In the Battle for Reality: Social Documentaries in the U.S.

Provides an overview of documentaries that address social justice and democracy issues, and includes case studies of successful strategic uses of social documentaries

Transactions, Transformations, Translations: Metrics that Matter for Building, Scaling, and Funding Social Movements

This report provides an evaluative framework and key milestones to gauge movement building. Aiming to bridge the gap between the field of community organizing that relies on the one-on-one epiphanies of leaders and the growing philanthropic emphasis on evidence-based giving, the report stresses three main insights. The first is that any good set of movement metrics should capture quantity and quality, numbers and nuance, transactions and transformations. They are related -- an energized leader with a clear power analysis (a transformative measure) may turn out more members for a coalition rally (a transactional measure) -- and the report offers a matrix that weaves together both types of metrics across ten different movement-building strategies. The second is that a movement is more than one organization -- and if the whole is to be greater than the sum of its parts, we must measure accordingly. While report includes measures of success at the organizational level, it attempts to move beyond and focus on whether groups can align and work together to create a more powerful force for social change -- suggesting that in the same way that movements need to scale up to face the challenges of our times, metrics, too, must expand to capture the whole. The third is that metrics must be co-created, not imposed. Recognizing the gravity of the times and hoping to gauge their effectiveness, movement builders are eager to come up with a common language and framework for themselves -- and are developing the tools and capacities to do so. The report suggests that the funder-grantee relationship can build on this wisdom in the field and develop a set of evaluative measures that are not onerous requirements but tools for mutual accountability. The report also offers a set of recommendations to funders and the field, ranging from practical steps (like building a new toolbox of measures, improving the capacity to use them, and documenting innovation and experimentation) to more far-reaching suggestions about leadership development, the connection of policy outcomes with broader social change, and the need to generate movement-level measures. We, at USC PERE, hope this report contributes to a conversation about how to best capture transformations as well as transactions in social movement organizing, and how to build the broader public and philanthropic support necessary to realize the promise of a more inclusive America

Europeana communication bug: which intervention strategy for a better cooperation with creative industry?

Although Europeana as well as many GLAMs are very engaged - beside the main mission, i.e. spreading cultural heritage knowledge- in developing new strategies in order to make digital contents reusable for creative industry, these efforts have been successful just only in sporadic cases. A significant know how deficits in communication often compromises expected outcomes and impact. Indeed, what prevails is an idea of communication like an enhancement “instrument” intended on the one hand in purely economic (development) sense, on the other hand as a way for increasing and spreading knowledge. The main reference model is more or less as follows: digital objects are to be captured and/or transformed by digital technologies into sellable goods to put into circulation. Nevertheless, this approach risks neglecting the real nature of communication, and more in detail the one of digital heritage where it is strategic not so much producing objects and goods as taking part into sharing environments creation (media) by engaged communities, small or large they may be. The environments act as meeting and interchange point, and consequently as driving force of enhancing. Only in a complex context of network interaction on line accessible digital heritage contents become a strategic resource for creating environments in which their re/mediation can occur – provided that credible strategies exist, shared by stakeholders and users. This paper particularly describes a case study including proposals for an effective connection among Europeana, GLAMs and Creative Industry in the framework of Food and Drink digital heritage enhancement and promotion. Experimental experiences as the one described in this paper anyway confirm the relevance of up-to-date policies based on an adequate communication concept, on solid partnerships with enterprise and association networks, on collaborative on line environments, on effective availability at least for most of contents by increasing free licensing, and finally on grassroots content implementation involving prosumers audience, even if filtered by GLAMs

Continuous Transformation and Neo-Carbon Energy Scenarios

This report describes the process and results of Futures Clinique held 22nd May 2015 at Aalto University. At the Futures Clinique − titled Creatively Sustainable Built Environment in Neo-Carbon Energy Worlds − students of Continuous Transformation Course elaborated four tentative scenarios of an on-going Tekes-funded project called Neo-Carbon Energy. The goal of the research project is to explore futures based on renewable energy system. The report begins by describing the method, project, and the theoretical framework. This is followed by the description of the process and results of the Futures Clinique. The nature of change and transformation is also discussed. Working in four groups, the participants focused on a chosen scenario through a multi-staged process. As the report is given to the participants for feedback as well as for further discussion and development, comments on the results are also presented. The conclusive chapter presents observations on transformation and futures learning

A Review of the Open Educational Resources (OER) Movement: Achievements, Challenges, and New Opportunities

Examines the state of the foundation's efforts to improve educational opportunities worldwide through universal access to and use of high-quality academic content

Linking Higher Education and Social Change

More than four thousand stories could be told about the remarkable individuals who received fellowships under the Ford Foundation International Fellowships Program (IFP) between 2001 and 2010. Over the decade, the program enabled 4,314 emerging social justice leaders from Asia, Russia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America to pursue advanced degrees at more than 600 universities in almost 50 countries. By April 2013, nearly 4,000 Fellows had completed their fellowships, receiving degrees in development-related fields ranging from social and environmental science to the arts. A survey done in early 2012 showed that 82 percent of more than 3,300 former Fellows were working in their home countries to improve the lives and livelihoods of those around them, while many of the rest were studying for additional advanced degrees or working in international organizations. The final group of Fellows enrolled in universities around the world will complete their fellowships by the end of 2013.In 2001, the Ford Foundation funded IFP with a $280 million grant, the largest single donation in the Foundation's history. The program was intended to provide graduate fellowships to individuals in countries outside the United States where the Foundation had grant-making programs. In 2006, the Foundation pledged up to$75 million in additional funds, allowing IFP to award more than 800 fellowships beyond its original projections. As extraordinary as the level and duration of funding, though, was IFP's singular premise: that extending higher education opportunities to leaders from marginalized communities would help further social justice in some of the world's poorest and most unequal countries. If successful, IFP would advance the Ford Foundation's mission to strengthen democratic values, reduce poverty and injustice, promote international cooperation and advance human achievement. It would decisively demonstrate that an international scholarship program could help build leadership for social justice and thus contribute to broader social change.In striving toward its ambitious goals, the program would transform a traditional mechanism -- an individual fellowship program for graduate degree study -- into a powerful tool for reversing discrimination and reducing long-standing inequalities in higher education and in societies at large. This report is the story of that transformation

