Climate of Opportunity: Gender and Movement Building at the Intersection of Reproductive Justice and Environmental Justice

Women's reproductive health and rights are inextricably linked to environmental health and justice issues. Women's bodies and reproductive health are often the markers of environmental contamination through diminished fertility, fetal developmental disabilities and increased rates of cancers. Beginning in 2008, the Foundation brought together grant partners working in these two movements to form the Environmental Justice/Reproductive Justice (EJ/RJ) Collaborative. The Foundation has seen firsthand how joint advocacy generates more inclusive movements and stronger outcomes for communities. This report summarizes the EJ/RJ Collaborative as a reference for funders, policymakers, organizations and others interested in joint advocacy work

Building the Financial Vitality of Border Families

Highlights community foundations' efforts to implement the Family Economic Success anti-poverty strategies in the U.S.-Mexico border region through partnerships across sectors, benefits to the families and foundations, challenges, and recommendations

Inter-firm collaboration in transportation

Dans la littérature académique et professionnelle relative au transport de marchandise, il y a longtemps que les méthodes de planification avancées ont été identifiées comme un moyen de dégager des économies grâce à une efficacité accrue des opérations de transport. Plus récemment, la collaboration interentreprises dans la planification du transport a été étudiée comme une source de gain supplémentaire en efficacité et, par conséquent, une opportunité pour dégager de nouvelles économies pour les collaborateurs. Cependant, la mise en œuvre d'une collaboration interentreprises en transports soulève un certain nombre d’enjeux. Cette thèse aborde trois thèmes centraux de la collaboration interentreprises et démontre les contributions via des études de cas dans l’industrie forestière et du meuble. Premièrement, les moyens technologiques pour soutenir une collaboration en planification du transport sont étudiés. Un système d’aide à la décision supportant la collaboration en transport forestier est présenté. Deuxièmement, le partage entre les collaborateurs du coût commun en transport est étudié. Une méthode de répartition du coût de transport tenant compte de l'impact - l’augmentation du coût de transport - des exigences inégales entre des collaborateurs est proposée. Troisièmement, la création de groupes collaboratifs - des coalitions - dans un ensemble de collaborateurs potentiel est étudiée. Un modèle réseau pour la formation d’une coalition selon les intérêts d’un sous-ensemble de collaborateurs adoptant ou pas un comportement opportuniste est détaillé. De plus, pour soutenir l'étude des thèmes précédents, la thèse comprend deux revues de la littérature. Premièrement, une revue sur les méthodes de planification et les systèmes d’aide à la décision en transport forestier est présenté. Deuxièmement, à travers la proposition d'un cadre pour créer et gérer une collaboration en transport et, plus généralement en logistique, une revue de travaux sur le transport et la logistique collaborative est offerte.In the academic and professional literature on freight transportation, computer-based planning methods have a long time ago been identified as a means to achieve cost reduction through enhanced transportation operations efficiency. More recently, inter-firm collaboration in transportation planning has been investigated as a means to provide further gains in efficiency and, in turn, to achieve additional cost reduction for the collaborators. However, implementation of inter-firm collaboration in transportation raises a number of issues. This thesis addresses three central themes in inter-firm collaboration and exemplifies the contributions in case studies involving collaboration in furniture and forest transportation. First, technological means to enable collaboration in transportation planning are studied. Embedding a computer-based planning method for truck routing, a decision support system enabling collaborative transportation is presented. Second, sharing the common transportation cost among collaborators is studied. A cost allocation method taking into account the impact – an increase of the transportation cost – of uneven requirements among collaborators is proposed. Third, building collaborating groups (i.e. coalitions) among a set of potential collaborators is studied. A network model for coalition formation by a subset of self-interested collaborators adopting or not an opportunistic behaviour is detailed. Moreover, to support the study of the aforementioned themes, the thesis includes two literature reviews. First, a survey on planning methods and decision support systems for vehicle routing problem in forest transportation is presented. Second, through the proposition of a framework for building and managing collaboration in transportation and, more generally in logistics, a survey of works on collaborative transportation and logistics is given

