Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
486,316
result(s) for
"Community Development"
Sort by:
Making volunteers
Volunteering improves inner character, builds community, cures poverty, and prevents crime. We've all heard this kind of empowerment talk from nonprofit and government-sponsored civic programs. But what do these programs really accomplish? InMaking Volunteers, Nina Eliasoph offers an in-depth, humorous, wrenching, and at times uplifting look inside youth and adult civic programs. She reveals an urgent need for policy reforms in order to improve these organizations and shows that while volunteers learn important lessons, they are not always the lessons that empowerment programs aim to teach.
With short-term funding and a dizzy mix of mandates from multiple sponsors, community programs develop a complex web of intimacy, governance, and civic life. Eliasoph describes the at-risk youth served by such programs, the college-bound volunteers who hope to feel selfless inspiration and plump up their resumés, and what happens when the two groups are expected to bond instantly through short-term projects. She looks at adult \"plug-in\" volunteers who, working in after-school programs and limited by time, hope to become like beloved aunties to youth. Eliasoph indicates that adult volunteers can provide grassroots support but they can also undermine the family-like warmth created by paid organizers. Exploring contradictions between the democratic rhetoric of empowerment programs and the bureaucratic hurdles that volunteers learn to navigate, the book demonstrates that empowerment projects work best with less precarious funding, more careful planning, and mandatory training, reflection, and long-term commitments from volunteers.
Based on participant research inside civic and community organizations,Making Volunteersillustrates what these programs can and cannot achieve, and how to make them more effective.
eBook
Community development arenas in Singapore
\"In the last two decades or so, community development efforts in Singapore have strongly focused on task-centred community activities namely short-term projects revolving around socio-educational and recreational activities. Such an emphasis is further reinforced by the outsourcing of community services to the private sector which is contracted to deliver services or activities. Although the consequences are not seen immediately, they will in the longer term reinforce learned helplessness of the participants or beneficiaries who are usually relegated to passive or dependent roles. Through the insights of contributors who are practitioners in the community development field, this book argues that more resources and initiatives must be accorded to community organisations so as to redirect to a community- or resident-centric approach towards community work intervention. In short, more reaching out to people or community groups should be undertaken. Covering a broad range of arenas including health, housing, ageing, community integration and bonding, among others, this book will open up a wider horizon for community development efforts and provide a reservoir of ideas and strategies to build a stronger and resilient community for more effective community problem-solving\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
This Could Be the Start of Something Big
For nearly two decades, progressives have been dismayed by the steady rise of the right in U.S. politics. Often lost in the gloom and doom about American politics is a striking and sometimes underanalyzed phenomenon: the resurgence of progressive politics and movements at a local level. Across the country, urban coalitions, including labor, faith groups, and community-based organizations, have come together to support living wage laws and fight for transit policies that can move the needle on issues of working poverty. Just as striking as the rise of this progressive resurgence has been its reception among unlikely allies. In places as diverse as Chicago, Atlanta, and San Jose, the usual business resistance to pro-equity policies has changed, particularly when it comes to issues like affordable housing and more efficient transportation systems. To see this change and its possibilities requires that we recognize a new thread running through many local efforts: a perspective and politics that emphasizes \"regional equity.\"
Manuel Pastor Jr., Chris Benner, and Martha Matsuoka offer their analysis with an eye toward evaluating what has and has not worked in various campaigns to achieve regional equity. The authors show how momentum is building as new policies addressing regional infrastructure, housing, and workforce development bring together business and community groups who share a common desire to see their city and region succeed. Drawing on a wealth of case studies as well as their own experience in the field, Pastor, Benner, and Matsuoka point out the promise and pitfalls of this new approach, concluding that what they term social movement regionalism might offer an important contribution to the revitalization of progressive politics in America.
eBook
Community development : a critical approach
\"Community development finds itself in times of unprecedented political, social and economic change, locally and globally, at the same time as divisions between poverty and privilege widen. Building practical approaches to theory and theoretical approaches to practice, this updated and expanded second edition of a bestselling text develops critiques of the changing context and identifies challenges faced by community development both at community level and as a collective force for a more just, equal and sustainable future. Featuring a range of different models of community development and illustrative stories from practitioners in the field, the new edition will be essential reading for practitioners, students and educators involved in community development, youth and community work, social work, health and education.\"--Publisher's website.
Book
Constructing a New Framework for Rural Development
\"This volume seeks to answer modern questions and concerns regarding peasants, their production techniques, and their links to wider society. In the past, peasants and their seemingly simple production models have been criticized for being unable to fully meet the needs of modern society, especially when it comes to world hunger, food quality, and sustainability. However, often neglected is the myriad of new initiatives that alter the way food is produced and marketed. New 'peasant markets' are created everywhere and new products and services abound. This volume argues that these initiatives represent \"seeds of transition\"; they are the \"sprouts\" out of which new socio-technical modes for organizing production and marketing emerge - \"sprouts\" that, taken together, can be summarized as \"rural development\". This book critically discusses these new practices and the actors engaged in them. In doing so, it deals with several countries in three different continents (Asia, South America and Europe). It proposes new concepts and approaches for a better understanding of the re-emergence of peasants as indispensable part of modern societies.\"
eBook
Fixing the African State
01
02
Fixing the African State explains why the predominant approach to international development produces outcomes that are incompatible with its underlying assumptions and intended objectives. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research undertaken in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania over the past decade, Brian J. Dill examines the relationship between community participation in the development process and the exercise of state power. Although the primary objective of community-based and -driven development is to shift the balance of power from the state to the benefit of non-state actors, Fixing the African State shows that, in fact, what is strengthened is both the image of a coherent, efficacious, and autonomous state, and the capacity of the state apparatus to exercise authority.
04
02
1. \"Developing\" Dar es Salaam 2. Life on the Ground 3. Recognizing Community 4. Rendering Political 5. Fixing the State
31
02
A study of why community-based/community-driven development produces outcomes that are incompatible with its underlying assumptions and intended objectives, using neoliberal development in Dar es Salaam as a defining example.
13
02
Brian Dill is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA.
02
02
'Community-based development' (CBD) or'community-driven development' (CDD) has been the predominant approach to international development in recent years. Drawing on fieldwork and first-hand experience, this book explains why CBD/CDD produces outcomes that are incompatible with its underlying assumptions and intended objectives.
19
02
1) PROVOCATIVE THESIS: Brian Dill argues that the neoliberal assault on the state has in fact helped to reinforce the state's image of coherence.
2) THOROUGHLY RESEARCHED: The book draws extensively on both historical and current literature, as well as eye-opening fieldwork conducted in Dar es Salaam.
3) VALUABLE CASE STUDY: Through his analysis of Dar es Salaam, Dill is able to construct a model applicable to neoliberal development across Africa.
08
02
to come
eBook
Tech, Smart Cities, and Regional Development in Contemporary Russia
With chapters on FinTech, the cost of technological growth, and innovation risk management, Tech, Smart Cities and Regional Development in Contemporary Russia grapples with ideas about technology and the intertwined issues that Russia faces in the 21st Century.
eBook