The Children's Aid Society of the Catholic Archdiocese of Vancouver has now been in existence for forty-eight years. This study reviews its development from its origin in 1905 to the present day. Material for this purpose was collected from the minutes of the Executive Board of the Society, 1905 to 1953; annual reports for the years 1944 to 1948; statutes of British Columbia; personal interviews with the Director; and other related records and literature of the agency. In the course of its existence, the Society has expanded from an organization providing care only to children committed to it by court, to a social welfare agency which cares for both "ward" and "non-ward" children, provides a service to adoptive parents and unmarried mothers, and engages in family and preventive work. This study traces the increased participation of the Provincial Government in financing the Society, and in serving the Catholic population in those areas of British Columbia where the agency does not operate. It also reveals changes in views on child care. At first, most children in need of protection were placed in institutions. Later, emphasis was placed on foster homes. To-day, the agency shares the modern belief that certain children benefit more from institutional than foster home care. An appraisal of the Catholic Children's Aid Society shows that it has filled a definite need in the Catholic community within the overall framework of local agencies. Its efforts, however, have been hampered by a lack of foster and adoption homes, and a shortage of qualified personnel. The record indicates that more effective and continuous interpretation to the community is required if the agency is to improve its services. / Arts, Faculty of / Social Work, School of / Graduate

This study developed from results obtained in a recent MSW thesis entitled, "Utilization of Manpower at Children’s Aid Society of Vancouver, B.C." by Adams, et. al. (U.B.C. School of Social Work, 1967). In the main, our assignment was to select and rank a wide range of tasks performed by agency staff in the field of child welfare. Using the Adams et. al. recommendation regarding "worker autonomy," we selected a panel of fifteen judges representing the three levels of employment - administrative, supervisory, and line worker, developed an adequate method of judging, and analysed the data. The Adams, et. al. study proved useful in our inquiry in providing clues to the various personal assignments we had set for our project group. The entire project covered a period of less than three months and because of this comparatively short research period, we resorted to simplified techniques of judging. We found a high percentage of agreement among the judges. This not only indicates that the tasks can be differentiated by social workers in the field of child welfare but also that the "forced choice" phase of the judging probably does not adversely affect reliability. Further, we suggested in the Adam's study, it would appear that "worker autonomy” can usefully be used as a criterion in ranking tasks in a child welfare agency. / Arts, Faculty of / Social Work, School of / Graduate

