Understanding voluntary organizations : guidelines for donors

Voluntary development organizations have demonstrated substantial comparatiave advantage in developing countries - especially in their ability to innovate, adapt to local conditions, and reach and work with poor and difficult to reach populations. These capabilities are a function of their values, special skills, small size, limited resources, flexibility, and freedom from political constraints. Their weaknesses are a function of many of the same characteristics - particularly their value commitments, small size, independence, and lack of administrative rigidity. The authors explain that the strongest Voluntary Organizations (VOs) and People's Organizations (POs) respond to more than financial incentives. Their strength lies in the fact that they are not the same as government organizations or businesses. At the same time, they are not immune to financial incentives, which if wrongly applied can destroy the voluntarism of all but the most strongly aware of VOs and POs.Environmental Economics&Policies,Early Child and Children's Health,Health Economics&Finance,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Poverty Assessment

Shape coexistence in neutron-deficient Kr isotopes: Constraints on the single-particle spectrum of self-consistent mean-field models from collective excitations

We discuss shape coexistence in the neutron-deficient Kr72-Kr78 isotopes in the framework of configuration mixing calculations of particle-number and angular-momentum projected axial mean-field states obtained from self-consistent calculations with the Skyrme interaction SLy6 and a density-dependent pairing interaction. While our calculation reproduces qualitatively and quantitatively many of the global features of these nuclei, such as coexistence of prolate and oblate shapes, their strong mixing at low angular momentum, and the deformation of collective bands, the ordering of our calculated low-lying levels is at variance with experiment. We analyse the role of the single-particle spectrum of the underlying mean-field for the spectrum of collective excitations.Comment: accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Lifetime measurements in 63^{63}Co and 65^{65}Co

Lifetimes of the $9/2^-_1$ and $3/2^-_1$ states in $^{63}$Co and the $9/2^-_1$ state in $^{65}$Co were measured using the recoil distance Doppler shift and the differential decay curve methods. The nuclei were populated by multi-nucleon transfer reactions in inverse kinematics. Gamma rays were measured with the EXOGAM Ge array and the recoiling fragments were fully identified using the large-acceptance VAMOS spectrometer. The E2 transition probabilities from the $3/2^-_1$ and $9/2^-_1$ states to the $7/2^-$ ground state could be extracted in $^{63}$Co as well as an upper limit for the $9/2^-_1\rightarrow7/2^-_1$ $B$(E2) value in $^{65}$Co. The experimental results were compared to large-scale shell-model calculations in the $pf$ and $pfg_{9/2}$ model spaces, allowing to draw conclusions on the single-particle or collective nature of the various states.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, 1 table, accepted for publication in Physical Review

Accountability, Strategy, and International Non-Governmental Organizations

Increased prominence and greater influence expose international non-governmental development and environmental organizations (INGOs) to increased demands for accountability from a wide variety of stakeholdersdonors, beneficiaries, staffs, and partners among others. This paper focuses on developing the concept of INGO accountability, first as an abstract concept and then as a strategic idea with very different implications for different INGO strategies. We examine those implications for INGOs that emphasize service delivery, capacity-building, and policy influence. We propose that INGOs committed to service delivery may owe more accountability to donors and service regulators; capacity-building INGOs may be particularly obligated to clients whose capacities are being enhanced; and policy influence INGOs may be especially accountable to political constituencies and to influence targets. INGOs that are expanding their activities to include new initiatives may need to reorganize their accountability systems to implement their strategies effectively. This publication is Hauser Center Working Paper No. 7. The Hauser Center Working Paper Series was launched during the summer of 2000. The Series enables the Hauser Center to share with a broad audience important works-in-progress written by Hauser Center scholars and researchers

Are Apathy and Depressive Symptoms Related to Vascular White Matter Hyperintensities in Severe Late Life Depression?

OBJECTIVE: Apathy symptoms are defined as a lack of interest and motivation. Patients with late-life depression (LLD) also suffer from lack of interest and motivation and previous studies have linked apathy to vascular white matter hyperintensities (WMH) of the brain in depressed and nondepressed patients. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between apathy symptoms, depressive symptoms, and WMH in LLD. We hypothesize that late-onset depression (LOD; first episode of depression after 55 years of age) is associated with WMH and apathy symptoms. METHODS: Apathy scores were collected for 87 inpatients diagnosed with LLD. Eighty patients underwent brain magnetic resonance imaging. Associations between depressive and apathy symptoms and WMH were analyzed using linear regression. RESULTS: All 3 subdomains of the 10-item Montgomery–Åsberg Depression Rating Scale correlated significantly with the apathy scale score (all P < .05). In the total sample, apathy nor depressive symptoms were related to specific WMH. In LOD only, periventricular WMH were associated with depression severity (β = 5.21, P = .04), while WMH in the left infratentorial region were associated with apathy symptoms (β coefficient = 5.89, P = .03). CONCLUSION: Apathy and depressive symptoms are highly overlapping in the current cohort of older patients with severe LLD, leading to the hypothesis that apathy symptoms are part of depressive symptoms in the symptom profile of older patients with severe LLD. Neither apathy nor depressive symptoms were related to WMH, suggesting that radiological markers of cerebrovascular disease, such as WMH, may not be useful in predicting these symptoms in severe LLD