Catalyst For Community Development Research Articles

Assessment of the Status and Prospects of Agricultural Communities: Input to Support Commercialization and Farm-Tourism Promotion Schemes

Capitalizing on the potential of Farm Tourism as a catalyst for community development and an alternative source of income for farmers, the study was conducted to assess the status and challenges faced by agricultural communities in the town of Hermosa, Province of Bataan, Philippines to generate information to evaluate the tourism prospects of its farm sites. The study made use of an embedded mixed-methods design to assess the farms quantitatively and determine the status and challenges in farming as experienced by the farmers. It was revealed that farm sites with the highest potential to be farm tourism destinations bearing scenic landscapes and cultural value are located in upland areas, mostly privately owned ranging from 1 to 4 hectares in size with variable harvest seasons applying the traditional way of farming. Accessibility is subject to the specific area, with minimal access to basic utilities and site facilities but with provisions for development. Emerging themes as to the status and challenges faced by farmers are inadequacy of resources; fluctuating productivity; vulnerability of the quality of produce and profit unpredictability. Farm Communities may work together with the Government to maximize and exhaust their fullest potential to generate alternative sources of livelihood through Tourism while maintaining food security.

Partnership, Knowledge Translation, and Substance Abuse Prevention With a First Nations Community

Partnership, Knowledge Translation, and Substance Abuse Prevention With a First Nations Community Lola Baydala, Fay Fletcher, Stephanie Worrell, Tania Kajner, Sherry Letendre, Liz Letendre, and Carmen Rasmussen What Is the Purpose of This Study? • To understand the benefits of culturally adapting and implementing a 3-year, school-based, drug and alcohol prevention program for First Nation children and youth. What Is the Problem? • Substance abuse is a significant area of concern within Aboriginal communities across Canada. However, effective school-based substance abuse prevention programs are not typically available to the majority of First Nations schools. • Prevention programs that are available often fail to integrate the cultural beliefs and values of individuals outside of the dominant culture. • More research is required on the benefits of culturally appropriate drug and alcohol prevention programs that incorporate the beliefs, values, language, and visual images of the community. What Are the Findings? • Qualitative measures revealed a positive effect of the culturally adapted program on youth. • Elders and community members observed positive changes in student’s cultural knowledge and cited observed behavioral changes as evidence of the adapted program’s success. • The culturally adapted program is seen as surpassing the original in terms of embodying the values of the community. • Positive community developments occurred as a result of the program adaptation process, which followed a community-based participatory research approach. • Results of the quantitative measures were mixed, in part as a result of inconsistent and unpredictable student school attendance. Who Should Care Most? • Educators, school officials, and health care providers working in First Nations communities. • Policymakers in the areas of health and education. • Community members and leaders. • Substance abuse, public health, and youth program providers. [End Page 139] Recommendations for Action • Highly effective, evidence-based substance abuse prevention programs for school-aged children can be successfully adapted to incorporate the cultural beliefs, values, language, and visual images of the community where the program is delivered. • Community Elders are the keepers of the Nation’s oral traditions and knowledge and their input and guidance is an important and necessary part of program adaptation, implementation, and evaluation. • Culture, language, history, and spirituality are the foundations of Aboriginal identity and are essential components of program adaptation. • Cultural adaptations should go beyond surface level cultural markers to include Aboriginal worldviews and ways of knowing, as well as recognition of historical impacts on health and education. • A community-based participatory research approach is a catalyst for community development and an important component of program sustainability. • Attention to both community capacity building and academic capacity building is important to ensure a successful project. [End Page 140] Lola Baydala University of Alberta Fay Fletcher University of Alberta Stephanie Worrell University of Alberta Tania Kajner University of Alberta Sherry Letendre University of Alberta Liz Letendre Alexis Heritage Program, Alexis Nakota Institute Carmen Rasmussen University of Alberta Copyright © 2014 The Johns Hopkins University Press

Service-Learning as a Catalyst for Community Development

Service-learning has the potential to create mutually beneficial relationships between schools and communities, but little research explores service-learning from the community’s perspective. The purpose of this study was to (a) understand how community-based organizations (CBOs) benefited from partnering with students and (b) examine whether organizational capacity (e.g., organization size) or employee vision (e.g., belief in the abilities of children) had a greater impact on the extent to which organizations benefited from their partnerships. The sample consisted of 129 CBOs that received a grant from K-12 students engaged in a service-learning program. Organizational capacity was more predictive of CBO behaviors, such as involving students in service projects and interacting with students, whereas employee vision was more predictive of positive CBO beliefs, such as the future potential of their partnership. This study helps service-learning practitioners and researchers understand how to better support CBOs that wish to form meaningful partnerships with schools.

