This dissertation explores the plight of vulnerable poor households in Sinazongwe district of Zambia. It determines nature of their vulnerability and identifies commonly used coping strategies. It also identifies different types of livelihood strategies and assets available and accessed by vulnerable poor households to create sustainable livelihoods. Study design used qualitative and participatory paradigms, involving variety of data collection techniques and tools such as key informant interviews and focus group discussions. The study identified several factors impacting on vulnerable poor households, their response strategies and perceived potential sustainable livelihoods. Drought and flash floods destroyed livelihoods of poor households from which they often failed to recover. Vulnerable poor households possessed fewer assets and less diversified sources of income and often lacked back up resources in times of hardship. Livestock rearing, fishing and irrigation-supported gardening were identified as possible sustainable livelihoods for vulnerable poor households in Sinazongwe, to recover and become resilient. / Sociology / M.A. (Development Studies)

Des nombreuses applications participatives, commerciales et académiques se appuient sur des volontaires ("la foule") pour acquérir, désambiguiser et nettoyer des données. Ces applications participatives sont largement connues sous le nom de plates-formes de crowdsourcing où des amateurs peuvent participer à de véritables projets scientifiques ou commerciaux. Ainsi, des demandeurs sous-traitent des tâches en les proposant sur des plates-formes telles que Amazon MTurk ou Crowdflower. Puis, des participants en ligne sélectionnent et exécutent ces tâches, appelés microtasks, acceptant un micropaiement en retour. Ces plates-formes sont confrontées à des défis tels qu'assurer la qualité des réponses acquises, aider les participants à trouver des tâches pertinentes et intéressantes, tirer parti des compétences expertes parmi la foule, respecter les délais des tâches et promouvoir les participants qui accomplissent le plus de tâches. Cependant, la plupart des plates-formes ne modélisent pas explicitement les compétences des participants, ou se basent simplement sur une description en terme de mots-clés. Dans ce travail, nous proposons de formaliser les compétences des participants au moyen d'une structure hiérarchique, une taxonomie, qui permet naturellement de raisonner sur les compétences (détecter des compétences équivalentes, substituer des participants, ...). Nous montrons comment optimiser la sélection de tâches au moyen de cette taxonomie. Par de nombreuses expériences synthétiques et réelles, nous montrons qu'il existe une amélioration significative de la qualité lorsque l'on considère une structure hiérarchique de compétences au lieu de mots-clés purs. Dans une seconde partie, nous étudions le problème du choix des tâches par les participants. En effet, choisir parmi une interminable liste de tâches possibles peut s'avérer difficile et prend beaucoup de temps, et s’avère avoir une incidence sur la qualité des réponses. Nous proposons une méthode de réduction du nombre de propositions. L'état de l'art n'utilise ni une taxonomie ni des méthodes de classement. Nous proposons un nouveau modèle de classement qui tient compte de la diversité des compétences du participant et l'urgence de la tâche. À notre connaissance, nous sommes les premiers à combiner les échéances des tâches en une métrique d'urgence avec la proposition de tâches pour le crowdsourcing. Des expériences synthétiques et réelles montre que nous pouvons respecter les délais, obtenir des réponses de haute qualité, garder l'intérêt des participants tout en leur donnant un choix de tâches ciblé. / A large number of commercial and academic participative applications rely on a crowd to acquire, disambiguate and clean data. These participative applications are widely known as crowdsourcing platforms where amateur enthusiasts are involved in real scientific or commercial projects. Requesters are outsourcing tasks by posting them on online commercial crowdsourcing platforms such as Amazon MTurk or Crowdflower. There, online participants select and perform these tasks, called microtasks, accepting a micropayment in return. These platforms face challenges such as reassuring the quality of the acquired answers, assisting participants to find relevant and interesting tasks, leveraging expert skills among the crowd, meeting tasks' deadlines and satisfying participants that will happily perform more tasks. However, related work mainly focuses on modeling skills as keywords to improve quality, in this work we formalize skills with the use a hierarchical structure, a taxonomy, that can inherently provide with a natural way to substitute tasks with similar skills. It also takes advantage of the whole crowd workforce. With extensive synthetic and real datasets, we show that there is a significant improvement in quality when someone considers a hierarchical structure of skills instead of pure keywords. On the other hand, we extend our work to study the impact of a participant’s choice given a list of tasks. While our previous solution focused on improving an overall one-to-one matching for tasks and participants we examine how participants can choose from a ranked list of tasks. Selecting from an enormous list of tasks can be challenging and time consuming and has been proved to affect the quality of answers to crowdsourcing platforms. Existing related work concerning crowdsourcing does not use either a taxonomy or ranking methods, that exist in other similar domains, to assist participants. We propose a new model that takes advantage of the diversity of the parcipant's skills and proposes him a smart list of tasks, taking into account their deadlines as well. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to combine the deadlines of tasks into an urgency metric with the task proposition for knowledge-intensive crowdsourcing. Our extensive synthetic and real experimentation show that we can meet deadlines, get high quality answers, keep the interest of participants while giving them a choice of well selected tasks.

