On May 31, 2008, one of Canada’s oldest needle exchange programs was forced to close its doors. Street Outreach Services (SOS), run by AIDS Vancouver Island, was evicted from its fixed site location in downtown Victoria, BC, due to years of inadequate funding and resources, and pressure from community members who blamed SOS for “public disorder” on the city streets. Without a new location from which to house the program, SOS has since operated as a mobile service. This case study documents the context surrounding the closure of SOS and the perspectives of outreach staff regarding the transition from fixed site to mobile services-only. Specifically, this study addresses the question: How have service delivery changes and restrictions impacted SOS outreach work? In addition to participant-observation, media and report analysis, primary data are derived from six semi-structured interviews with SOS outreach workers and a thematic analysis highlights common experiences of loss, isolation and changes in relationships with clients. A discussion of strategies for collective responses to ethical distress includes social justice perspectives. / Graduate

This qualitative study of six Indigenous youth HIV prevention peer educators is presented to help understand how Indigenous youth perceive HIV/AIDS education. The research used a semi-structured questionnaire as a guide to conducting in depth individual interviews. The research followed decolonizing methodologies to explore the views of peer educators about the HIV/AIDS education they delivered, and the issues around perceptions of infection and risk. It examines the youth’s views on peer education, the importance of cultural revitalization in relation to health education and how peer education can be most effective. This study has included examples of programs with marginalized communities in several parts of the world and compared them with Indigenous experiences in Canada, in order to develop an understanding and recommendations of the most effective approaches in Indigenous youth health interventions. There have been very few research studies on Indigenous youth involvement in STD interventions. Indigenous youth have only been marginally included in the design of most of the social programming they receive, even though they have the unique knowledge, skills, language and cultural perspective necessary to reach their peers. HIV infection is on the rise with Indigenous youth because of historical and ongoing socio-economic and political inequities. Therefore, it is crucial that young Indigenous people be welcomed as integral participants in the strategies for improving Indigenous health.

The thesis empirically examined the implications of microfinance scaling up or sustainability on outreach in Nigeria. Basically, two methodologies were used namely, panel data econometric and survey methods. The panel dataset of 752 microfinance banks in Nigeria was used during the period 2011-2014, while the survey was conducted on some selected microfinance banks in Federal Capital Territory, Abuja in 2014. The findings from the thesis showed that, at the national level, yield, labour cost, orientation, efficiency, gender and size of loans are the major drivers of microfinance banks‟ sustainability in Nigeria. While at the state level, microfinance banks sustainability is driven by orientation and loan size. Findings also showed that sustainable MFBs tend to be more focused on the poor clients. The thesis showed that lending to female clients improves repayment rate of MFBs in Nigeria. Corroborating the regression result, the survey findings also suggest that lending to women had improved and enhanced repayment rate. In view of these findings, the thesis recommends that sustainability and outreach are not necessarily incompatible. However in pursuing sustainability greater attention should be on female clients, as greater lending to women would improve the repayment rate of MFBs and further engendered the industry sustainability.

This is a qualitative study whose purpose was to investigate the community radio education practices and the museum outreach education activities with a view to understanding how a museum-radio partnership may be used to engage the Livingstone community in environment and sustainability learning. Environment and sustainability issues require a community approach in order to bring about sustained responses to environmental challenges. As such, the study worked with social learning ideas of engaging the community in environment and sustainability learning. The data was generated mainly from face-to-face semi-structured interviews involving three community radio stations, Radio Listener Clubs and museum experts. The data generated was then presented to a strategy workshop involving the Livingstone Museum and Radio Musi-otunya staff. Arising from this workshop, recommendations were made about the possibility of the museum working in partnership with the radio to engage the community in environmental education. The study has shown that much of the museum environmental education activities have been confined to exhibitions and lectures within the museum building, which has affected the number of people being serviced by the museum. These education activities are arranged such that museum expert-led knowledge is presented to the audience with minimal community engagement on the environmental learning content. The study has also shown that community radio programming provides opportunities for community-led social learning which the Livingstone Museum could make use of to engage the community in environmental learning. Community radio programming allows community participation through Radio Listener Clubs, in identification and presentation of local environmental issues. This makes it a suitable tool to address locally relevant environmental issues, by the local community. Environmental issues are different from one place to another. Therefore environmental education approaches that bring issues into the museum may fail to address the different environmental education issues in different community context. The study concludes by recommending that Livingstone Museum should explore the use of community radio so that their expert knowledge and that of the radio producers could be used to shape environmental education programmes to go beyond awareness-raising.

