The Experience of an Intermediary in a Complex Initiative: The Urban Health Initiative's National Program Office

Why would a foundation use an intermediary to manage a multi-site initative? What are the important aspects of the relationships among a foundation, intermediary and local sites? How has The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's use of an intermediary played out during the life of a ten-year initiative

Acquiring a new discourse : using action research and sociocultural pedagogies to explore how a study group is able to support mature-aged open entry students in their first semesters at university : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand

This research explores how a study group concurrent with mature-aged open-entry students’ first semesters on the campus of a research university could support those students as they acquired an academic Discourse. It addresses a gap in both research and practice for such students who very often arrive at university without academic preparation and must find support for their transitions through generic provisions rather than from interventions designed for their own particular needs based on the findings of focused research. Many of these students struggle to engage with the ways of being and doing within higher education, particularly with its expectations for teaching and learning, its worldviews, specialised language, and approaches to writing. This study used action research to develop and trial an intervention informed by Gee’s concept of Discourse incorporating a sociocultural pedagogy. As writing is a core component of an academic Discourse, pedagogy also incorporated a scaffolded genre approach to teaching writing. In line with action research, the intervention was continually modified in response to emerging data which were gathered primarily from participant observation and transcripts of study group meetings, the researcher’s reflective journal, participant interviews, and student texts. Findings suggest that while a study group does not replace academic preparation, it may provide something necessary and complementary for mature-aged students. The group provided a space in which many participants were able to identify expectations for teaching and learning they held and, through the reflection that was a core of the action research process, adapt those to something more appropriate for an academic Discourse. In the study group, students learned and practised specific writing process skills they did not have on entry which they then applied in their writing beyond the bounds of the group. Students also began to recognise themselves as legitimate participants in higher education. This study concludes with the implication that transition for mature-aged students is a holistic process of acquiring a new Discourse by immersion in a social grouping. A study group such as the one in this research may provide an opportunity for acquiring a new Discourse

Hard Lessons about Philanthropy & Community Change from the Neighborhood Improvement Initiative

Between 1996 and 2006, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation invested over $20 million in the Neighborhood Improvement Initiative (NII), an ambitious effort to help three neighborhoods in the Bay Area reduce poverty and develop new leaders, better services, more capable organizations, and stronger connections to resources. On some counts NII succeeded, and on others it struggled mightily. In the end, despite some important accomplishments, NII did not fulfill its participants' hopes and expectations for broad, deep, and sustainable community change. In those accomplishments and shortcomings, and in the strategies that produced them, however, lies a story whose relevance exceeds the boundaries of a single initiative. Our goal is to examine this story in the context of other foundation sponsored initiatives to see if it can help philanthropy support community change and other types of long-term, community-based initiatives more effectively.As we began to review materials and conduct interviews, we learned of NII's accomplishments in each neighborhood, including new organizations incubated, new services stimulated, and new leaders helped to emerge. We also quickly discovered multiple, and often conflicting, perspectives on NII's design, implementation, and outcomes that were hard to reconcile. Some of this Rashomon effect is to be expected in a complex, long-term community change initiative that evolves over time with changing players. Some can also be attributed to the different dynamics and trajectories in each of the three sites.We have tried to describe all points of view as accurately as possible without favoring any one perspective. Moreover, we have tried to look beyond the lessons drawn exclusively from NII and to position all of these varied opinions within a broader field-wide perspective, wherever possible.The frustrations of NII's participants and sponsors are mirrored in many other foundations' major initiatives. Indeed, our reviewers -- who have been involved in many such initiatives as funders, evaluators, technical assistance providers, and intermediaries -- all underscored how familiar they were with the challenges and pitfalls described here, both those related specifically to community change efforts and those pertinent to other initiatives. Because the opportunity to discuss the frustrations candidly has been limited, however, they often are relegated to concerns expressed sotto voce. So it was particularly important throughout the review to solicit from our interviewees ideas or suggestions for improving their work together. We offer these along with our own observations as a way to stimulate further reflection and debate, because we believe that philanthropy has an important role to play in improving outcomes for poor communities and their residents. Few foundations have been willing to contribute to this level of honest and sometimes painful public dialogue. But by commissioning this retrospective analysis, the Hewlett Foundation demonstrates a desire to help the field learn and move forward, and we applaud that

Connecting Neighbors: The Role of Settlement Houses in Building Social Bonds With Communities