Communities throughout Canada have been faced with economic problems as a result of global restructuring, national and regional recessions, and a reduced demand for primary resource commodities. Over the course of the past decade those communities have begun to utilize various forms of community economic development (CED) strategies to overcome local economic problems. Although CED has been interpreted in various ways, resulting in no single readily identifiable definition of the term, a few concepts seem to prevail throughout most of the interpretations. Generally, CED is a process which involves community members banding together to initiate their own solutions to their common economic problems. There are, however, several impediments to this bottom-up approach to economic development Community Futures, a program sponsored by the federal government, has been designed to promote and facilitate CED by helping to remove some of those impediments. The purpose of this thesis is to determine the extent to which a government program, namely Community Futures, can promote CED. A three part methodology has been used to accomplish this goal. First, a review of the relevant CED literature was performed to determine the goals of this approach to economic development and the impediments which exist. Four goals were identified: self-reliance, local control, institution-building, and equity. Self-reliance can be achieved through policies which decrease the level of economic leakages from the community and by recognizing the significance of the informal economy. Local control is a key element of the CED model. The goal is to increase the broader community's political control over the local economy through increased participation in community affairs. Local control manifests itself in institution-building processes. Community-based institutions allow the community to better control its collective economic destiny and ensure equitable access to resources by all community members, through policies which decrease the level of economic leakages from the community and by recognizing the significance of the informal economy. Local control is a key element of the CED model. The goal is to increase the broader community's political control over the local economy through increased participation in community affairs. Local control manifests itself in institution-building processes. Community-based institutions allow the community to better control its collective economic destiny and ensure equitable access to resources by all community members. The impediments to bottom-up CED are: difficulty accessing financial resources, difficulty accessing information, and underdeveloped human resources. These are the impediments which government programs should attempt to overcome to facilitate the CED process. The second part of the methodolgy consisted of a historic review of Canadian regional and local economic development policy to determine the nature of top-down economic development in Canada. This study found some of the relevant trends which have developed throughout the past decades, thus placing Community Futures into its appropriate historical context. Among the trends which emerged, we witness that policy: has been slow to develop; has lacked significant innovation; has traditionally been firmly controlled by the federal bureaucracy; has been influenced by political disputes at all levels; has been subject to the quantifiable, efficiency indicators which characterize the policy analysis approach to planning; and has regularly failed to meet its prescribed objectives. Having analyzed the relevant theory and practice, the third part of the methodology studied the policy design of Community Futures to determine the program's ability to overcome the impediments to bottom-up CED and thereby facilitate the acheivement of the goals described by CED writers. Eligibility requirements of the program, such as unemployment and minimum levels of economic infrastructure, restrict the ability of the program to operate comprehensively and be universally available. Other eligibility requirements, such as minimum population requirements and ministerial approval requirements tend to be counterproductive to the local control objective of CED. A positive effect of the program is its ability to facilitate institution-building through the use of a community-based Community Futures Committee. However, the ability of that committee to develop a community-based plan is restricted by the limited nature of the program and by the onerous procedural guidelines set by CEIC. Five broad conclusions concerning government involvement in CED programs are drawn from the literature review, the historical review, and the Community Futures case study. First, top-down strategies do, to a degree, have the potential to promote the goals of CED by addressing the impediments to the bottom-up approach. Second, the state's potential ability to promote comprehensive CED is impeded by the scale and national focus of top-down programs. Third, the government's sectoral structure also acts as an impediment to comprehensive top-down CED. Fourth, programs which are considered to be bureaucratic innovations may not be substantially different from those programs which preceded them. And finally, quantitative techniques of analysis and evaluation which characterize the policy analysis approach to planning are not capable of assessing the success of communities in achieving the ‘softer’ goals advocated by CED proponents. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / This thesis discusses the triangular relationship of aid, state and development since Lesotho's independence. It builds on three key hypotheses. First, during the preadj ustment period aid entrenched bureaucratic state power, but this changed with the adoption of the adjustment programme which only facilitates state survival. Secondly, hemmed in by external developemts and internal political and economic crisis, the state is caught between survival and shrinking resources. Thirdly, given the above, development has remained elusive inspite of the infusion of aid at highly preferential terms. Since the Cold War, aid issues have undergone three phases. Until the 1960s, donor concerns focussed primarily on economic growth. Growth with redistribution or the basic needs approach dominated aid disbursement up to the late 1970s. Since the 1980s, aid has been influenced predominantly by the IMF/World Bank orthodoxy of adjustment. Much of the debate on aid to Africa generally and to Lesotho specifically has revolved around whether aid develops or underdevelops recipient countries. The view that aid bolsters state power is not new. This study argues, however, that this may not be the case under adjustment conditions. Aid facilitates state survival in the context whereby donors mount a systematic offensive agianst dirigisme and economic nationalism. As they do that, the locus of economic production and interaction is shifted to private agents and autonomous social movements and the role of the state is cut back. Donor confidence, therefore; shifts from states to markets. The implications of these processes for the Lesotho state and prospects for development form the central thrust of this study. Non-probability purposive sampling was used for data collection. This approach rests on qualitative research methodology. Respondents were chosen on the basis of their position and influence on decion-making processes that impinge on the interface amongst aid, state and development. Primary data sources are clustered into three categories: Government; Donor agencies and embassies; and Non-governmental Organisations.

The final publication is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1402391111. Ashraf S. Yousif, Andre Stanlie, Samiran Mondal, Tasuku Honjo, and Nasim A. Begum. Differential regulation of S-region hypermutation and class-switch recombination by noncanonical functions of uracil DNA glycosylase. PNAS 2014 111 (11) E1016-E1024; published ahead of print March 3, 2014. / 京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(医科学) / 甲第18464号 / 医科博第55号 / 新制||医科||4(附属図書館) / 31342 / 京都大学大学院医学研究科医科学専攻 / (主査)教授 清水 章, 教授 萩原 正敏, 教授 武田 俊一 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Medical Science / Kyoto University / DFAM

There is an increased number of childhood cancer survivors living into adulthood. As more survivors live into adulthood, researchers have been able to study and better understand the late effects of cancer treatment. A well-known late effect of cancer treatment is the risk of infertility. Cancer-related infertility is a source of distress to cancer survivors. There have been many advances to fertility preservation over the last few years and there are now multiple options available for both men and women. Despite the improved understanding of the risk of cancer-related infertility and advances to fertility preservation treatment, these services remain underutilized by cancer patients. It is known that discussing fertility preservation options with newly diagnosed cancer patients improves survivors’ long-term quality of life and reduces decisional regret, regardless of if they pursue fertility preservation treatment. Survivors often report that the risk of treatment-related infertility and/or available fertility preservation options was often inadequately or not discussed with them at the time of diagnosis. The use of fertility preservation decision aids for adult patients newly diagnosed with cancer have been proven to be effective at improving participants’ knowledge surrounding fertility preservation, reducing decisional conflict, and reducing long term decisional regret. A fertility preservation decision aid has not yet been developed for use by adolescents newly diagnosed with childhood cancer. This study aims to engage survivors and providers to develop a fertility preservation decision aid to improve the decision quality of adolescents newly diagnosed with childhood cancer who are determining their preferences on accepting a referral to a fertility specialist. This study then proposes to field test the decision aid with newly diagnosed patients. The use of a decision aid will lead adolescents with childhood cancer to have increased knowledge on the risk of infertility and the fertility preservation options available. This study also aims to lower participants’ levels of decisional conflict about their fertility preferences. There is a need to incorporate the use of a fertility preservation decision aid into childhood cancer treatment. If this decision aid proves effective, referral to the fertility preservation decision aid may become common practice at the time of initial diagnosis. If the decision aid is effect at improving decision quality and reducing decisional conflict, survivors may experience long-term benefits including improved quality of life and reduced levels of decisional regret.

