Post-Project Replication of Savings Groups in Uganda

Populations that lack convenient and affordable access to savings and credit are often described as "unbanked." The micro-finance movement has succeeded in providing the previously unbanked with access to credit. However, the influence of micro-finance has been uneven and incomplete, with many variations in the degree of access to financial services. Those who are marginally worse off are still in need of a way to manage their money.One model that fills this gap is the VSLA/SILC. These are savings groups in which members meet regularly and must contribute a minimum savings amount at each meeting. This money goes into a loan pool and is lent out to members, ideally so that each member receives at least one loan per year. Loans typically must be repaid, with interest, in one to three months, thus returning cash to, and enlarging, the pool. At the end of the annual cycle the pool is disbursed, each member's share corresponding to the amount of savings they have put in.In addition to providing an accessible savings and loan vehicle, the VSLA/SILC model goes beyond conventional banking by including a system of social support. The group structure encourages and promotes positive saving habits among members. In addition, members contribute to a separate social welfare fund that can be drawn on to cover emergency costs during times of need, such as illness or death.We studied VSLA/SILC savings groups in Uganda that were established in multi-year projects by two facilitating agencies, CARE and Catholic Relief Services (CRS). Project funding phased out completely in 2012, but savings groups continue to spring up, or "replicate." The Datu Research team conducted field research in Uganda in May -- July 2013 and collected data through surveys and focus group discussions with replicated groups and the original project groups. The data gathered enabled us to estimate the rate of replication. It also provided a sense of how the experience of replicated groups compared with that of project groups.This report synthesizes the data gathered, addressing the following core questions:1. What is the estimated rate at which project groups are replicating?2. Why and how do replicated groups form?3. How does the performance of replicated groups compare with that of project groups? 4. What do members of replicated groups report about their experience?5. What does membership in multiple groups tell us about replication and the VSLA/SILC model

Comparative Analysis of Inter-Basin Transfers, Leakage, and Precipitation as Inflows within the Urban Hydrologic Cycle

Water budgets are useful frameworks for urban planning, water management, and water conservation efforts—particularly as urban populations continue to grow. This research quantifies and compares magnitudes and temporal dynamics of precipitation, inter-basin transfers (IBTs), and leakage of potable water as inflows within the South River Watershed (SRW), an urbanized watershed located near Atlanta, GA USA. Monthly and annual precipitation totals derived from local gauge networks and from the PRISM model showed good agreement, with a long-term spatial average of 1407 mm for the watershed. Annually, precipitation was the dominant inflow into the watershed at 88%, the net IBT of potable water was 165 mm, or 10% of inflows, while leakage was 30 mm or 2%. Dividing leakage volume by whole-watershed area belies the reality that those inflows are very localized. Over land areas where the leakage can conceivably occur, it may represent 48-96% of total inflow

Tina Modotti\u27s Vision: Photographic Modernism in Mexico, 1923-1930

This dissertation is a close consideration of photographs by Tina Modotti (1896-1942), whose work marks the beginning of a modernist aesthetic in post-Revolutionary Mexico. Modotti\u27s photographs are distinguished by a formal clarity coupled with incisive social content. Her work was informed by dominant modes of modernist photographic practice manifest in America and Europe in the 1920s. This study sets out previously unknown biographical information on Modotti in Chapters I through IV. Modotti was among the many expatriate artists and intellectuals who settled in Mexico during the 1920s, when the country was undergoing a cultural Renaissance. This rebirth was stimulated by social reforms, which were the outcome of the Mexican Revolution. Modotti went to Mexico from California, where she had lived since emigrating in 1913 from her birthplace, Udine, in Northern Italy. In Los Angeles, Modotti met a group of progressive artists and writers, the photographer Edward Weston among them. In 1923, Modotti and Weston moved to Mexico City, where they established a photographic studio together. Chapters V through VIII set out Modotti\u27s photographic career, which evolved in conjunction with her activism. Without abandoning a formalist aesthetic, similar in rigor to that of Weston\u27s, Modotti attempted to merge art with politics, enlisting her photographic skills to express her radicalism. Modotti\u27s photographs reflect her commitment to the promises of the Mexican Revolution and her photographs bear a relationship to the public art produced by her colleagues in Mexico\u27s mural movement, her friends Diego Rivera, David Siqueiros and Jose Clemente Orozco. Modotti turned her camera on the workers of Mexico and showed them to be the heart of a movement toward social and economic justice. After joining the Communist Party in 1927, Modotti\u27s photographs became sharply critical of government policies that failed the objectives of the Revolution. In 1930 she was deported, and within a year, she gave up photography. Appendices include genealogical information; an index to Tina Modotti (Mexico, 1942); lists of exhibitions; a checklist of her posthumous exhibition; and a working catalogue of her photographs

Trajectories of Psychological Distress among Low-Income, Female Survivors of Hurricane Katrina