Provides lessons learned from the model of service delivery provided by community settlement houses. Examines how the atmosphere, programs, and activities at settlement houses create, foster, and support relationships among participants

The Informal Sector Wage Gap: New Evidence Using Quantile Estimations on Panel Data

This paper provides new evidence on the wage gap between informal and formal salary workers in South Africa, Brazil and Mexico. We use rich datasets that allow us to define informality in a relatively comparable fashion across countries. We compute precise wage differentials by accounting for taxes paid in the formal sector. For each country, we analyze how the sector wage gap varies within groups, between groups and over time. To account for unobserved heterogeneity, we use large (unbalanced) panels to estimate fixed effects models at the mean and at different quantiles of the wage distribution. We find that unobserved heterogeneity explains a large part of the (conditional) wage gap. The remaining informal sector wage penalty is large in the lower part of the distribution but almost disappears at the top. The penalty primarily concerns young workers and is found to be procyclical. We carefully investigate the robustness of these results and discuss their policy implications as well as regularities across countries.wage gap, informal sector, quantile regression, fixed effects model, selection

The Informal Sector Wage Gap - New Evidence Using Quantile Estimations on Panel Data

This paper provides new evidence on the wage gap between informal and formal salary workers in South Africa, Brazil and Mexico. We use rich datasets that allow us to define informality in a relatively comparable fashion across countries. We compute precise wage differentials by accounting for taxes paid in the formal sector. For each country, we analyze how the sectoral wage gap varies within groups, between groups and over time. To account for unobserved heterogeneity, we use large (unbalanced) panels to estimate fixed effects models at the mean and at di¤erent points of the wage distribution. We find that unobserved heterogeneity explains a large part of the (conditional) wage gap. The remaining informal sector wage penalty is large in the lower part of the distribution but almost disappears at the top. The penalty primarily concerns young workers and is found to be procyclical. We carefully investigate the robustness of these results and discuss their policy implications as well as regularities across countries.wage gap, informal sector, quantile regression, fixed effects model, selection

Is Informality Bad? Evidence from Brazil, Mexico and South Africa

The informal sector plays an important role in the functioning of labor markets in emerging economies. To characterize better this highly heterogeneous sector, we conduct a distributional analysis of the earnings gap between informal and formal employment in Brazil, Mexico and South Africa, distinguishing between dependent and independent workers. For each country, we use rich panel data to estimate fixed effects quantile regressions to control for (time-invariant) unobserved heterogeneity. The dual nature of the informal sector emerges from our results. In the high-tier segment, self-employed workers receive a significant earnings premium that may compensate the benefits obtained in formal jobs. In the lower end of the earnings distribution, both informal wage earners and independent (own account) workers face significant earnings penalties vis-à-vis the formal sector. Yet the dual structure is not balanced in the same way in all three countries. Most of the self-employment carries a premium in Mexico. In contrast, the upper-tier segment is marginal in South Africa, and informal workers, both dependent and independent, form a largely penalized group. More consistent with the competitive view, earnings differentials are small at all levels in Brazil.quantile regression, earnings differential, informal sector, salary work, self-employed, fixed effects model

The Informal Sector Wage Gap: New Evidence Using Quantile Regressions on Panel Data

This paper provides new evidence on the wage gap bewteen informal and formal salary workers in South Africa, Brazil and Mexico. We use rich datasets that allow us to define informality in a relatively comparable fashion across countries. We compute precise wage differentials by accounting for taxes paid in the formal sector. For each country, we analyze how the sector wage gap varies within groups, bewteen groups and over time. To account for unobserved heterogeneity, we use large (unbalanved) panels to estimate fixed effects models at the mean and at different quantiles of the wage distribution. We find that unobserved heterogeneity explains a large part of the (conditional) wage gap. The remaining informal sector wage penalty is large in the lower part of the distribution but almost disappears at the top. The penalty primarily concerns young workers and is found to be procyclical. We carefully investigate the robustness of these results and discuss their policy implications as well as regularities across countries.

Inequality Matters

This is one of a series of five papers outlining the particular domains and dimensions of inequality where new research may yield a better understanding of responses to this growing issue.The aim of this paper is to describe, in very broad brushstrokes, the state of academic scholarship regarding social inequality, with an eye toward identifying important gaps. The focus is on four key interacting social domains: 1) socioeconomic (financial and human capital)2) health (including physical and psychological) 3) political (access to power and political representation)4) sociocultural (identity, cultural freedoms, and human rights