Diplomová práce se zaměřuje na kritické zhodnocení současné energetické politiky Evropské Unie a její dopady na účastníky trhu s energetickými komoditami, především s důrazem na energetické společnosti a koncové spotřebitele.

Increasing competition in the construction market, the demands of investors and the unstable economic situation, these are factors which are forcing companies to effectively preparing and managing procurement. . The aim of this thesis is to describe and analyze the management of construction contracts in the selected company. Then the desired output is to design and documentation preparation supplying me selected buildings "Residential building Rieger" in Czech Budweis with the help of project management methods.

Syftet med studien är att undersöka hur förskollärares val av styrning och barns delaktighet kommer till uttryck i förskollärares beskrivningar av måltidssituationen i förskolan. Studien ska bidra med att ge förskollärare en medvetenhet om måltiden och konsekvenserna av deras styrning, detta för att utveckla en så god måltidssituation som möjligt för barnen, där barnen ges möjligheter att påverka. Studien genomförs genom en kvalitativ metod där sex förskollärare intervjuas för att skapa en djupare förståelse för måltiden. Den insamlade empirin analyseras genom tematisering för att ges en överblick av vad som framkommer i empirin. I resultat och analysdelen används det teoretiska ramverket som verktyg för att analysera empirin, det teoretiska ramverket består av det sociokulturella perspektivet, barnperspektiv, barns perspektiv, stark lärarkontroll och svag lärarkontroll. I resultatet framkommer det både likheter och skillnader i förskollärares val av styrning. Förskollärare har vissa förutbestämda regler och riktlinjer som inte är föränderliga medan vissa regler och riktlinjer skapas i samspel med barnen. Förskollärarnas val av styrning visar sig bero på vilken lärarroll de intar och kan vara anpassad utefter den enskilda individen. Barnens utrymme till delaktighet ser även olika ut i olika verksamheter. Det visar sig att när förskollärarna intar en stark lärarkontroll minskar barnens utrymme för delaktighet och när förskollärarna intar en svag lärarkontroll ökar deras utrymme för delaktighet. Studiens slutsats är att förskollärarens val av styrning har en viss påverkan på barns möjligheter att bli aktiva deltagare under måltidssituationen i förskolan. / Through a qualitative method where six preschool teachers are interviewed to create a deeper understanding of the meal. The collected empirics are analyzed through thematization to give an overview of what emerges in the empirics. In the results and analysis part, the theoretical framework is used as a tool for analyzing the empirical data, the theoretical framework consists of the socio-cultural perspective, children's perspective, children's perspective, strong teacher control and weak teacher control. The results show both similarities and differences in preschool teachers' choice of governance. Preschool teachers have certain predetermined rules and guidelines that are not changeable while certain rules and guidelines are created in interaction with the children. The preschool teachers' choice of governance turns out to depend on the teaching role they take on and can be adapted to the individual. The children's space for participation also looks different in different activities. It turns out that when preschool teachers take a strong teacher control, the children's space for participation decreases and when preschool teachers take a weak teacher control, their space for participation increases. The study concludes that the preschool teacher's choice of management has a certain impact on children's opportunities to become active participants during the meal situation in preschool.

This Inuvialuit ‘story’ revolves around the Inuvialuit uprising and resurgence against government and industrial encroachment, and the self determination efforts to regain sovereignty of traditional territories. This ‘story’ also discusses how meaningful consultation made the Inuvialuit Final Agreement a reality, through which Inuvialuit land rights and freedoms were formally acknowledged and entrenched in the Canadian Constitution. Through meaningful consultation, Inuvialuit have become ‘meaningful participants’ in sustainable and future-making decisions of Inuvialuit nunangat (Inuvialuit lands) and waters, with respect to the Inuvialuit People and natural beings that Inuvialuit depend upon and maintain relationship with. As ‘meaningful participants’, Inuvialuit have the sovereign rights to “make meaning” and carve out a future as a sovereign nation within the country of Canada. This Inuvialuit ‘story’ is told with an informal framework through which it decolonizes academia, while also highlighting Indigenous voice through an Indigenous lens and worldview. The government and industry are called upon to meaningfully consult with Indigenous Peoples who have not only inhabited Turtle Island for millennia, but who have inherent Indigenous rights and freedoms, as Indigenous embodiment and well-being, and temporality and future-making are entangled with homelands. / Graduate

The principal objective of the thesis is to provide the reader with information related to the subject matter of preparation and management of a construction contract from the perspective of an investor. The task of the thesis is to desrcibe the process of the particular stages of life cycle of a certain construction contract from the point of view of an investor and to analyze the issues of environmental protection and its impact on the preparation of constructions. The required outcome of this thesis is the creation of respective documentation for management of a construction contract.

