A New Generation of Social Change

Outlines the foundation's strategies for addressing social justice issues for the next generation, including access to education, economic fairness and opportunity, freedom of expression, natural resources and sustainable development, and human rights

Strategies and Resources for Integrated Community Sustainability Planning in St. Paul’s, NL

Under the Federal Gas Tax Agreement, Canadian municipalities are required to complete an Integrated Community Sustainability Plan (ICSP) by March, 2010. Integration and sustainability are two key concepts that have become the foundation of recent models for community planning. The purpose of such planning is to provide a broad, long‐term plan for a community that will help it maximize economic and social benefits, without depleting the environmental resources upon which community members depend. Like many coastal communities in Newfoundland and Labrador, St. Paul’s is currently facing many challenges to future sustainability. The town also has opportunities to develop linkages between its many assets in order to build a stronger community. This document discusses some of these challenges and opportunities in the context of integrated community sustainability planning. The document also includes strategies and resources that St. Paul’s, and other, similar coastal communities can use to develop linkages between community assets

An American Conversation on the Post-2015 Development Agenda

In the closing months of 2013, over 1,000 Americans gathered in communities large and small to discuss the world they want in 2030. They came together to answer a call to action from Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for every UN member state to seek public input for a new and ambitious development agenda to replace the Millennium Development Goals when they expire in 2015.From October to December 2013, the United Nations Association of the United States of America (UNA-USA), a program of the United Nations Foundation, held day-long consultations in 12 cities across America. The 16 proposed development themes listed on the MY World 2015 website of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) served as the starting point for each conversation with participants ranking each theme while adding new ideas of their own.This report provides a window into the conversations that unfolded as Americans stepped back from their daily routines to think about how a new development agenda might impact their own lives as well as the lives of citizens of other UN member states around the world. The conversations included a diverse audience from age 15 to 95 and revealed both cross cutting themes and a few surprising findings

Towards reframing professional expert support

The paper addresses practical ways of reconfiguring professional expertise in development practice in moving away from the expert as a technocrat. Two projects associated with managing natural resource dilemmas suggest an alternative way of framing intervention involving professional experts providing a more appropriate collaborative learning space for development practice. The paper describes the heuristic devices generated by each project as helpful in bringing out dialectic tensions between practice and understanding, and between systems of interest and situations of interest (or situated problems). Firstly, SLIM (social learning for the integrated management and sustainable use of water at catchment scale) - a European Framework Programme 5 project - exemplifies social learning as a measure of sustainable development. The heuristic illustrates the dependence of sustainability on changes in practice and understanding amongst professionals and other stakeholders as part of concerted - rather than merely individual or even collective - action. Secondly, ECOSENSUS (Electronic/Ecological Collaborative Sensemaking Support System) - a Guyana focused intervention involving several UK universities in collaboration with the University of Guyana and Amerindian community representatives from the North Rupununi wetlands - builds on the SLIM heuristic in supporting the development of practice. Additionally, the ECOSENSUS heuristic provides conceptual space for the interaction between conceptual constructs of distributed stakeholders (that is, systems thinking) including those with professional expertise, and the actual context of intervention (the situated problem). Both SLIM and ECOSENSUS provide heuristics for process-orientated management enabling more meaningful and purposeful interaction between professional/ technical experts and other stakeholders, as an alternative to conventional project-orientated management intervention. An alternative framing may help to steer practice away from the apoliticised comforting linearity of professionalised systematic project management towards more constructive systemic endeavours involving multiple stakeholders

Social Enterprise Businesses: A Strategy for Creating Good Jobs for People with Disabilities

Over the past 10 years, there has been a tremendous growth in entities known as social enterprise businesses. This approach has been particularly promising in creating new opportunities for individuals with disabilities in emerging and growth industries. Over the past five years, the Kessler Foundation's "Transition to Work" grants program has invested $18 million toward the goal of creating job opportunities for people with disabilities. This investment has included support for several social enterprise businesses in New Jersey, stemming from the Foundation's believe that these businesses have potential for increasing employment of people with disabilities

New Models of Technology Assessment for Development

This report explores the role that ‘new models’ of technology assessment can play in improving the lives of poor and vulnerable populations in the developing world. The ‘new models’ addressed here combine citizen and decision-maker participation with technical expertise. They are virtual and networked rather than being based in a single office of technology assessment (as was the case in the United States in the 1970s-90s). They are flexible enough to address issues across disciplines and are increasingly transnational or global in their reach and scope. The report argues that these new models of technology assessment can make a vital contribution to informing policies and strategies around innovation, particularly in developing regions. They are most beneficial if they enable the broadening out of inputs to technology assessment, and the opening up of political debate around possible directions of technological change and their interactions with social and environmental systems. Beyond the process of technology assessment itself, the report argues that governance systems within which these processes are embedded play an important role in determining the impact and effectiveness of technology assessment. Finally, the report argues for training and capacity-building in technology assessment methodologies in developing countries, and support for internationally co-ordinated technology assessment efforts to address global and regional development challenges

Review of Literature and Curricula in Smart Supply Chain & Transportation

This study provides a review of existing smart supply chain management (SCM) literature and current course offerings in order to identify unexplored implications of smart SCM. Specifically, the study focuses on curricula within the state of California to derive potential opportunities for the relevant practitioners in the Bay Area. In addition, the study further extends curriculum review to other well-recognized SCM programs around the U.S. By exploring current relevant course offerings from different academic institutions for higher education (i.e., universities), this research aims to deliver general ideas useful to knowledge practitioners in fields concerning SCM. Finally, the research illustrates a conceptual framework aimed at fostering familiarity with the necessary research topics for the evolving smart SCM

Economic barriers to development : cost of access to internet infrastructure

The Internet is increasingly viewed as an "indispensable" resource for general development and economic growth (UNDP 1999). Its adoption by governments, organizations and individuals has resulted in the shrinking of spatial and temporal distances between different regions of the world, and has greatly facilitated the "free" and quick exchange of information. Such constrictions of time and space impact upon social and economic interactions at all levels of society. Furthermore, ramifications of this impact are felt by a society, group or individual irrespective of whether or not they use the Internet. The ability to access the Internet, and in particular the costs associated with such access, are therefore important points of consideration. Not only do these costs contribute to the disproportional spread of the Internet across the world's population; they also potentially contribute to uneven patterns of development within, and between countries