Implementation Of An Early College Design In A Rural High School: Empowering Place-Conscious Leadership To Affect Change And Overcome Barriers To Innovation

This qualitative, improvement science, autoethnograpic case study aims to examine a unique perspective on rural research through the lens of place-conscious leadership. With an identified problem of inequity in advanced-level course offerings, which resulted in lost student opportunities and student attrition to neighboring schools, the leadership at Forest Lakes High School (FLHS) in rural South Carolina began the ambitious journey of reframing their narrative. As a scholarly researcher and administrator at FLHS, I had the unique opportunity to immerse myself fully in all aspects of this study. My dual positionality allowed me to study this process while sharing the lived experiences of the leadership team. This study tells our story of conceptualizing, creating, and maintaining the Forest Lakes Early College High School (FLECHS) program. Through leadership team interviews, researcher observations, personal experiences, and program artifacts, this study details the experiences of the FLECHS leadership team as we utilized the “plan, do, study, act” cyclical process of the improvement science model. As the processes surrounding the creation of the early college high school unfolded, the leadership team identified a sequence of steps we addressed before moving forward into the next phase of our arduous task. I categorized these steps into the three main phases of this study, planning and development, implementation, and sustainability. Within the narrative of each step, I discuss efforts, highlight successes, and present lessons learned by the team. From these steps, I selected the three most significant areas identified as pivotal elements in the program’s success. The first, creating coalitions, tells of the importance we placed in building supporting coalitions with the community, the school district, and the partnering institution. Next, throughout each semester of the early college program, we worked through a continuous process of evolving the curriculum to meet the student’s needs. Finally, the area of identifying, hiring, and retaining highly-qualified instructors presented a recurring area requiring extensive work and effort. The implications of this study suggest that the impact of developing and implementing an advanced program in a rural setting is transformational to a school and community by successfully increasing equitable opportunities for historically underserved rural students. The notable outcomes at Forest Lakes High School included an increase in advanced course offerings from one course in 2017 to ten courses in 2022 and, more importantly, a decrease in student attrition from approximately 7% in 2016 to slightly over 1% in 2022. I suggest that educational leaders seeking to implement similar programs might utilize this study\u27s experiences as a guide when considering a similar endeavor

