Community Engagement - Science topic

Trung Thành Anthony

Abdelhak Maghchiche

I believe that to encourage creativity and innovation in communities for climate change solutions, you can start by involving local people in the process. Listen to their ideas, support their projects, and provide resources or training if needed. Create a space where everyone feels safe to share and experiment with new ideas that fit the local environment. Collaboration and open communication are key

For whatever its worth, I have attached my updated CV below for those interested in giving me a chance.

Many thanks, for your points and contributions to this discussion!

Qualitative methods are effective at assessing community engagement at a project or program level; however, they are time consuming, do not easily scale up for the evaluation of large-scale or multi-community projects.

Qualitative research methods use different techniques to project divergent assumptions about the world and different means to persuade the reader’s assumptions.

Qualitative research may be useful (like Focussed group discussion)which is a method in which the study participants are observed .Different data collection tools like tape recorder , field notes are used . Even non verbal clues (memos) can be used . These information can then be written (Transcribed) into word document with preformed codes (inductive analysis).Codes can be further joined as narrative analysis. Theme analysis can also be carried out if interesting theme emerges. Even mixed method approach may be useful.

Thank you very much Jehan for sharing your perspective, that is very helpful.

To be more clear, with "referral" I referred to the identification by T2D patients of individuals with risk factors for T2D, such as being overweight and having excessive thirst or urination, and their referral to healthcare professionals.

Yes, I include CITI training in an ethnographic methods course and have found it works well. I have done it with and without inviting a representative from Research Compliance (IRB office) to speak to the class. In both cases all students successfully completed the online training and received the certificate for the course titled Group 2: social and behavioral investigators and key personnel.

Good Participatory Practice (GPP) Guideline is designed by AVAC and UNAIDS for health research with an HIV/AIDS focus. But I found it is also useful for other fields. More information: https://www.avac.org/good-participatory-practice

The public awareness of malaria needs to improve continuously. Health education campaigns should focus on basic malaria knowledge, Careful planning is required to ensure that even the sparse area of a country are incorporated into the malaria health promotion system to sustain elimination of malaria itself.

Rezwan Siddiqui

Here you go,

- Burton, Paul. "Conceptual, theoretical and practical issues in measuring the benefits of public participation." Evaluation 15, no. 3 (2009): 263-284.

- Carnes, Sam A., Martin Schweitzer, Elizabeth B. Peelle, Amy K. Wolfe, and John F. Munro. "Measuring the success of public participation on environmental restoration and waste management activities in the US Department of Energy." Technology in society 20, no. 4 (1998): 385-406.

- Wang, XiaoHu, and Montgomery Wan Wart. "When public participation in administration leads to trust: An empirical assessment of managers’ perceptions." Public Administration Review 67, no. 2 (2007): 265-278.

Dear Sakti, I urge you to research articles on corporate social responsibility and local development

I highly recommend in this respect to have a look at my book "Public Participation as a Tool for incorporating local knowledge into spatial planning" published by Springer (2017). I compare between the capabilities of various participatory methods - e.g., Charrettes, Citizen Forums, Focus Groups - to uncover citizens' needs and interests and incorporate them into plans.

This should really have been sent as an email.

The Sustainable [R]evolution Project

Permaculture in Practice in America

Not all of the sites below identify as permaculture sites, but we felt that each of them demonstrate permaculture principles in action in some way.  

1- Ashaninka Forest Wisdom School, Brazil

Since the 70s and 80s, a group of indigenous peoples, with the leadership of Ashaninka Apiwtxa village, have been developing methods of regenerating Amazon forest areas depleted by years of colonial occupation, and more recently, by the illegal actions of loggers. Strategies have included replanting degraded forest areas, re-introducing native species who were becoming endangered, and the creation of fruit orchards and medicinal herb gardens. The school is a center for education about sustainable techniques, in an effort to share and build alliances with neighboring communities

2-Earthhaven, North Carolina, USA

Founded in 1994, Earthaven is located on 320 acres in western North Carolina, dedicated to caring for people and the Earth by learning and demonstrating a holistic, sustainable culture. We’re learning to practice ecologically responsibile forestry and agriculture; to develop natural building systems that sustain forest health, create jobs, and generate renewable energy through good design. We intend to become empowered, responsible, ecologically literate citizens, modeling bioregionally appropriate culture for our time and place.

3- Ecovillage, Ithaca, New York, USA

EcoVillage at Ithaca is an intentional community and a non-profit educational organization, developing an alternative model for suburban living which provides a satisfying, healthy, socially rich lifestyle, while minimizing ecological impacts. The village currently includes two 30-home cohousing neighborhoods, a third neighborhood (TREE) in the planning stages, organic vegetable and berry farms, office spaces for cottage industry, a neighborhood root cellar, community gardens and varied natural areas.

