Project Evaluation of Community Wealth Building Projects in Hertfordshire

The purpose of this report is to evaluate the Community Wealth Building projects, funded by the UK Community Renewal Fund, across the 10 local authorities in Hertfordshire. It is evaluated on the basis of the Secretary of State’s Evaluation Guidance. The evaluation is then used to develop and present actions, opportunities, and recommendations in order to take Community Wealth Building work further forward. The key findings from the evaluation are two-fold. Firstly, focusing on the individual initiatives funded via the Community Renewal Fund across the five programme themes of employment, procurement, grants scheme, planning and feasibility, all of them were successfully implemented and delivered. With all of them, to varying degrees, overachieving in terms of the outcomes and outputs predicted prior to delivery. Secondly, adopting a more long-term perspective, there is only some evidence of the processes and infrastructure being developed to support Community Wealth Building as regular and widespread activities across the county. In short, although each individual initiative taken in isolation was a clear success, there is still some distance to go before some of the greater benefits from Community Wealth Building can be achieved. However, this is not to say that these won’t be achieved, evidence and experiences from other local authorities across the UK highlight that it is a long and challenging journey that does require continued commitment over extended periods, and across the 10 local authorities commendable progress has been made to date. The almost universal acceptance of the importance of social value as a guiding principle in decision making is a crucial step forward, and a continued acceptance combined with an ongoing commitment to the principles of Community Wealth Building should deliver much greater benefits in the future. On the basis of the evaluation, we have developed a series of detailed and specific recommendations within the report. However, in terms of widening the scope of Community Wealth Building across the county and facilitating the successful delivery of numerous social value initiatives, the following are the key recommendations. • Undertake skills audits through a social value and community need lens. • Identify skills gaps within Hertfordshire public sector procurement spends. • Develop a county-wide portal for monitoring and evidencing social value. • Capacity and network building, including engagement of the most important, known, stakeholders, and important representatives of each relevant council. There are several Participatory Action Research Methods that can be deployed to this end

Ideological Topoi And Discursive Strategies In Ayman Al-Zawahiri’s And Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi’s Jihadi Speeches: A Critical Discourse Analysis

This study on the use of discursive strategies and ideological topoi as reflected in the political speeches of al-Qa’ida’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri and ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, drawing on different historical-political perspectives, is the result of a particular interest in the ways rhetorical and figurative language is employed in jihadi politics. Since the rise of the two radical movements as an outcome of the convulsions of the war in Iraq (2003-2011), the Arab revolutions (2010-present) and the civil war in Syria (2011-present), the increasing power of the non-state leaders makes it crucial to study their political speeches, to identify their jihadi discourse topics, their discursive strategies, topoi, fallacies and their micro-legitimatory tools. The study approaches al-Qa’ida and ISIS jihadi rhetoric from a multidisciplinary discourse-analytical perspective to deepen our understanding of the two movements’ political power and rhetoric. To achieve this aim, five speeches for each of the two non-state leaders are analyzed with methodological tools provided by Reisigl’s and Wodak’s (2001; 2009) discourse-historical approach and van Dijk’s (1998) ideological square. The extensive analyses of the discourse topics in the jihadi rhetoric of al- Zawahiri and al-Baghdadi designate that the legitimisation of ‘Self’ is basically tailored via constructing and de- legitimising the ‘Other’ as evil and as a forthcoming threat. Even though religious authority is treated with respect and appreciated as a sign of veneration, it is employed as a source of referential, predication and argumentation for violent acts. The study concludes that the progress of both non-state leaders in capturing widespread support for extremism among Muslims via their rhetorical tactics is inextricably linked to the enormous degrees of alienation that distance many Arab youths from their own local governments in particular and from their Western sponsors in general, and thus, making their arguments both political and ideological

Common Site Planning Initiatives for Abbey Gardens and Peterborough GreenUP: Includes Final Report

Finding Common Ground for Facilitating Collaborative Partnerships stemmed from a desire among several employees of Peterborough GreenUP and Abbey Gardens to explore the potential for collaboration between both organizations. In the winter of 2014, planning began for a meeting between members of GreenUP and Abbey Gardens facilitated by Trent graduate students in the Sustainability Studies program through the Community First: Impacts of Community Engagement (CFICE) project and Trent Centre for Community Based Education (TCCBE). What this meeting would look like and what would be discussed evolved over the next few weeks and culminated in a daylong workshop in Bobcaygeon on April 1st, 2014. This report summarizes the main ideas that came up in several activities and presentations. It contains resources on the background of the project, next steps, and the contact information of participants from both organizations. Appendices include the presentation slides from the respective organizations presentations, staff lists and contact information for each organization, and detailed activity notes from the workshop

Limited refugia and high velocity range-shifts predicted for bat communities in drought-risk areas of the Northern Hemisphere

Abstract Species occupying semi-arid and dry regions around the globe face an uncertain future due to increases in the frequency and severity of droughts. In this study we modelled the potential effect of climate change on bat communities within two high-drought risk regions of the world and assessed the magnitude and direction of the predicted shifts in climatic suitability, locating climate change refugia and identifying species at greatest risk of population declines. To do this, we compared climate suitability models for 43 species using three global climate models and three emissions scenarios for current (1950–2000) and future (2061–2080) climates within two regions where droughts are predicted to increase, the Western Palaearctic and Western North America. Our models predicted an overall reduction in bat richness with future climates. Areas projected to support high species richness in the current climate coincided with greatest predicted species loss and greatest future drought risk. For species with the potential to extend their range, high velocity range shifts would be required to keep pace with these changes, particularly in the Western Palaearctic, where additional barriers to movement include seas and areas of high human population density. Predicted refugial zones were limited and occurred in similar areas across continents (montane and high latitude with some coastal areas). The area of climate suitability was predicted to contract for around half of study species, with nine identified as species of conservation concern due to low overlap between current and future modelled ranges. The best-case scenario for bat diversity in semi-arid and dry regions in the future is likely to be reduced species richness, with many species facing rapid range expansion over challenging landscapes to access climatically suitable areas. Conservation of bats in high drought risk regions will likely depend on protection of identified refugia and networks of water sources, as well as global measures to protect biodiversity and human wellbeing, such as reduction in global carbon emissions

Sunnitische Theologie in osmanischer Zeit

Edward BadeenDie Vorlage enth. insgesamt 8 WerkeText überwiegend arabisch in arabischer Schrift, teilweise deutsc