Thesis advisor: Alyssa W. Goldman / Pandemic mutual aid groups are part of a contemporary mutual aid movement which intends to marry the spontaneous suspension of social boundaries of post-disaster collective action with sustained community-building and social justice. This comparative case study examines how two such radical social change organizations navigate the tension between ideology and the need for resources. Specifically, I ask what strategies organizers deployed in pursuit of their dual mandate, under the banner of ‘solidarity not charity.’ Despite virtually identical philosophies, visions, and circumstances, I find that organizers deployed different resource mobilization strategies to access and generate moral, cultural, and human resources. These strategic differences directly influenced organizational outcomes: One group continued to operate more than two years after organizing, while the other was on an indefinite hiatus. The findings depart from what might be predicted by a longstanding focus on material resources in resource mobilization theory, and support the call for more attention to culture and ideology in resource mobilization scholarship. / Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

The goal of this dissertation is to investigate how foreign aid can be used as means to induce a recipient country to engage in trade policy reforms. For this purpose, we develop a two-good and two-country model where the donor commits to give foreign aid in the first period and disburses in the second period. The donor`s commitment for foreign aid is based on an equation where the volume of foreign aid is a function of the recipient tariff rate. We analyze the donor and the recipient actions in two types of game: a passive donor game and an active donor game. The active donor game has two sub-games: a simultaneous game and a sequential game. This dissertation is composed of two theoretical chapters and one empirical chapter. The two theoretical chapters use a similar theoretical model but they differ on the assumptions we make the recipient country economy. In the first chapter, we assume that the recipient country government is lobbied by interest groups that own its stock of capital. We find evidence that the donor can, under certain conditions, influence the recipient`s trade policy even when interest groups lobby the government. In the second chapter, we assume that the recipient country has borrowing constraints because it faces a quantitative restriction on its borrowing set by the international credit markets. Our results suggest that the recipient engages in trade liberalization depending on the type of games that the recipient and the donor participate. In the third chapter, we ask two questions: First, is the allocation of aid based on trade policy reforms; particularly, trade liberalization? Second, does foreign aid spur economic growth when we take into account the allocation of foreign aid based on trade liberalization? For this purpose, we use a panel data set of 137 countries from 1995 to 2009 which we estimate using the system GMM estimator. We find evidence of a negative relationship between trade liberalization and foreign aid. Our results suggest that foreign aid spurs economic growth.

Does allocating large amounts of international aid specifically for fighting HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa have an influence on mortality rates in this region? This paper explores the relationship between total Official Development Assistance and Official Development Assistance earmarked for HIV/AIDS with AIDS mortality and overall mortality within Sub-Saharan Africa between 2000 and 2006. There are no definitive findings from this study to conclude that the amount of any form of assistance aid has a positive or negative effect on mortality. The results suggest that focusing on establishing greater development and less government corruption would more effectively alleviate the high mortality rates in Sub-Saharan Africa than increasing funding for HIV/AIDS.

International humanitarian organizations played a prominent role in the Nigeria-Biafra War, but scholars have paid little or no attention to the humanitarian crisis in the war and the global humanitarian intervention that followed it. This thesis aims to fill a gap in the historiography of international humanitarian aid in the Nigeria-Biafra War by focusing on the Joint Church Aid (JCA), a consortium of Catholic and Protestant Churches that provided relief aid for the starving civilians in Biafra. This study of the JCA is broken down into three parts: the humanitarian impulse in the Nigeria-Biafra conflict, the formation of the JCA and its relief organization, and the challenges of relief operation in Biafra. The research provides a window into understanding the complex nature of international humanitarian aid in political conflicts. This dissertation argues that the JCA’s humanitarian operation, though relatively successful, had unintended consequences. While the JCA aimed to provide relief for the starving Biafran population, it was interpreted by the Nigerian government as political support for a “rebellion.” Convinced that the humanitarian organizations engaged in arms dealings with the Biafran government, the Nigerian government intensified military counter-action against the relief operation. The Nigerian government refused to separate international humanitarian aid from the political objectives of the war hence starvation came to be seen as a legitimate instrument of warfare. On the Biafran side, however, there was an effort to separate international humanitarian aid from the politics and hostilities of the war. Consequently, humanitarianism became a deeply contested issue that brought the humanitarian agencies into direct conflict with the Nigerian government. This study contributes to the scholarship on international humanitarianism and the internationalization of armed conflicts in postcolonial Africa. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)