mobilization team representatives in the two countries, document reviews, surveys of a cross section of inhabitants in Margibi and Shai Osudoku districts, and focus group discussions with purposively selected participants in the two countries. The study finds that expert-led top-bottom communication interventions used at the start of the outbreak were ineffective in getting target audiences to make the recommended behavior changes in Liberia. Messages developed induced fear rather than action. Furthermore, one in five respondents today, cannot identify the main signs and symptoms of Ebola. Again, the more worried people were about Ebola, the more vulnerable they felt. Finally, respondents moved through a cycle from equilibrium to defense to protection and then back to equilibrium as they sought to make sense of the disease and the communication they received about Ebola. It is recommended that risk communication include bottom-up community-led communication approaches and systems that are embedded within community culture and reality and used by community members. Again, the research challenged the assumption in risk perception studies that increasing knowledge and self-efficacy lowers risk perception thus suggesting the need for further studies in this area. / 10000-01-01

Ecosystem services are the benefits people obtain from ecosystems. Quantifying these benefits and understanding how they may change under multiple future pressures, such as climate change or land use change, is a highly uncertain exercise. In managing ecosystems to be resilient to future changes, natural resource managers need the most accurate information available, but also need to be informed of when and where they can be confident, or not, in projections of change. In this thesis, I address many of the key aspects of uncertainty in projections of change in ecosystem services, with a particular focus on challenges in West Africa. I show where and for what variables climate models may be reliably used in ecological studies, providing important advice for interpreting the impacts of climate change on biodiversity. Furthermore, I show that uncertainty in climate observations can also have a significant impact on climate change adaptation decisions at both the species level and in terms of protected area management. I also address how vegetation in West Africa may respond to future climate change. I found that even after uncertainties in climate and land use were considered, carbon storage in West African tropical forests was projected to increase where forest degradation remained low or reduced; vegetation productivity was projected to increase in all parts of West Africa, with the exception of locations in the West Sahel where the largest reductions in precipitation were projected; and, importantly for protected areas, ecosystems were projected to shift northwards despite uncertainty in precipitation projections. I also show the sensitivity of 3 major land surface models to uncertainty in vegetation mapping, thereby providing guidance to the remote sensing community on priorities to improve land cover mapping and to the earth system modelling community on bounds of uncertainty in carbon, moisture and energy budgets due to vegetation mapping uncertainties. Lastly, in using the latest land-atmosphere coupled convection-resolving model, I show that it is possible to simulate the observed interaction between landscape heterogeneity and local and regional scale precipitation in West Africa. This provides a timely and relevant tool that will allow scientists and natural resource managers to more accurately assess the impact of changes in land use on the regional climate of West Africa.

West African Journal: A Travel Account is a narrative of the author's trip in twelve West African countries. In the first chapter the author describes her previous travels and preparations for this trip and introduces her husband. She begins the second chapter with a discussion of the benefits and hardships of independent travel and describes the hotels, restaurants, forms of transportation, and difficulties with language. The remainder of Chapter II is a close account of the first sixteen days of travel. The narrative continues chronologically in Chapters III through VIII. Each chapter pertains to a distinct stage of the trip. In Chapter IX, the author reviews her personal accomplishments during the journey, relates her and her husband's reactions on their return to the U.S., and concludes with some evocative descriptions of West Africa.