4- Gaia, Argentina

Gaia is located outside of Buenos Aires and is active in the Global Ecovillage Network and founder of the Permaculture Institute of Argentina. Its founding mission is the promotion of sustainable societies, mainly by creating human settlements based on the practice of Permaculture systems and methods.

5- Greater World Earthship Community, New Mexico, USA

This is a subdivision of homes built outside of Taos, New Mexico, that are completely off-the-grid and built of recycled tires and rammed earth. Their innovative design incorporates water catchment and passive solar greenhouses and has been replicated in thousands of houses across the globe.

6- IPEC, Goias, Brazil

The Instituto de Permacultura e Ecovilas do Cerrado (IPEC) includes 15 ecological buildings, composting toilets, water treatment system, ecological gardens, food forests, and renewable energy systems. Ecocentro IPEC has become one of the most important reference centers for sustainable living in Latin America, hosting permaculture and ecovillage design course.

7- IPES, El Salvador

The Permaculture Institute of El Salvador (IPES) was founded as an independent organization in 2002 by small farmers concerned to halt the destruction of their environment and way of life. Over the past 6 years, we have built a network of subsistence farmers who work with ecological farming methods. We have a training centre and 4 demonstration permaculture sites, the most important of which is the ecological community La Florida in the La Libertad department. Our aim is to train community leaders within poor rural areas to enable them to tackle the environmental crises that face.

8- Lama Foundation, New Mexico, USA

The Lama Foundation is a community associated with Ram Dass and the ‘60s countercultural movement in the U.S, and was a pioneer of the natural building movement, especially strawbale, cob and adobe. Lama has integrated permaculture into their core principles, and is an interesting model of an educational retreat center which is also home to long-term residents.

9- Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, California, USA

The Occidental Arts and Ecology Center is a nonprofit organizing and education center and organic farm in Northern California’s Sonoma County. OAEC was founded in 1994 by a group of biologists, horticulturists, educators, activists, and artists seeking innovative and practical approaches to the pressing environmental and economic crises of our day. Much of the Center’s work addresses the challenges of creating democratic communities that are ecologically, economically and culturally sustainable in an increasingly privatized and corporatized economy and culture.

10- OPA, Salvador, Brazil

The Organization of Permaculture and Art (OPA) was created by multicultural artists and educators who combine their passion and belief in the arts and permaculture to offer sustainable solutions that empower people and their communities. OPA is based in the city of Salvador, Bahia, on the northeastern coast of Brazil. OPA emerged from the desire of combining permaculture and arts in order to build bridges between cultural, social and environmental sustainability in the urban setting. Its center in Salvador demonstrates innovative urban permaculture models, functions as a multi-purpose art space, and runs an environmental education project for at-risk youth that uses circus arts and theater.

11- Permacultura America Latina (PAL), Ecuador and Guatemala projects

PAL has worked with indigenous groups in the coastal, Andean, and Amazon regions of Ecuador and many initiatives have been organized, including land demarcation, school, and tree planting projects. In Guatemala, our work began in 1995 when the first permaculture design course was held in San Lucas Toliman in Lago Atitlan. Soon after, the Associacion I’jatz was formed to produce and distribute patrimonial Mayan seeds. A donated parcel of abandoned land was transformed into a beautiful demonstration of an integrated food forest garden. From this centre a womens group was formed, a small farmers cooperative organized and courses are regularly held for indigenous and campesino groups from throughout Mesoamerica. Permaculture principles are closely linked to traditional Mayan methods of working with land.

12- The Farm, Tennessee, USA

One of the most famous and long-lived communes established out of the ‘60s countercultural movement in the U.S., The Farm has evolved into an ecovillage incorporating permaculture principles, an international charity, and a world-renowned midwifery and birth center. It is involved with social and political movements and runs educational programs.

13- The People’s Grocery Urban Gardens, Oakland, California, USA

Cities are becoming important places for developing sustainable and locally-rooted food systems for meeting nutritional needs. Many low-income residents of urban areas, such as West Oakland, do not even have access to sufficient fresh foods. People’s Grocery grows and distributes local, organic produce through a network of urban gardens and micro-farms while providing jobs to Oakland youth.

14- The Permaculture Institute, New Mexico, USA

Located near Santa Fe, New Mexico, the Permaculture Institute was founded in 1997 as the sister organization to the Permaculture Institute of Australia. It came on the footsteps of the Permaculture Drylands Institute, formerly the leading permaculture educational institution in the US. Our mission is to promote sustainable living skills through education, networking and demonstration projects. We facilitate networking among permaculture groups and projects in NM/Southwestern region and beyond.Final del formulario

Dear Raul,

Here are three websites in my country (USA) that offer online psychological counseling:

1.  https://breakthrough.com/

2. https://www.livehealthonline.com/psychology

3. https://www.talkspace.com/

I hope that helps you!

