The Lia Fund: An Adventure in Philanthropy

Randy Lia Weil made two highly unusual decisions about the $5 million she left to be donated after her death. The first was that she appointed 14 people she knew and trusted to select the organizations and individuals who would receive funding. Most of them were lifelong activists with decades of passionate dedication to environmental, cultural and social justice issues. The second unusual thing was that she left no instructions for how or to whom they should give her bequest. She trusted them to decide.This would prove to be an adventure and a discovery, and not without its challenges for the participants. Everyone sincerely wanted to be a responsible grantmaker and do what Randy would have wanted. But it was a complex journey to turn a group of passionate individuals into a group of effective funders. Before they could make any grants, they had to agree on their mission, vision, and values. They also had to decide how they would operate and make decisions in a way that honored Randy and the values that led her to choose them. It was a tall order.After spending a year planning to establish the Foundation, The Lia Fund awarded grants to 107 organizations from 2007 to 2013. Most of the grants ranged from$5,000 to $25,000. In total the Foundation gave away$5 million. This is the story of what The Lia Fund did, how they did it, and what they learned. It describes the impact of this type of grantmaking on some of the most important issues of our time. It also looks at what foundations and individual donors might learn from this adventure in philanthropy

Conceptual graph-based knowledge representation for supporting reasoning in African traditional medicine

Although African patients use both conventional or modern and traditional healthcare simultaneously, it has been proven that 80% of people rely on African traditional medicine (ATM). ATM includes medical activities stemming from practices, customs and traditions which were integral to the distinctive African cultures. It is based mainly on the oral transfer of knowledge, with the risk of losing critical knowledge. Moreover, practices differ according to the regions and the availability of medicinal plants. Therefore, it is necessary to compile tacit, disseminated and complex knowledge from various Tradi-Practitioners (TP) in order to determine interesting patterns for treating a given disease. Knowledge engineering methods for traditional medicine are useful to model suitably complex information needs, formalize knowledge of domain experts and highlight the effective practices for their integration to conventional medicine. The work described in this paper presents an approach which addresses two issues. First it aims at proposing a formal representation model of ATM knowledge and practices to facilitate their sharing and reusing. Then, it aims at providing a visual reasoning mechanism for selecting best available procedures and medicinal plants to treat diseases. The approach is based on the use of the Delphi method for capturing knowledge from various experts which necessitate reaching a consensus. Conceptual graph formalism is used to model ATM knowledge with visual reasoning capabilities and processes. The nested conceptual graphs are used to visually express the semantic meaning of Computational Tree Logic (CTL) constructs that are useful for formal specification of temporal properties of ATM domain knowledge. Our approach presents the advantage of mitigating knowledge loss with conceptual development assistance to improve the quality of ATM care (medical diagnosis and therapeutics), but also patient safety (drug monitoring)

A Glocalised National Narrative: A Siraya-based Discourse In The Tai-gi Puppet Play Blitzkrieg Siraya

Globalisation, which has become a buzzword in current debates, is said to deconstruct and replace nations in "the era of post-nationalism." On the other hand, fear of being inundated with globalism rekindles local consciousness, forging more "imagined communities" that are co-constituted by interlaced local liaisons. As a consequence, nationalism does not fade out, but undergoes a series of transformations. National narratives re-emerge with varied facets and more localised substantiation. Blitzkrieg Siraya, a Tai-gi puppet play marks this new breed of "glocalised national narrative"—a new discourse fermented by both globalism and localism. Debuting in 2010, Blitzkrieg Siraya receives much acclamation. It tells of how descendants of Han immigrants and Siraya, a lowland Austronesian people populating southern Taiwan, transcend mutual animosity and fight together against an evil spirit to defend their homeland. The narrative gives a vivid picture of Siraya's matrifocal culture, challenging Han-dominated ethnic stereotypes and male-centric gender bias. Two other factors distinguish Blitzkrieg Siraya from other Taiwan-made puppet plays. Unlike Taiwan's traditional puppet shows, which are confined to Chinese framework, Blitzkrieg Siraya is based on Taiwan's historical context. Moreover, it is the first Tai-gi puppet play that highlights Sirayans, who were barely mentioned in the Chinese-Han-dominant discourse. Blitzkrieg Siraya re-addresses Taiwan as a multi-ethnic society with solid Austronesian roots

Clinical Decision Support System for Unani Medicine Practitioners

Like other fields of Traditional Medicines, Unani Medicines have been found as an effective medical practice for ages. It is still widely used in the subcontinent, particularly in Pakistan and India. However, Unani Medicines Practitioners are lacking modern IT applications in their everyday clinical practices. An Online Clinical Decision Support System may address this challenge to assist apprentice Unani Medicines practitioners in their diagnostic processes. The proposed system provides a web-based interface to enter the patient's symptoms, which are then automatically analyzed by our system to generate a list of probable diseases. The system allows practitioners to choose the most likely disease and inform patients about the associated treatment options remotely. The system consists of three modules: an Online Clinical Decision Support System, an Artificial Intelligence Inference Engine, and a comprehensive Unani Medicines Database. The system employs advanced AI techniques such as Decision Trees, Deep Learning, and Natural Language Processing. For system development, the project team used a technology stack that includes React, FastAPI, and MySQL. Data and functionality of the application is exposed using APIs for integration and extension with similar domain applications. The novelty of the project is that it addresses the challenge of diagnosing diseases accurately and efficiently in the context of Unani Medicines principles. By leveraging the power of technology, the proposed Clinical Decision Support System has the potential to ease access to healthcare services and information, reduce cost, boost practitioner and patient satisfaction, improve speed and accuracy of the diagnostic process, and provide effective treatments remotely. The application will be useful for Unani Medicines Practitioners, Patients, Government Drug Regulators, Software Developers, and Medical Researchers.Comment: 59 pages, 11 figures, Computer Science Bachelor's Thesis on use of Artificial Intelligence in Clinical Decision Support System for Unani Medicine