The purpose of this study was to investigate trajectories of psychological distress among low-income women, primarily unmarried and African American, who survived Hurricane Katrina (N = 386). Data were collected in the year prior to the hurricane, as well as approximately one and three years thereafter. Using Latent Class Growth Analysis (LCGA), we detected six distinct trajectory groups. Over half of participants fit into a trajectory consistent with resilience; that is, they maintained low levels of psychological distress over the course of the study, but experienced an elevation in symptoms at the first pre-disaster time point, followed by a return to pre-disaster levels. The other trajectories reflected the range in psychological responses to disasters, and suggested pre-disaster functioning as having a major influence on post-disaster psychological outcomes. Exposure to hurricane-related stressors, experiences of human and pet bereavement, perceived social support, and socioeconomic status were significant predictors of trajectory group membership. Based on these findings, we recommend policies that protect against hurricane exposure, promote the rebuilding of social support networks, and assist survivors in identifying employment and educational opportunities, as well as well as empirically supported clinical interventions that help survivors cope with longstanding or emergent symptoms. Further longitudinal quantitative studies, as well as qualitative analysis of survivors\u27 accounts of post-disaster psychological experiences, would advance our understanding of resilience and other trajectories of functioning in the aftermath of traumatic events

Face-to-face and online collaboration: appreciating rules and adding complexity

This paper reports how 6-8 year-old children build, play and share video-games in an animated programming environment. Children program their games using rules as creative tools in the construction process. While working both face-to-face and remotely on their games, we describe how they can collaboratively come to explain phenomena arising from programmed or 'system' rules. Focusing on one illustrative case study of two children, we propose two conjectures. First, we claim that in face-to-face collaboration, the children centre their attention on narrative, and address the problem of translating the narrative into system rules which can be =programmed‘ into the computer. This allowed the children to debug any conflicts between system rules in order to maintain the flow of the game narrative. A second conjecture is that over the Internet children were encouraged to add complexity and innovative elements to their games, not by the addition of socially-constructed or 'player' rules but rather through additional system rules which elaborate the mini-formalism in which they engaged. This shift of attention to system rules occurred at the same time, and perhaps as a result of, a loosening of the game narrative that was a consequence of the remoteness of the interaction

Spatial habitat modeling for a threatened plant in a prairie sand dune landscape

In 1998, hairy prairie-clover was listed as threatened by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) and subsequently afforded protection under the Species at Risk Act in 2004. Hairy prairie-clover, being a habitat specialist species confined to areas of sparsely vegetated to bare sand, may provide an indication of the loss of a once viable natural mixed-grass prairie and sand dune landscape indicative to southern Saskatchewan. Therefore, critical habitat identification for hairy prairie-clover is of particular concern, not only to provide conservation efforts for this particular species, but also for bare sand and sand dune environments which are some of the most sensitive landscapes on the prairies. The goal of this thesis is to identify and spatially delineate areas of critical habitat for hairy prairie-clover within the range of a known metapopulation in the Dundurn sand hills south of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. This research was divided into two specific objectives: 1) to investigate the spatial relationship between bare sand habitat for hairy prairie-clover and other land cover classes, and 2) to study the relationship between habitat configuration and hairy prairie-clover occurrence. To achieve the first objective, the desired output was a land cover classification of the study site at an appropriate spatial and temporal resolution. Wavelet analysis revealed that the optimum spatial resolution for bare sand identification and delineation in the study site was between 2-5 m. Analysis of field spectroradiometer measurements throughout the growing season concluded that the early and late growing seasons were best for spectrally discriminating between land cover classes. A multi-resolution, multi-temporal land cover classification using object-oriented methods resulted in an overall classification accuracy of 79% with a user’s and producer’s accuracy of 85% for bare sand. Grassland comprised the matrix of the area covering 45.5% of the study site. Aspen and shrub were the most dominating landscape elements comprising 25.5% and 19.2% of the study site respectively. Bare sand made up only 6.0% of the study site while juniper was the least persistent class comprising only 2.7% of the study site. The desired output from objective two was a critical habitat landscape mosaic for hairy prairie-clover. Patch scaled metrics were calculated for bare sand patches identified in the land cover classification from objective one. Binary logistic regression was used to identify which metrics could explain and predict hairy prairie-clover occurrences. Results showed that almost 29% of the variation in bare sand patch occupancy could be explained by the size, shape, and degree of isolation of a sand patch as well as the amount of vegetation on a sand patch in the early growing season. Based on these variables, 18.8% of sand patches in the study site were predicted to be unsuitable hairy prairie-clover habitat, 45.7% were predicted to be marginally unsuitable, 32.7% were predicted to be suitable, and 2.8% were predicted to be marginally suitable. Overall prediction accuracy was about 61% with 80% of occurrences and 54% of non-occurrences being correctly predicted

Rights-based claims made by UK anti-abortion activists

This article analyzes the ways in which rights-based arguments are utilized by anti-abortion activists in the UK. Drawing on an ethnographic study featuring 30 abortion clinic sites, anti-abortion marches, and other campaigns, we argue that rights-based claims form an important part of their arguments. In contrast to the way in which human rights law has been interpreted to support abortion provision, anti-abortion activists seek to undermine this connection through a number of mechanisms. First, they align their arguments with scientific discourse and attempt to downplay the religious motivation for their action. While this is an attempt to generate greater credibility for their campaign, ultimately, the coopting of scientific arguments actually becomes embedded in their religious practice, rather than being separate from it. Second, they reconfigure who should be awarded human rights, arguing not only that fetuses should be accorded human rights but also that providing abortion to women goes against women’s human rights. This article is important in showing how rights claims are religiously reframed by anti-abortion activists, and what the implications are regarding debates about access to abortion services in relation to religious rights and freedom of belief