Hi Samah,

It happened again. I am not able to download the documents. Please, would you be able to send them to my university email?

I do really apologize to bother you again

Regards

Mercedes

Thanks Debra. Certainly a lot of preparation is needed. first of all the teachers are to be fully sensitized and some coordinating effort is also needed to coordinate the issues to be studies and the visits students from different departments. I will share the findings of our research in due course. Once again thank you.

The five benchmarks denote areas that educational research has shown to be important to students’ college experiences and educational outcomes. Therefore, they provide colleges with a useful starting point for looking at institutional results and allow colleges to gauge and monitor their performance in areas that are central to their work. In addition, participating colleges have the opportunity to make appropriate and useful comparisons between their performance and that of groups of other colleges.

cooperated with local scholar, we have finshed a comparative study between China and Australia on community media using with some interesting findings, new media is reconstructing community life quickly in China, strongly recommend you make China as a case...

Dear Ibrahim,

Thank you for spending the time to respond to my question - it adds to the completeness of the review.

Kind regards,

Liza

Thank you all. Paul, I will look into contacting Dr. Travers. I have been conducting focus groups with folks living with HIV whose viral loads are suppressed and have had interesting conversations regarding engagement, retention in care and dropping out of care. Thank you for your connection.

Ronny is right - really depends on what you and the community members want to be able to do. If it is simply to share stories collected during the process is a way that is highly accessible to community members then I would simply go with a YouTube channel or something of the sort like I did for this project - we created different playlists for the different collections of stories. The bonus is they are easy for community members to access and to share. The con is that is doesn't really allow space for discussions except in the comment sections or updates on the project. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5k2R0yFWQGVuYh_I6lWw3Q/feed

Another project i worked on used a simple blog based website (Wordpress) to have conversations and post content. We weren't using digital stories or oral histories so most of it was text based content but it would be simple enough to add videos and audio. Super simple to use (and easier now than it was a few years ago) and easy to modify to meet your needs. My project is now over so the website isn't that current but here it is if you want to take a look www.athletesfirst.ca

Sarah, you are asking a very interesting question.

My answer to your question is yes. They should be accepted by society at broad.

My own contribution to this (broad) field of work is summarised at the first link below.

As a comment to your presentation, the happeners toolbox should also be applied in the relationship between authorities and (small) business, and small business and their customers.

The latter aspect is clarified more in Article 6 of the proposed Convention on Knowledge commons (public domain knowledge being a space to be re-appropriated as well), and facilitated by sector pages for industries and functions of government.

Two concrete elements proposed for inclusion in the happener's toolbox:

- systematically defined hashtags - see the Guideline - 3rd link;  for collaborative use

- social capital wikis per municipality - see the example of a "super-structure" for those in the Philippines (4th link).

Good luck with your research!

An interesting idea for some of the early stage screening, and if it really is as simple as identifying RCTS, regardless of topic relevance. Have you thought of comparing this with any other method to see if you get better results? I have found simple searches through a Word version of references and abstracts using the 'Find' facility effective for this sort of task.

Beyond this simple stage, however, my experience doing many reviews, and of reviewing other people's reviews, is that high quality screening for relevance needs people who are well-trained in the topic area. This saves redundancy and revisiting of results later on, when the main investigators detect wrong decisions made at these early stages. There is also the danger of the research team losing the in-depth understanding of the shape of the literature that they gain from trawling through the searches. Yes, it's boring - but so is much that makes up good scientific endeavour!

More generally, I guess we need to continually improve our search techniques so that we get even greater specificity.

The answer to your question is YES. It's both and neither and more options. It depends on who is reading the instructions. Someone with Asperger's Syndrome or milder forms of Autism, or who reads only at a 5th grade level would probably prefer the comic strip. Someone who reads at a 4th grade level or lower, would probably prefer to have the text read to them. Someone with dyslexia would probably want the text read to them with the current word being read out loud appearing in a black box with white letters in the text material to help them follow along, and would want corresponding pictures on the side. Someone without any reading difficulty would prefer the presentation style that will take the least amount of time to assimilate, and of those you will have people who prefer the comics more than the text and visa-versa.

It's all preference, and the personal preference is determined by the students reading level, whether or not they have a learning disability, the level of severity of that disability and their ability to process comics and texts. Some people are great at reading, but are not picture-based learners. Others are not strong in text-based learning and would prefer picture representations. And others still would want the text written in brail.

The right answer is to allow users to choose which option works best for them. Hope that helps. One of the biggest problems in education today is this idea of uniformity in the delivery of education. We aren't manufacturing children with the same one-size-fits-all brain. And the sooner we start realizing this, and affording a choice of educational delivery methods, the sooner we'll stop throwing teens away just because they aren't text-based learners.