Making Health Equity Real: Implementing a Commitment to Engage the Community Through Fellowships

Between 2016 and 2019, Richmond Memorial Health Foundation jumpstarted its transformation from a health legacy foundation committed to increasing access to health care to one promoting regional health equity through a racial and ethnic lens. A central component of this new focus was the trustees’ decision to invite community members to inform and advance the health equity strategy through two distinct community fellowship programs — the Equity + Health Fellowships. These programs ultimately provided the foundation with a new language, benchmarks, and structure for welcoming broader community engagement. This article highlights the outcomes of both programs, how the experience with the Fellowships enhanced the foundation’s impact and learning, and how the foundation identified areas that require strengthening as its transformation continues. The article also shares four lessons for any philanthropic organization seeking to work in direct partnership with community members. With these insights, foundations can use their social and financial capital to address power and health inequities directly and become stronger, trusted allies of community partners

Communities at a Crossroads. Material semiotics for online sociability in the fade of cyberculture

How to conceptualize online sociability in the 21st century? To answer this question, Communities at a Crossroads looks back at the mid-2000s. With the burst of the creative-entrepreneur alliance, the territorialization of the internet and the commercialization of interpersonal ties, that period constituted a turning point for digital communitarian cultures. Many of the techno-libertarian culture\u2019s utopias underpinning the ideas for online sociability faced systematic counter evidence. This change in paradigm has still consequences today. Avoiding both empty invocations of community and swift conclusions of doom, Annalisa Pelizza investigates the theories of actions that have underpinned the development of techno-social digital assemblages after the \u2018golden age\u2019 of online communities. Communities at a Crossroads draws upon the analysis of Ars Electronica\u2019s Digital Communities archive, which is the largest of its kind worldwide, and in doing so presents a multi-faceted picture of internet sociability between the two centuries. Privileging an anti-essentialist, performative approach over sociological understandings of online communities, Communities at a Crossroads proposes a radical epistemological turn. It argues that in order to conceptualize contemporary online sociability, we need first to abandon the techno-libertarian communalist rhetoric. Then, it is necessary to move beyond the foundational distinction between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, and adopt a material semiotic approach. In the end, we might have to relinquish the effort to define online or digital communities and engage in more meaningful mapping exercises

State-community synergies in development : laying the basis for collective action

If states would interact more synergistically with communities, they could tap local energies and resources for development-- and help create a development-oriented society and polity in the process. The authors analyze experience in several countries to identify the actions required for state-community synergies in development. Two actions that seem especially important: 1) Broadening the distribution of power within communities, to facilitate collective action and reduce the potential for local capture. In rural areas, much can be done by expanding access to credit, strengthening tenants'rights, and expanding non-crop sources of income. 2) Creating state-community alliances toimprove the effectiveness of local public sector institutions and the delivery of services. Case studies from East Asia and Latin America show that such alliances can effect rapid improvements in local institutions, benefiting not only communities but also politicians seeking support and legitimacy. Local bureaucratic reform, combined with more egalitarian community social organizations, allows the creation of powerful coalitions and synergies for rapid, self-sustaining development. This model has been used to achieve outcomes ranging from better health care and drought relief to the generation of agrarian and industrial economic growth. In China and Taiwan, China, these state-community synergies helped produce not only for local consumption but for a rich export market. The cases show that with creative political thinking it is possible to effect rapid change even in poor institutional settings. The Brazilian experience shows how difficult institutional change is in highly inegalitarian settings, but also how such obstacles can be overcome by changes designed to bring grassroots electoral pressure to bear on local government. Experience elsewhere shows, however, how fragile such efforts can be if political support from above is prematurely withdrawn.Health Economics&Finance,Environmental Economics&Policies,Decentralization,Banks&Banking Reform,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems,Environmental Economics&Policies,Health Economics&Finance,Poverty Assessment,Governance Indicators,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems

“See, Click, Fix”: Civic Interrogation and Digital Tools in a Ninth-Grade Ethnic Studies Course

Drawing from the theoretical contributions of Ethnic Studies, activist new media, and critical digital literacies, this article explores the nature of a ninth-grade curricular unit about how one’s daily environment impacts one’s health and well-being. Using a combination of ethnographic and practitioner inquiry methods, the authors highlight an Ethnic Studies teacher’s innovative and community-based pedagogy that honed students’ critical digital literacies and civic action practices through their engagement with the digital media app “See, Click, Fix.” Findings detail students’ perspectives about how the unit both helped them resist deficit-oriented ideologies and served as a conduit for critical civic literacies. The authors contend that the fostering of critical digital literacies remain extremely imperative to the future and expansion of Ethnic Studies courses