PRIMUS/Informed Cities: Making research work for local sustainability

The final report of a three year European Commission FP7 project

"We think that’s the future": curriculum reform initiatives in higher education

This research report, considering curriculum reform initiatives in higher education, explores the nature of whole institutional curriculum reform undertaken by universities in the UK, and beyond, in response to the globalised world and global economy of the 21st Century. The key questions addressed in the report considered: What self-scrutiny, strategies, planning and processes do universities who have successfully reformed the curriculum undertake? How do these universities measure and evaluate the impact of whole curriculum reform in relation to learning and teaching and the student experience? Eighteen universities expressed interest in the research and provided details of their reforms. Each university judged their reforms as successful against their own expectations. An initial in-depth interview took place with ten of these universities and follow-up case study research took place at three universities: Kingston University, London; Curtin University, Perth, Australia and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. The thematic analysis focusses on higher educational leadership, the process and evaluation of curriculum reform initiatives and explores staff and student engagement with curriculum change in higher education. The research concludes that these initiatives can lead to a realignment of the curriculum with a clearly articulated mission for the individual universities taking part in such activities

Deeper Capacity Building for Greater Impact: Designing a Long-Term Initiative to Strengthen a Set of Nonprofit Organizations

Offers advice about how to plan, implement, and evaluate long-term, capacity-building initiatives -- sustained efforts to help a select group of nonprofit grantees reach a new level of effectiveness

The Shifting Gears Approach to Systems Change

Evaluates the Shifting Gears initiative to strengthen state postsecondary, adult basic education, and skills development systems through data, policy change, engagement, and communications. Focuses on the logic model and the policy agenda and action plan

Evaluation of the Jim Joseph Foundation Education Initiative Year 3 Report

Launched in 2010, the Jim Joseph Foundation Education Initiative supports programs at three flagship Jewish institutions of higher education: Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR), Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), and Yeshiva University (YU). As part of this initiative, HUC-JIR, JTS, and YU designed and piloted new programs, enhanced existing programs, and provided financial assistance to additional programs.American Institutes for Research (AIR) is conducting an independent evaluation of the Jim Joseph Foundation Education Initiative. This report is the third in a series of five annual reports that describe progress toward accomplishing the goals of the Education Initiative

mFish Alpha Pilot: Building a Roadmap for Effective Mobile Technology to Sustain Fisheries and Improve Fisher Livelihoods.

In June 2014 at the Our Ocean Conference in Washington, DC, United States Secretary of State John Kerry announced the ambitious goal of ending overfishing by 2020. To support that goal, the Secretary's Office of Global Partnerships launched mFish, a public-private partnership to harness the power of mobile technology to improve fisher livelihoods and increase the sustainability of fisheries around the world. The US Department of State provided a grant to 50in10 to create a pilot of mFish that would allow for the identification of behaviors and incentives that might drive more fishers to adopt novel technology. In May 2015 50in10 and Future of Fish designed a pilot to evaluate how to improve adoption of a new mobile technology platform aimed at improving fisheries data capture and fisher livelihoods. Full report

The Story of Family to Family: The Early Years (1992-2006) of an Initiative to Improve Child Welfare Systems

Outlines the crisis in child welfare systems and the development of Casey's initiative to increase the agencies' frontline capacity, prioritize reunification, and provide neighborhood-based foster care. Reviews strategies, intended outcomes, and results

Hard Lessons about Philanthropy & Community Change from the Neighborhood Improvement Initiative