Collaborative truckload transportation procurement with multiple coalitions

Gönderici işbirliği, son yıllarda ortaya çıkmış yeni bir işbirliği türüdür ve tedarik zinciri yönetiminde kurumlar arası yatay işbirliği sınıfına girmektedir. Sert rekabet koşulları, kaynak yetersizliği, iklim değişimi, güvenlik sorunları ve yeni kanuni düzenlemeler firmalar üzerindeki baskıyı artırmış ve geleneksel düşünce kalıplarını zorlayan yeni çözümler aramaya itmiştir. İşbirliği; daha geniş ve bütün sistemi kapsayan bir bakış açısı getirmesi nedeniyle yeni fırsatlar sunan bir strateji olarak görülmektedir. Gönderici işbirliğinde taşıyıcı firmalardan taşımacılık hizmeti alan bir grup gönderici firma bir araya gelir; ve taşıyıcı firmalarla grup olarak pazarlık yaparlar. Göndericiler işbirliği yapmak istediklerinde; hangi göndericilerin işbirliğine dahil edileceği, hangi göndericilerin rotalarının arka arkaya ekleneceği, ve oluşturulan rota birleştirme çözümünden doğan toplam maliyetin göndericilere ve hatta her bir rotaya dağıtılması konularında en iyi kararları vermek durumundadırlar. Literatürdeki çalışmalar işbirliği yapan göndericilerin tek bir koalisyon kurduğunu varsaymış ve bu tek koalisyonunun kurulması, devamı ve genişletilmesi konularını ele almışlardır. Verilen bir koalisyon ve bu koalisyon için hesaplanan en küçük maliyetli çözüm için adil bir maliyet paylaşımı olup olmadığını konu almışlardır. Buna ek olarak, verilen bir koalisyon, çözüm ve maliyet paylaşma mekanizması için koalisyona katılmak isteyen yeni bir göndericinin koalisyona alınıp alınmaması kararını konu alan çalışmalar da mevcuttur. Büyük ölçekli gönderici işbirliği ağlarında sadece tek bir koalisyona izin verilmesi koordinasyonu zorlaştırmakta ve kabul edilebilir maliyet dağıtımına sahip geniş çaplı bir çözüm bulunmasını zorlaştırmaktadır. Bu çalışmada birden fazla ayrışık koalisyon içerebilen tam kamyon yükü gönderici işbirliği ağları ele alınmıştır. Her biri adil maliyet dağıtımına sahip, ayrık koalisyonlardan oluşan en düşük toplam maliyetli koalisyon yapısının bulunması amaçlanmıştır. Gönderici ve rota sayıları arttıkça ve operasyonel kısıtlar eklendikçe bu kararları en iyi biçimde vermek gittikçe zorlaşmaktadır. Gerçek hayat durumlarında problem boyutlarının çok büyük olması beklendiği için özellikle büyük ölçekli problem örneklerinin çözümüne yönelik sezgisel algoritmalar geliştirilmiştir.We study formation of stable coalitions given a set of shippers and their lanes corresponding to regularly scheduled truckload shipment. In this thesis, selecting participants, deciding who should participate with whom, calculating the lowest cost operational solution and allocating the system-wide cost to the participants stand out as important problems. Collaborating shippers try to identify tours which consist of regularly scheduled shipment with minimal empty truck movements. Then, they must allocate the total cost of the collaborative solution to the participated firms and individual lanes such that the collaborative solution remains attractive to the participants. In the literature, solving the optimization problem minimization the total cost and allocating the calculated minimum cost are treated as successive but distinct phases. The cost minimizing optimization problem is solved with well-known operation research methods, while cooperative game theory concepts are used for cost allocation. The minimum cost solution may render finding an acceptable cost allocation impossible. Besides, similar works in the literature assume that the collaborating firms will forge a single grand coalition. However, as the collaboration grows in size, a single grand coalition may become impractical and also it might leave several lanes out of the coalition, depriving shippers of significant cost savings. In this study, we propose algorithm to design coalition structure which consist of multiple disjoint stable coalitions. Each coalition must have a minimum cost collaborative solution with an acceptable cost allocation. Due to the complexity of the task hand, we devised a heuristic to find good quality solutions to this problem

Building a Stronger Regional Safety Net: Philanthropy's Role

Examines nonprofit organizations' capacity to serve the fast-growing low-income suburban populations in the Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, and Detroit areas and local philanthropic communities' strategies for boosting regional service capacity

Fresh Water and Smarter Growth: Restoring Healthy Land-water Connections

The paper describes water resources in the United States, discusses the principles of the land-water connection, outlines the current regulatory framework, and explains the impact of climate change. It also introduces the concept of low impact development while providing examples, and highlights how funders are having an impact on sustainable water management. With bibliographical references

Taking the High Road: Protecting Open Space Along America's Highways

Examines the environmental impacts of road construction and the spiraling of land prices along new roads, and promotes best practices for linking land use and road construction. Includes success stories and recommendations for policymakers

Applications of Urban Tree Canopy Assessment and Prioritization Tools: Supporting Collaborative Decision Making to Achieve Urban Sustainability Goals

Urban Tree Canopy (UTC) Prioritizations can be both a set of geographic analysis tools and a planning process for collaborative decision-making. In this paper, we describe how UTC Prioritizations can be used as a planning process to provide decision support to multiple government agencies, civic groups and private businesses to aid in reaching a canopy target. Linkages to broader City-scale sustainability plans are explored. This article represents an extension and update to the UTC Canopy Goal Setting Guide by Raciti et al (2006). We conclude with recommendations for a market-like analysis of neighborhoods to better match planting initiatives to particular neighborhoods’ motivations, capacities and interests in order to improve the adoption of improved urban forestry practices