Thesis (M.Dev. (Planning and Management)) -- University of Limpopo, 2022 / There is a high rate of gender-based violence in South Africa. The study aimed at examining the effectiveness of Ikhaya Lethemba as a community based organisation in empowering victims of gender-based violence in Gauteng province of the republic. In ensuring that the objectives of this study used predominantly qualitative research approach. The study method has been a case study. Representative of the study were selected purposively and participants were ten staff members including principals of Ikhaya Lethemba along with twenty-four respondents. The sample consisted of thirty-four participants. As this was predominantly qualitative study, data collection was using semi structured in-depth interviews. The narrative data from the interview guide was analysed qualitatively through open-ended questions. Data was also collected by using closed-ended questions for responding to semi-structured questions. Patterns of experiences were noted from the emerged themes. Those emerged themes were then grouped together. The main findings indicated that Ikhaya Lethemba played a significant role in empowering gender-based violence victims in Gauteng province, South Africa. The study discussed the nature of gender based violence experienced by the respondents, the legislative and policy framework in responding to gender based violence within the Republic of South Africa, and to examine the effectiveness of Ikhaya Lethemba as a community based organisation in empowering victims of gender based violence.

Text in Afrikaans / Coronary artery disease (CAD) is a life-threatening disease. When heart patients in the treatment of their disease, due to certain subjugating discourses practised by the biomedical model or biomedicine, are treated in a way that contributes to their anxiety and they feel themselves marginalised by society, then CAD becomes even more threatening. The narrative-pastoral approach of this study aims to treat heart patients in a way that has a calming effect on them that could assist them to deal with their heart disease more efficiently. This study shows how a heart patient's illness stories can be centralised by means of narrative therapy and how a pastoral and ethical attitude of love and respect can produce a climate that's conducive to better health and well-being. I indicate how my methodology of participatory action research succeeds in making the heart patients active participants to the research project. Their active participation indicates that meaning is not created on their behalf in therapy; rather, they are responsible for the process of richer construction of meaning. I describe how the participants socially co-constructed alternative and richer descriptions of their illness. Futhermore, I point out how their richer descriptions of illness contribute to perceptible and measurable results that are of value to the heart patients. / Koronere hartvatsiekte (KHS) is 'n lewensbedreigende siekte. Wanneer hartpasiente in die behandeling van hul siekte vanwee sekere onderdrukkende diskoerse van siekte vanuit die biomediese model of biomedisyne s6 hanteer word dat dit spanning op hul plaas en deur die samelewing gemarginaliseer word, word KHS des te meer gevaarlik. In hierdie studie gaan dit oor 'n narratief-pastorale benadering wat hartpasiente op 'n kalmerende manier hanteer sodat hulle kan kom tot 'n meer doeltreffende hantering van hul hartsiekte. Hierdie studie toon aan hoe hartpasiente se siekteverhale deur middel van narratiewe terapie gesentreer word en hoe 'n etiese en pastorale gesindheid van liefde en respek 'n klimaat skep wat bevorderlik is vir beter gesondheid en welwese. Ek dui aan hoe my metodologie van deelnemende aksienavorsing daarin geslaag het om die hartpasiente aktiewe deelnemers te maak aan die navorsingsprojek. Hul aktiewe deelname impliseer dat betekenis nie in terapie vir hulle geskep word nie, maar dat hulle self skeppend betrokke is in die proses van ryker betekeniskonstruering. Ek beskryf hoe die deelnemers altematiewe en ryker beskrywings van hul siekte sosiaal ko-konstrueer. Ek dui verder aan hoe hul ryker beskrywings van siekte bydra tot sigbare en meetbare resultate wat vir hartpasiente van waarde is. / Practical Theology / D. Th. (Praktiese Teologie)

This study investigates the situation of Rwandan youth ex-combatants in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Specifically, the study examines how and why young people become involved in conflicts as fighters, how the conflict impacts upon them, and how the Disarmament, Demobilization, Rehabilitation and Reintegration programs set up by international aid agencies attempted to address the youth's special needs as they relate to reintegration in their home communities. By employing qualitative semi-structured interviews and group discussions with demobilized ex-combatant youth and other stakeholders in northern Rwanda, the study examines how the Western model and assumption of childhood and child soldiering has so far dictated the approaches of international aid agencies in response to the needs of young people in armed conflicts. The study challenges some of the assumptions and argues for a more representative and focussed approach that emphasizes on the socio-cultural context of the ex-combatants. The research shows how and why some youth voluntarily join armed groups. It also highlights the resilience of the youth in the midst of conflict and their ability to rebuild their lives. The findings of the research have some implications for the way the international aid agencies conceptualize and provide assistance to the young people affected by armed conflicts. It challenges the assumption held by the aid agencies regarding the exclusive emphases on victimization and trauma counselling, and refocuses on the need to rebuild the youth's resilience and coping strategies. / Sociology / MA (Sociology)