Between 1996 and 2006, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation invested over $20 million in the Neighborhood Improvement Initiative (NII), an ambitious effort to help three neighborhoods in the Bay Area reduce poverty and develop new leaders, better services, more capable organizations, and stronger connections to resources. On some counts NII succeeded, and on others it struggled mightily. In the end, despite some important accomplishments, NII did not fulfill its participants' hopes and expectations for broad, deep, and sustainable community change. In those accomplishments and shortcomings, and in the strategies that produced them, however, lies a story whose relevance exceeds the boundaries of a single initiative. Our goal is to examine this story in the context of other foundation sponsored initiatives to see if it can help philanthropy support community change and other types of long-term, community-based initiatives more effectively.As we began to review materials and conduct interviews, we learned of NII's accomplishments in each neighborhood, including new organizations incubated, new services stimulated, and new leaders helped to emerge. We also quickly discovered multiple, and often conflicting, perspectives on NII's design, implementation, and outcomes that were hard to reconcile. Some of this Rashomon effect is to be expected in a complex, long-term community change initiative that evolves over time with changing players. Some can also be attributed to the different dynamics and trajectories in each of the three sites.We have tried to describe all points of view as accurately as possible without favoring any one perspective. Moreover, we have tried to look beyond the lessons drawn exclusively from NII and to position all of these varied opinions within a broader field-wide perspective, wherever possible.The frustrations of NII's participants and sponsors are mirrored in many other foundations' major initiatives. Indeed, our reviewers -- who have been involved in many such initiatives as funders, evaluators, technical assistance providers, and intermediaries -- all underscored how familiar they were with the challenges and pitfalls described here, both those related specifically to community change efforts and those pertinent to other initiatives. Because the opportunity to discuss the frustrations candidly has been limited, however, they often are relegated to concerns expressed sotto voce. So it was particularly important throughout the review to solicit from our interviewees ideas or suggestions for improving their work together. We offer these along with our own observations as a way to stimulate further reflection and debate, because we believe that philanthropy has an important role to play in improving outcomes for poor communities and their residents. Few foundations have been willing to contribute to this level of honest and sometimes painful public dialogue. But by commissioning this retrospective analysis, the Hewlett Foundation demonstrates a desire to help the field learn and move forward, and we applaud that

Review of Neighborhood Revitalization Initiatives

This document presents introductory information gathered on a wide range of neighborhood revitalization initiatives

Embedding Diversity: Communication and Label Concept for Underutilized Crops – Checklist for your First Evaluation

There are some very successful cases of marketing of underutilized crops in European countries. Examples are the marketing of rare varieties in Austrian and Swiss supermarkets. Other examples are market initiatives in Spain, France, or Italy, selling local produces and processed foods in specialised shops, at farmers markets, or directly at the farm. A consumer survey was conducted in 2017 in France, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland during DIVERSIFOOD project in order to gain additional data on such examples; and Rossi et al. (2016)1 developed the DIVERSIFOOD Case Study Framework. Among others an objective of these studies was to identify some best-case examples for the use of a trademark, label or logo and the related communication strategies. Then a flagship approach to communicate the benefits of underutilized crops by means of a label should be developed. The studies identified many individual approaches of the various marketing initiatives, each based on slightly different secrets of success. Within the DIVERSIFOOD consortium it was concluded that there’s no sense in defining a single best-label flagship approach; instead, a concept should give an idea of the possibilities to communicate the value of agrobiodiversity to consumers. This concept is the resulting outcome. It provides a structured approach for networks an market initiatives to evaluate whether a label for underutilized crops is feasible, and wheter it is in line with theire values and aims or not, and what the premises for the communication strategy are for those underutilized crops. This concept provides a general idea about topics that should be considered. The result could be the introduction of a label or the abandonment of introducing a label. In the beginning of such an evaluation there are most likely existing underutilized crops, that is, genetic resources, such as old, locally, and newly bred underutilized varieties, as well as some products or product ideas derived from these crops. The main target groups of this concept are farmers involved in participatory breeding, seed savers, seed networks and communities, foundations, and breeders of underutilized crops, as well as partners of such genetic resources. Moreover, the concept could be interesting for initiatives and organizations that consider the integration of underutilized crops in their existing label; however there is no specific treatment of this topic in the concept. The concept should be considered as the first step in the evaluation of a new label. The treated topics might also hint on further considerations when developing a successful marketing initiative. However, the concept focuses mainly on two points: 1. Introduction of a label2, a logo, a trademark or similar and some implications 2. Communication tools and communication contents for products of underutilized crop