Microfinance research concerns addressed in this thesis relate to: (1) targeting of clients vis-à-vis financial sustainability; (2) loan size effect of interest rate and clients’ well-being status; (3) economic governance and the dual objectives of microfinance institutions; and (4) patterns, trends and drivers of microfinance institution’s efficiency. The thesis emphasises operational issues that affect institutional performance and outreach of microfinance institutions rather than impact of microfinance intervention on poverty reduction. The thesis revolves around four empirical chapters that seek to address the above research concerns. Both micro and macro-level analyses have been explored with the aim of identifying institutional and public policies that drive the success of microfinance interventions. Micro level data from households in Ghana and cross country data mainly from the Microfinance Information Exchange (MIX) market are used. Varied microeconometric techniques (ordinary least squares, instrumental variable estimation, quantile regression, pooled regression, fixed and random effects estimations, Hausman-Taylor, Fixed Effects Vector Decomposition, stochastic frontier analysis and non-parametric efficiency estimations) are used depending on the hypotheses being considered in each of the empirical chapters. The main findings are: observed trade-off between financial sustainability and reaching poorer clients; formal institutions dispensing their own funds target poorer clients; pronounced variations in responsiveness of loan size to interest rate changes; semi-elasticity of loan amount responsiveness to a unit change in interest rate is more than proportionate and very significant for the poorest group; lesser time in securing property and availability of credit information show positive effects in targeting poorer clients; both type (pure technical and scale) and scope (narrow and broad) of financial efficiency show varying trends; and lastly, negative effects of bureaucracies in property registration and lack of credit information on social efficiency are also observed. This thesis suggests the following recommendations both for management of microfinance institutions and other stakeholders including international microfinance investors and government: harmonizing microfinance programmes irrespective of the source of funds; segmenting microfinance outreach markets based on socio-economic well-being; curtailing bureaucracies in property registration; and providing credit related information. These are paramount to the success of the microfinance paradigm, especially in achieving its social objective.

This dissertation is a comparative study of the formal institutionalization of Chicana/o Studies programs in four-year colleges and universities between 1970 and the present, and of how variations in institutionalization create different community engagement dynamics for Latina/o populations both on- and off-campus. This research examines the impact of program and university-level characteristics on the formal institutionalization of these programs and the embedding of community engagement within program mission statements. Moreover, the dissertation examines tensions, balancing acts, and trade-offs between achieving program stability and satisfying legitimizing demands of academic labor. Program-level characteristics include formal classification as either a Chicana/o Studies program or cognate (e.g., Mexican American Studies, Hispanic Studies, Latin American Studies, etc.) or a more generalist ethnic studies program (e.g., ethnic studies, cultural studies, American Studies, etc.). University-level characteristics include locus of control (i.e., public or private universities), institutional wealth, total student body and minority enrollments, histories of campus protest, and regional diffusion. The findings indicate complex and distinguishable relationships among program classification, formal program institutionalization, and community engagement prospects; and that predictors for institutionalization partially predict efforts to work with minority populations off-campus. Complicating these relationships suggests a need to consider variations in program-level institutionalization and dedicate future work to this level.

Magister Administrationis - MAdmin / This research identifies the challenges of a three-year environmental education project in a primary school in Cape Town. The project, an indigenous fynbos garden, was located at a school in a working class area in Cape Town’s south eastern areas, also known as the “Cape Flats”. The garden at the school was initiated as a formal partnership project with Kirstenbosch Gardens in 2006 and the partnership ended in 2009. The research sought answers to the following questions: to what extent and how have the goals/guidelines as stipulated in the Kirstenbosch Outreach Greening Project (KOGP) partnership been understood and implemented by the educators; what have been the kinds of support from school management for the project; what factors might increase the sustainability of the KOGP at Stephen Road Primary School? The research drew on policy implementation literature, in-depth interviews and personal observations. The findings were that while the project was doable, it was not in line with the declining human resources available and added to stresses experienced by teachers who were trying to perform basic tasks related to classroom teaching and getting learners to pass basic subjects. Also the school saw a dramatic decline in learner and educators numbers from 2006 onwards. Although all educators were involved in environmental activities at the school, none of them was fulltime in Environmental Education (EE) and had many other areas to teach or administer. The success of the KOGP also depended on the active participation of the school’s management and the School Governing Body (SGB) and this also seemed to be lacking.

