Cultivating Community: The role of the Winooski school system in creating positive relationships between city institutions and the refugee population

Schools serve as key institutions for absorbing newcomers into American society, as they provide resources, programming, and access points into a community for immigrant children and their families. In Winooski, Vermont, the public school building serves as a center for support and engagement for the refugee population, offering a variety of services to children and their parents. As demographics shift to include more foreign-born students, schools need to rethink classroom strategies and ways of engaging with families that best navigate cultural divides. My findings suggest that Winooski can be viewed as a model city for bridging the cultural divides inherent in refugee resettlement: various community institutions, in collaboration with the school system, provide services and support for refugee families, and the school serves as a center for support and community engagement. These processes can be examined through the social network concept of multiplexity. Put simply, community members know and trust each other in several different roles, increasing the capacity of the community to support one another and generate trust. At the center of this social network are the multicultural liaisons, who play a critical role in supporting refugees in communities, and enhance this network of trust. The research presented here highlights the unique processes in place that make Winooski a successful site for refugee resettlement, and recognizes the work of those in the community that dedicate themselves to increasing the level of acceptance and cultural understanding throughout the district and the community as a whole

OSS integration issues and community support: an integrator perspective

The reuse and integration of Open Source Software (OSS) components provided by OSS communities is becoming an economical and strategic need for today’s organizations. The integration of OSS components provides many benefits, but also risks and challenges. One of the most important risks is the lack of effective and timely OSS community support for dealing with possible integration problems. For gaining an understanding of the common problems that organizations face when integrating OSS components, and the role played by OSS communities, we performed an exploratory study on 25 OSS integration projects from different European organizations. The results show that the main way of reducing integration problems was the use of OSS components from well-established communities; therefore very few integration problems were identified. In most of the cases these problems were successfully solved with the support from the OSS community and/or colleagues. In addition, contrary to the common belief that understanding code from someone else is a hard and undesirable task, some integrators consider OSS code even more understandable than their own code.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

School Sense of Community, Teacher Support, and Students\u2019 School Safety Perceptions

This study examined the association between two characteristics of school climate (sense of community and teacher support, measured both at the individual and at the school level) and students\u2019 feelings of being unsafe at school. The study involved a sample of 49,638 students aged 10\u201318 years who participated in the 2010\u20132012 California Healthy Kids Survey. Using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM), our findings revealed that, at the individual level, students perceiving higher levels of sense of community and teacher support at school were less likely to feel unsafe within the school environment. At the school level, sense of community was negatively associated with unsafe feelings, whereas there was no association between school-level teacher support and feelings of being unsafe at school

Development of a Faculty Learning Community to support Scholarship and Feedback

In an effort to explore the ideas of Scholarship of Learning and Teaching, and to comply with Glasgow’s University’s career development programme, a small group of academics from the College of Medicine, Veterinary and Life Sciences established a Learning Community. The LC has several aims: • To create and design a Learning Community to support scholarship and progression for lecturers on learning & teaching track • To understand how a Learning Community can be used to support staff on career development pathways • To empower participants to engage in the University’s career development programme through peer support and peer mentorship within the Learning Community • provide practical support for scholarship projects (it is hoped that all members will be supported to drive their scholarship ‘from idea to manuscript’) It is hoped that through the sharing of ideas, and collaboration between schools, the LC hope to publish and disseminate scholarship, and provide a series of recommendations regarding scholarship support. Planned scholarship outputs include papers in educational journals, conference abstracts and presentations, and a significant ambition to influence policy within the university regarding scholarship and career development

Addiction Recovery Support: Connecting Primary Care Providers and Community Resources

Addiction to drugs and alcohol is a pervasive problem throughout Vermont and the U.S., and only a fraction of those needing help receive it. The vast majority of admissions to substance abuse treatment programs do not come from healthcare providers, who report a lack of preparedness in managing addiction screening and referrals. Recognizing that Family Medicine Providers are likely to be caring for many patients struggling with substance abuse, this project aims to improve provider familiarity with local resources. In particular, this project focuses on promoting long-term retention in self-help group programs, as these have been demonstrated to be the most approachable form of help for many presenting in the primary care setting.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/fmclerk/1288/thumbnail.jp

Building Community Partnerships in Support of a Postsecondary Completion Agenda

This report highlights key lessons from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Community Partnerships portfolio evaluation. It assesses the communities' progress over the course of the investment, and describes their work in the areas of building public commitment, using data, building and sustaining partnerships, and aligning policies and practices. The OMG Center served as the national evaluator of this initiative and the report also discusses the steps these communities can take to sustain their programs

A Home-Start peer support scheme for women with low mood following childbirth

Perinatal mental health problems vary in impact and severity, and can have long-lasting effects on maternal health and child psychological health and development. The evidence to support the effectiveness of postnatal peer and volunteer support schemes to improve the long-term health of women is mixed, with some studies highlighting positive effects in terms of reducing symptoms of depression. Using data from a peer support scheme designed to support women with low mood following childbirth, this paper provides insight into the initial support needs of women, alongside the challenges of using volunteer and peer support services. This paper provides health visitors and others working in community settings with an understanding of how volunteer befriending services may, or may not work in community settings. The data suggests that Home-Start does have a positive impact on the lives of some women, however more work is required in order to understand which aspects of the Home-Start intervention women find effective and why