Helping Public Housing Residents Find and Keep Jobs: A Guide for Practitioners Based on the Jobs-Plus Demonstration

This guide contains practical advice on implementing a program model -- known as the Jobs-Plus Community Initiative for Public Housing Families (Jobs-Plus) -- aimed at helping public housing residents find and keep jobs. The most rigorously evaluated employment program initiative ever tried in public housing, Jobs-Plus has shown strong potential for improving the employment outlooks of low-income workers and job-seekers. The guide draws on the experiences of six programs based in housing projects around the country that took part in MDRC's national Jobs-Plus demonstration

Beyond Remittances: The Role of Diaspora in Poverty Reduction in Their Countries of Origin.

This paper analyzes the impact of established Diaspora on the reduction of poverty, and identifies ways in which policy interventions, especially from donors of official development assistance, might strengthen that impact. The new policy interest in Diasporas reflects a broader concern with globalization, and specifically the very recent appreciation of the volume of remittances to developing countries by emigrant workers and their descendents. Remittances, however, are far from being the only vehicle for Diaspora influence on the incidence of poverty in their home countries

Five-country Study on Service and Volunteering in Southern Africa

In the context of globalization, civic service and volunteering is emerging as a growing social phenomenon and a field of inquiry internationally. This research was done to strengthen knowledge and understanding of service and to build research capacity in order to develop service as a field of inquiry and to strengthen its knowledge base and practice

From Words to Action : Alberta Can Afford a Real Poverty Reduction Strategy

The Edmonton Social Planning Council, Public Interest Alberta, and the Alberta College of Social Workers present Alberta's 2013 child poverty report card, which shows that despite an improving economy, in 2011 there were 84,000 children in Alberta (29,800 of whom were under the age of 6) living below the low-income measure (LIM After Tax).This year's report suggests reforms that would facilitate additional provincial investment in ending child poverty, and outlines the associated investment values. Other poverty indicators and suggestions for alleviating poverty are also included

Review of employment and skills: April 2011

"This Review has its foundation in the Leitch Report published in 2006, which recommended the development of an “integrated employment and skills service to help people meet the challenges of the modern labour market” and for the UK Commission for Employment and Skills to report on the changes required to deliver integrated services. The UK Commission’s 2010-11 Grant in Aid Letter required: “The continuation of a Review that has as its focus progress on integrating employment and skills systems”. This report covers England only. There will be separate reporting for Wales and Scotland after the elections in May 2011." - Page 5

Collaborative-Based Research in a Service Learning Course: Reconceiving Research as Service

Using a case study as its basis, this paper proposes a model for service-learning classes in which service is performed through collaborative research. After situating this model within service-learning and various modes of collaborative research between scholars and community partners, the paper will present lessons learned in bridging two traditional classroom pedagogies, undergraduate research and service learning. The paper will also provide specific strategies and pedagogical practices that help ensure an ethical, reciprocal, and collaborative relationship between faculty, students and community partners. Ultimately, the paper argues that research as service can lead to deep and meaningful civic engagement that extends beyond the specific boundaries of a single class or project.Keywords: community based research, service-learning, undergraduate research, collaboration, case study

Embedded Foundations: Advancing Community Change and Empowerment

· Embedded funders are foundations that have made long-term commitments to the communities in which they are located or work. · Foundations have a long history in funding community development, often with few concrete results. · Political conditions, the increasing divide between rich and poor, inaccessibility of education, lack of housing, and continued segregation and racial discrimination are issues that need be addressed concurrently and resources need to be drawn from a variety of sources, particularly the neighborhoods themselves. This complexity has created an impetus for embedded philanthropy. · Embedded funders work participatively with the community and frame evaluations in less theoretical, more actionable ways. · While the future of embedded philanthropy remains to be seen, there is now a group of funders committed to this way of working

Behaviors That Eliminate Health Disparities for Racial and Ethnic Minorities: A Narrative Systematic Review

Within the health care provider-health care recipient relationship the communication must be culturally competent to eliminate barriers to equitable health care for all Americans. This assertion has conceptual grounding in Public Law 106-129 (the Health Care Research and Quality Act of 1999) and Public Law 106-525 (the Minority Health and Health Disparities Research and Education Act of 2000). This narrative systematic review examines this assertion by using selection and exclusion criteria to gather interventions, assessments, and testimonies conducted from 2000-2007. Reports that were not eliminated via these criteria were analyzed to determine the effect of specific practices that were undertaken in interventions, assessments, and testimonies. Which practices does research propose as indispensable to efforts to eliminate health disparities for racial and ethnic minority health care recipients? Findings indicate that culturally competent behaviors by providers and recipients promote effective intercultural communication that eliminates health care disparities, and removes obstacles to care