This licentiate thesis investigates the use of digital visualisations for knowledge production and communication of maritime heritage located underwater. The archaeological practice that takes place in response to development, contract archaeology, is the field that is being investigated. Much of the practical and administrative aspects of contract maritime work involves the survey, excavation and interpretation of archaeological remains. In addition, shifts in heritage policy emphasise that the results of this work move beyond their own value to provide access and democratic participation to heritage and be of benefit to society (e.g. Faro Convention, 2005). Since the inaccessibility of maritime archaeology underwater makes outreach especially challenging, digital, and in particular 3D, technologies have been recognised as having great potential to meet the needs of both maritime archaeological researchers and public audiences. Advances in methodologies for digitally documenting and visualising archaeological sites, both on land and underwater, are providing a range of innovative and multidisciplinary solutions for both archaeological analysis and outreach activities. The aim of this research is to understand current uses of digital visualisation for knowledge production and communication of maritime archaeology located underwater, in order to identify knowledge gaps that would benefit from future research. This aim is met through a study drawn primarily from the fields of digital archaeology, maritime archaeology and heritage studies, as well as discourse and thematic analysis of the factors that influence the use of these technologies in the sector. The case study is the contract maritime archaeology sector in Scandinavia, with a primary focus on the practice in Sweden and also including perspectives from the Danish and Norwegian sectors. The results show that an emphasis on efficiency within the contract sector shapes the understanding and use of digital technologies, in some instances limiting their potential for archaeological interpretation and communication. While the maritime sector was found to be partly defined and restricted by a distinct identity, at times operating independently from mainstream archaeology, it was also found to be open to innovation. This represents great potential for digital workflows aimed at enhancing both interpretation and communication to be applied to the maritime archaeological sector in the future.

No description available.

ABSTRACT Extension agricultural business programs have provided enhanced individualized services to Vermont’s agricultural producers by using a variety of external funding sources combined with base departmental funds. These farm business programs are uniquely positioned to deliver one-on-one outreach education and information that not only has a direct benefit to private farm business owners but indirectly serves the public good by enhancing farm business viability. Meanwhile, there is an ongoing cultural shift among Extension professionals and farm owners who acknowledge that Extension programs cannot be sustained at low or no cost to participants. Funding for Extension programming has been declining for several years. Traditional funding sources, such as university base funding and state legislature appropriations, have been significantly reduced, and as a result, faculty positions in Extension nationwide have been reduced or eliminated altogether. New ways to support Extension programming must be developed in order to continue to deliver high quality business outreach education to Vermont agricultural producers. This research addresses this need in the following two ways. First, Farm Viability (now Agricultural Business) program participants were surveyed to gauge their understanding of declining funding from traditional sources to determine whether or not a fee-based structure for future programming is acceptable them. Next, a reflective essay proposes solutions for supplementing funding for Extension programming with a fee-for-service model for advanced and extended one-on-one programming. Survey results showed that those respondents likely to engage in programming beyond the initial 2-year period were willing to pay for extended services at a rate higher than the original application fee. Of those who were willing to pay for future services, 80% of respondents said that they would use a plan that included 1-3 visits at a cost of $250 - $499. The reflective essay defines program areas in need of funding enhancement, such as using facilitated management teams, succession planning and grant application assistance. The essay discusses programming opportunities that exist to serve at least some past program participants with additional one-on-one services, thereby sharing the increasing financial burden experienced by Extension educators in the presence of shrinking internal capacity to fund this type of outreach education. This research also raises awareness in areas of program costs, dwindling funding sources, and how participants can help share the financial burden. Important points for farmers weighing the merits of paying for program participation and future programing opportunities are discussed. These results can guide the efforts of program administrators seeking to improve the cost-effectiveness of Extension outreach education in Vermont agriculture.