Search results

There are different types of non-profit organisations (NPOs) characterised by the different extents of their volunteer management practices. In addition, the use of volunteer work measurement tools is infrequent among these organisations, especially in contexts where NPOs face no obligations or standard practices in this area, such as in Italy. The literature has stated that volunteer programmes and activities are effective if a NPO is highly structured and employs good volunteer management practices and that the measurement of volunteer work may increase the effectiveness of such programmes; this is frequent, for instance, in US NPOs. However, what would occur if a NPO introduces the measurement of volunteer work in a context where volunteer management is not highly structured, such as in Italy?

To study this topic, we adopt the quasi-experimental approach to examine six Italian voluntary organisations (VOs) based in Abruzzo. The treatment consists of the gradual introduction of volunteer work measurement tools to the managers and volunteers who work for the selected organisations, as well as the observation of the early impact of this treatment on the effectiveness of volunteer programmes and activities. This paper aims to discuss the issue of the implementation of measurement tools for effectively managing volunteer services in two different contexts: Italian and US NPOs.

Our findings have practical implications, especially with regard to the management of relatively unstructured volunteer organisations that would like to introduce new tools of measurement but do not have the necessary skills to do so. We also wish to show in this work how some organisations are implementing these tools and highlight the initial effects produced by this implementation process.

This study is innovative, particularly for contexts in which there are no obligations and customs with regard to the measurement of volunteer work.

Between September 4, 2010 and mid-2013 a severe earthquake sequence struck Christchurch, the second largest city in New Zealand, causing multiple fatalities and the destruction of much of the central business district. Large areas of suburban residential housing were condemned with the prospect that entire neighbourhoods would be abandoned for several decades if not permanently. The recovery and rebuilding process was immediately placed high on central and local government agendas since Christchurch and the surrounding Canterbury region were and continue to be seen as crucial to the security and stability of the national economy. Programmes for recovery developed initially relied principally on one-off funding packages and strategies from central government, local government recovery plans and the settlement of commercial insurance claims. There remains, however, the spectre of Christchurch as a city of demolition sites and vacant lots for the best part of a decade if not longer. Furthermore, although local and national Civil Defence and Emergency Management systems were activated during the most severe seismic events the response operations did not always reach those in need as promptly as was expected. Residents in a number of communities and neighbourhoods are now conscious that when disaster strikes they are still likely to have to fend for themselves. This chapter documents and evaluates two specific “gap-filling” responses to the Christchurch earthquakes over a three-year period. The first response considered is a community-based project called “Greening the Rubble” which took root in October 2010 as the prospect of a central city of vacant lots and car parks worried a number of volunteers into action to temporarily cheer up empty public and private sites with pocket parks, native plant displays and cultural interventions. The second initiative scrutinised, the “Mt Pleasant Community Response Plan 2012–2013,” is one of the first community-based emergency response plans to emerge that has sought to complement official civil defence planning arrangements. Both responses are discussed in detail in the context of constantly changing and evolving hazardscapes and socio-economic and political conditions.

This chapter aims to provide a critical analysis of special needs education within the United Kingdom today. Central to such an analysis is an understanding of the rapidly changing social and political milieu within which special needs education is embedded, including the rapidly changing demographics of schooling, and the devolution of political power into four separate but linked countries – England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Following a discussion of such wider social, political and educational issues, the authors explore the convergences and divergences in policy and practice across the four devolved administrations. The authors describe a plethora of contemporary policy developments within each of the four administrations that speak to the need for special needs education to change in response to 21st century concerns about the problems of access to, and equity in, education for all children. Despite this, the authors remain extremely circumspect about the potential of many of these developments to lead to successful inclusive practices and developments on the ground – and explain why. The analysis in the concluding section focuses on the issue of teacher education for inclusion and some very innovate UK research and development projects that have been reported to successfully engage teachers with new paradigm thinking and practice in the field of inclusive special needs education.

[L]ife has become increasingly dangerous in the erratically moving river. The relatively closed circles of development agents may turn into dangerous vortices. Promises are empty, concrete practices of implementation lose their meaning. All of a sudden everything seems to be in a mess, and any kind of order seems to have been lost. (Quarles van Ufford, 1999, p. 292)

The purpose of the study was to analyse approaches to HIV/AIDS education adopted by the Zambian Ministry of Education (MoE), using a holistic approach and focusing on the Zambian culture. This chapter reports on an explorative qualitative study involving focus group discussions and in-depth interviews with Ministry of Education and Health officials, pupils, students, and members of the community. Qualitative analysis was applied and themes from ecological theory were used to organise and discuss data. At the macro level, there was inadequate implementation of HIV/AIDS education in schools, very few handbooks, textbooks and learners’ reading materials, and no discussion of the Zambian cultural (sexual) practices in relation to HIV/AIDS education. Inadequate laws and policies on HIV/AIDS prevention, poverty, unemployment, lack of job creation, and lack of social security were blamed for the lack of positive sexual behaviour changes. Communities had strong theological and metaphysical beliefs including witchcraft and sex with a widow, a menstruating woman or a woman who had an abortion as possible causes of HIV and incurable diseases being a curse from God. At the individual level, the knowledge of HIV/AIDS was high with radio and television being sources of information. Respondents viewed sexual cultures in communities not to have significantly changed. A majority of respondents did not use condoms; most adults continued having multiple sexual partners and women were submissive in marriages. This chapter is useful to policy makers, teachers, pupils/students, and the community, and in understanding interactions and influences of cultures on HIV/AIDS education and government's role in creating an enabling environment to sustain desirable changes.

This chapter examines how gender interacts with informal workers’ collective action strategies in the context of contemporary development scripts around economic growth. Specifically, it engages the theoretical debates on the relationship between patriarchy and capitalism as the systems of domination that organize gender and class. Drawing from a comparative analysis of informal workers’ movements in India’s domestic work and construction sectors, I find the relationship between gender and class and between patriarchy and capitalism is being reconceptualized from below and differs by occupational structures and organization histories. For domestic workers, movements assert what I call a “unitary” model of exploitation. Because domestic workers’ organizations entered the productive sphere through a focus on social reproduction, their struggles conflate gender and class to reverse the shame attached to domestic work and increase the recognized worth of women’s labor. Because construction workers’ organizations mobilize male and female workers and began as class-based organizations focusing on productive work, they articulate what I term “a dual systems” approach to patriarchy and capitalism that exposes inequalities between men and women within the sector, such as unequal pay, glass ceilings, and issues of embodiment. In both cases, global development scripts have not only shaped movement approaches, but also enabled movements to articulate gendered labor subjects in innovative ways. While domestic workers’ unitary model has had more success in increasing women workers’ dignity and leadership, construction workers’ dualist model has attained more successes in attaining material benefits in the reproductive sphere. These findings suggest that debates on unitary versus dual-systems models of exploitation present a false dichotomy and veil the reality that both are necessary for feminist theory, development models, and women workers’ struggles on the ground.