Kaupapa Māori practitioner's whakaaro (thoughts) of traditional practices (rongoā, rāranga, mirimiri and pūrākau) assisting rangatahi Māori (Māori youth) with suicidal behaviours : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master's of Science in Psychology at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand

Worldwide, a person dies by suicide every 40 seconds (World Health Organization, 2018). An estimated 793,000 people take their lives by suicide every year, and for every one suicide, 20 more people attempt suicide (World Health Organization, 2018). Internationally, for the younger generation aged 15–29 years, suicide is the second most prominent cause of death (World Health Organization, 2018). In Aotearoa (New Zealand), the Māori (Indigenous people) population has an approximate average age of 22 (Statistics New Zealand, 2017) and we are losing rangatahi Māori (Māori youth) to suicide at almost double the rate than their non-Indigenous counterparts (aged 15–24) (Ministry of Health, 2015; World Health Organization, 2018). Western attempts at suicide prevention lack cultural specificity, while Indigenous suicide prevention methods focus on reconnection back to culture, cultural living and traditional practices. Māori practitioners whakaaro (thoughts) show traditional Māori practices of rāranga, pūrākau, mirimiri and rongoā have beneficial properties that alleviate suicidal behaviours. This project incorporates an overarching Kaupapa Māori methodology while integrating qualitative research and semistructured interviews offers flexibility, subjectivity and to extract rich whakaaro for an experiential thematic analysis approach. Seven wāhine (female) Māori practitioners were interviewed. Findings show three critical whakaaro that can assist rangatahi Māori wellbeing: i) Healing as a Whole, ii) Protecting with Wairua and iii) Self-Healing. This study offers mental health professional’s valuable insight into utilizing Māori practitioners as a viable culturally appropriate method for positively promoting Māori wellbeing and protective factors that may prevent suicide. Future research could explore traditional practices as alternative treatment for whānau (family) who have experienced or supported tāngata (people) with suicidal behaviours

Green Health in Guatemala - How can we build mutual trust and partnerships for developing local medicines’ evidence-base and potential?

The implementation of access and benefit-sharing (ABS) protocols and especially the Nagoya Protocol has created new hurdles for collaborations around Indigenous Traditional Knowledge and international collaborations. Overall, these frameworks push for the development of novel collaborative North-South agendas in order to improve the fair distribution of benefits. The Green Health project (Guatemala) aims to implement a culturally pertinent and mutually accepted framework for sustainable use, access and benefit-sharing (ABS) of traditional medicinal plants. It involves developing a consensus among indigenous groups, government officials, industry, and academia. We describe steps undertaken to design and implement an intercultural transdisciplinary process that promotes trust building and advances herbal medicine research in a respectful and innovative way. This involves joint definition of goals and methods. The consortium co-researched Q’eqchi’ Maya traditional medicine, collected voucher specimens of medicinal plants with traditional healers, identified their taxa, and later developed a literature-based evaluation identifying species for potential product development. No samples for further research and development are collected. By applying the emic-etic concept, the project was able to understand the main drivers of each stakeholder and the associated obstacles for reaching an ABS agreement. This results in the emergence of potential new drivers for developing evidence-based herbal medicine from the perspective of academia, policy and cooperation and grass-roots indigenous movements

Collection, cultivation and processing of medical plants, herbs and spices in the Balaton Ecomuseum – herbal medicine as intangible cultural heritage

The Balaton Ecomuseum, which is being continuously developed since 2017, will have a holistic approach, where the objectives of the ecomuseum embrace the whole cultural landscape of Lake Balaton as one unit with several thematic routes in one system and shall not be restricted to one particular subject area or a part of local heritage. One of these thematic routes is the recently developing Herbs and Spices Network, led by Zánka Herb Valley Visitor and Training Centre based on the collection, cultivation and processing of medicinal plants, herbs and spices. The place of herbs and spices in the diet needs to be considered in reviewing health benefits, including definitions of the food category and the way in which benefits might be viewed, and therefore researched. Here we describe the already established system of the Zánka Herb Valley Visitor and Training Centre, the potential of the Balaton Region in the development of herbal medicine illustrated by the scientific presentation of the 30 most collected herbs in the region and examples of other herbal centres, which are intended to become a part of the network. Herbal medicine, as an important part of the intangible cultural heritage, with hundreds of years old recipes for herbal concoctions has been known since ancient times before science related to modern medicine developed and continues to be used for generations until now. Furthermore, the medical effects of many agricultural crops should be better understood, such as the grapevine, which is being investigated for its medical compounds or the medicinal properties of other fruits and vegetables not sufficiently known to the general public. In this study we present a new system of the culture and interactive education of the collection, cultivation and use of medicinal plants, herbs and spices applying a learning by doing approach and a network embracing the whole area of the Balaton Ecomuseum