Agency and Empowerment under Unlikely Conditions: Exploring How Wartime Displacement Can Promote Community Development

Scholars agree that violent conflict is a major obstacle to development. Wars destroy physical infrastructure, disrupt communication and transportation, encourage capital flight, and discourage foreign and domestic investment. And most important, wars inflict incalculable losses on human populations due to death or displacement. While war is undoubtedly devastating, current research largely fails to explore how wartime displacement can create institutional opportunities to exercise agency, on both an individual and a community level. This paper, based on fieldwork that spans nearly a decade in Guatemala—both during and after the end of its civil war—investigates the conditions under which the tragedy of war can be a catalyst for community development. In particular, refugee testimonies demonstrate that their forced migration contributed to positive outcomes, namely the formation of international relationships and intra-group social bonds, the acquisition of education, useful skills and material goods, and the development of political savvy. The refugee voices featured here give us a different picture of the relationship between community development and war, showing us how—quite counter-intuitively—a situation defined by force and coercion can become one that enables agency and empowerment. For Guatemalan refugees, their displacement to Mexico created an unprecedented opportunity to exercise agency. This, in turn, facilitated the development of social, political, and human capital—three foundational ingredients for successful community development.

Public Liability Insurance

ABSTRACT Festivals in rural communities have their own unique ambience that can powerfully act as a catalyst for community development, stimulate community planning and mobilise communities towards tourism development (Getz & Frisby, 1988; Falassi, 1987; Pyo, 1995; Getz & Cheyne, 2001). Sudden increases in public liability insurance, however, have forced festival organisers to rethink the feasibility of hosting festivals in their communities. The problems currently besetting liability insurance are the result of interrelated factors to do with increasing claims, declining industry profitability and poor risk management practices. Investigations reveal that the cost of claims has been rising for many years. These costs have been driven by personal injury claims and underpriced insurance premiums during most of the 1990s. These trends, exacerbated by the collapse of the insurance giant HIH and the acts of terrorism in the United States on September 11, 2001, have impacted on the rural communities which in many cases, cannot afford to pay the higher insurance premiums. This paper examines the factors that have influenced the current circumstances of festival management in relation to the public liability insurance crisis in Australia. Its purpose is to provide an overview of the current state of the public liability insurance system available to festival organisers in Australia by investigating how the public liability crisis has emerged and to what extent it has impacted on the festival sector, particularly on rural communities that host them. The literature reviewed for this research has been drawn from diverse fields such as law, insurance, risk management, politics, tourism and event management. The research process was undertaken utilising an interpretive paradigm within a grounded theory ontology to explain the extent of the phenomenon. The research was conducted by making qualitative and quantitative analyses of data produced by a questionnaire which was administered via telephone. Discussions with the 82 respondents confirmed that the public liability insurance crisis has had a significant impact on festivals in rural Australia.

COMMUNITIES, WILDLIFE CONSERVATION, AND TOURISM-BASED DEVELOPMENT: CAN COMMUNITY-BASED NATURE TOURISM LIVE UP TO ITS PROMISE?

This working paper draws from research on the Makuleke Region of Kruger Park, South Africa, to analyze the opportunities and tensions generated by efforts to use conservation-based tourism as a catalyst for community development. By attending to the political economies in which effort is embedded, I seek to enrich our theorizations of community-based natural resource management. This paper represents an initial step in that direction; the Makuleke case is used to identify and think through the implications of nature tourism for participating communities. Like many other protected areas, the origins of the Makuleke Region lie in convergence of dispossession, forced removal, and conservation. The Makuleke, who consider the land their ancestral home, were forcibly removed in the late 1960s so that the land could be incorporated into Kruger National Park. They regained title in 1998, and have subsequently pursued economic development through conservation. While co-managing the Region with SANParks, the parastatal that manages all national protected areas, the Makuleke have sought to develop a tourism initiative that will produce economic self reliance and development. In adopting this strategy, the Makuleke are engaging with local, national, and international political economies over which community actors have limited room for maneuver. This case brings three factors to light. First, the legacy of fortress conservation may make it more difficult for community actors to engage with their partners on an equal basis. Second, sectoral attributes of tourism pose special challenges to CBNRM initiatives; it is not clear that tourism projects will produce substantial benefits. Third, the coincidence of the shift to CBNRM with liberalization and democratization has altered the landscape on which all conservation efforts are situated. The confluence of these factors have created an environment in which state protected areas, community controlled conservation areas, and private game parks are competing for domestic and international tourist revenue.

The Community Artist as Community Development Catalyst: an Evaluation of a Pilot Project

Relations between culture and community are analyzed in an evaluation of a community arts project conducted in a small Colorado community. A visual artist worked with residents during a four-week residency in a wide variety of arts activities designed to promote community development goals. Surveys, interviews and direct observation revealed that the entire community was affected positively by the project. The community systems impacted included: the change agent (the artist), the change agent system (the sponsoring local arts council), the action system (the local arts community and artists) and the target and client systems (the community at large). These impacts are interpreted as confirmation that community arts can indeed serve as a catalyst for community development.

Religious Conversion and Community Development

This paper deals with an issue much discussed since the time of Max Weber in social science literature: the relationship between Protestantism and socio-economic development. Data from a Mexican Indian municipality whose members have recently experienced mass conversion to Protestantism are presented to give a non-Western perspective on Weber's thesis. The resultant socio-economic changes are discussed in terms of alleviating three major problems of any underdeveloped Indian community: poverty, disease, and illiteracy. After dealing with the history of conversion and community development, the question of why conversion took place is discussed by identifying the relevant socio-economic, cultural, and other factors. Finally, the question of how conversion became the catalyst for community development is discussed, focusing on the implications of the conversion experience, its confirmation, and the resultant value orientation changes.