Including Social Service Clients in the Organizational Decision Making Process

Empowerment of clients is a goal of many social service organizations and yet a concept that is hard to define and often complicated to implement. This professional project looks at the importance and practice of empowering parents in a teenage pregnancy prevention program through a case study. A survey of parents supported the idea of empowering practices leading to parents becoming partners with the organization in the education of the community. In a qualitative study, this researcher offers the practice of taking empowerment a step further in asking participants of the program to take part in the decision of what should be next for the program

Penghasilan manual rjngkas penggunaan alat Total Station Sokkia Set5f dan Perisian Sdr Mapping & Design untuk automasi ukur topografi

Projek ini dilaksanakan untuk menghasilkan manual ringkas penggunaan alat Total Station Sokkia SET5F dan Perisian SDR Mapping & Design dalam menghasilkan pelan topografi yang lengkap mengikut konsep field to finish. Manual telah dihasilkan dalam dua bentuk iaitu buku dan CD-ROM. Manual ini telah dinilai berdasarkan data yang diperolehi daripada 7 orang responden melalui kaedah Borang Penilaian Manual. Analisis data dilakukan menggunakan perisian SPSS versi 11.0. Hasil analisis skor min menunjukkan kesemua responden bersetuju bahawa manual dalam bentuk buku ini menarik Min ( M ) ^ ^ dan Sisihan Piawai (SD) = .535 tetapi kurang interaktif (M) = 2.29 dan (SD) = 0.488. Berbanding dengan manual dalam format CD-ROM yang mencatat nilai (M) = 3.57 dan (SD) = 0.535 semua responden bersetuju bahawa manual ini mesra pengguna dan lebih interakti

Community Change for Youth Development in Kansas City

Kansas City, Missouri, is one of six sites in Community Change for Youth Development (CCYD), a national demonstration project aiming to increase basic supports and opportunities available to youth aged 12-20. The lead agency is the YMCA of Greater Kansas City; because of its considerable organizational capacity and relationship with funders, the YMCA was successful in operating and expanding CCYD. This report focuses on the benefits of working with the YMCA of Greater Kansas City and the challenges faced by the organization in leading a community-based initiative in three urban neighborhoods

A Systematic Review of Financial Literacy as a Termed Concept: More Questions Than Answers

'Financial literacy', as a concept by that name, has only been explored in library science literature for a little over a decade. The concept, and especially the role of libraries in furthering this literacy, is still evolving. This systematic literature review examines the current definition of 'financial literacy', why financial literacy matters, where the public has been accessing financial literacy education to date, the difficulties encountered, by libraries and others, in providing this education, and how these challenges might be addressed moving forward.Publisher does not allow open access until after publicatio

Aided diagnosis of structural pathologies with an expert system

Sustainability and safety are social demands for long-life buildings. Suitable inspection and maintenance tasks on structural elements are needed for keeping buildings safely in service. Any malfunction that causes structural damage could be called pathology by analogy between structural engineering and medicine. Even the easiest evaluation tasks require expensive training periods that may be shortened with a suitable tool. This work presents an expert system (called Doctor House or DH) for diagnosing pathologies of structural elements in buildings. DH differs from other expert systems when it deals with uncertainty in a far easier but still useful way and it is capable of aiding during the initial survey 'in situ', when damage should be detected at a glance. DH is a powerful tool that represents complex knowledge gathered from bibliography and experts. Knowledge codification and uncertainty treatment are the main achievements presented. Finally, DH was tested and validated during real surveys.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft