Income-generating Opportunities Research Articles

Strategic marketing of further and higher educational institutions: partnership arrangements and centres of entrepreneurship

Partnership arrangements involving institutions of further and higher education provide educational provision to a broad audience. It is essential that within the framework of a partnership arrangement there is a structure in place which allows senior academics and administrators to ensure that the partnership is maintained, developed and realizes the objectives set by senior management. This paper makes reference to a centre of entrepreneurship, which academics and administrators can establish, to facilitate the development of partnership arrangements and can be viewed also as a catalyst for developing new products and services which can be turned into marketable products and services, leading to increased opportunities for income generation. The framework outlined in this paper can provide a basis for establishing a professional and relational marketing approach that should ensure that customer expectations are met, and can be used to audit, evaluate and manage a partnership arrangement.

On Choosing a Fieldsite for Health Related Research

As anthropologists interested in applying our research to the improvement of health and quality of life, we often find ourselves in places rife with poverty, violence and environmental degradationnot to mention corruption, scandal and controversy. This can make our job not only heartbreaking, but difficult to carry out. This paper briefly addresses how the selection of a fieldsite for ethnographic research should be based on more than local health issues alone. Failure to make a careful consideration of broader factors that contribute to the focus of one's study can interfere with the success of research. I discuss two field experiences to illustrate this point. The first is research that I attempted to carry out in Chiapas, Mexico. The second example is from research conducted in Zimbabwe. Both projects involved traditional medicine and a great deal of controversy. Only one was successful. The ultimate goal of my work in Chiapas was to contribute to a more detailed picture of indigenous environmental knowledge by characterizing the relationship between Mayan perceptions of the medicinal plants they ingest and perceptions held by scientists who study these plants in a laboratory. More specifically, my research was designed to answer the question: Do the Tzeltal Maya share folk models of medicinal plant actions and do these models reflect the biological activities of compounds found in such plants? I planned to work in the Tzeltal community of Ch'ixaltontik, which is a tiny hamlet in the municipality of Tenejapa. The idea was to elicit folk models of medicinal action for a set of common medicinal plants that could be compared with the scientific literature. I was awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation to do this research. I also received some funding from the Maya International Collaborative Biodiversity Group (Maya ICBG)2 project to translate my findings into Tzeltal. Translating my data and results into Tzeltal would have helped the people of Ch'ixaltontik make claims to their intellectual property and give them leverage to determine what kind of medicinal plant research may take place in their community. The controversy in this case has to do with the politics of medicinal plant research in Highland Chiapas. Drs. Brent and Elois Ann Berlin and their students have studied Mayan medicinal plants in the region for over 20 years. Unfortunately, their most recent project-the Maya ICBG-caused a torrent of argument and misunderstanding. The Maya ICBG was supposed to be a five-year project that would study Maya ethnomedicine, inventory the flora of Highland Chiapas and screen common medicinal plants for biological activities. The project was also designed to develop sustainable, culturally appropriate income-generating opportunities for the Maya. Finally, it was intended to be a model for doing ethnobotanical drug discovery fairly. That is, with the explicit aim of sharing benefits equally with indigenous communities. The drug discovery portion of the project attracted the attention of human rights groups who assumed that because the project was funded by the American government it had to be another example of corporate interests out to exploit indigenous people. When the regional Mayan traditional healers association (known by the acronyms OMIECH and COMPITCH) publicly protested the Maya ICBG, activists from the United States and Canada (led by the now defunct Rural Advancement Foundation International) rushed to their aid. The healers, with the help and encouragement of these activists, accused the Maya ICBG of stealing their specialist medical knowledge. It did not seem to matter that the Berlins were interested in the medical knowledge of everyday people and had the unanimous support of numerous Mayan communities in the region. Neither the activists nor the healers cared that the researchers had convinced their corporate partner to give a quarter of all potential profits to the highland Maya and developed means to equitably distribute these profits throughout the region. …

Guidelines for coastal and marine site-planning and examples of planning and management intervention tools

Guidelines are presented for a process to plan for the sustainable management of coastal and marine ecosystems of discrete sites. The guidelines provide an agreed starting point to initiate a site-planning effort, help organize a complicated process into discrete components, incorporate principles of community-based and collaborative management, minimize the risk of conflict by directly involving representatives of all interest groups and identifying and addressing all issues at an incipient stage, promote development of a sense of ownership and support for resulting management initiatives by all stakeholders, address the cumulative effects of adverse impacts to coastal and marine environments, and implement an integrated approach by considering all interrelated elements that affect the site through the collaboration of all interest groups. Site-planning is a process of reviewing past progress and assessing current and future issues, threats, and needs to identify priority management intervention activities that will sustain ecological, economic, and cultural values; balance multiple and often incompatible objectives; address priority threats to natural ecosystem functioning; conserve ecological processes and biodiversity; achieve sustainable development; and fulfill institutional, policy, and legal needs. Examples of intervention tools for coastal and marine resources planning and management range from developing and implementing integrated site management plans, to identifying and promoting opportunities for alternative sustainable economic income generation.

Participatory Forest Conservation in Southwest Lowland Rainforests of Sri Lanka

Natural forest in Sri Lanka has been decreased significantly in the last few decades. The remaining natural forests especially in floristic region seven have undergone less conservation efforts in the past. Considering the capacity of the government and dependence on forest resources by local villagers, the only way for conservation of these forests in the Southwest lowland is forest management through local participation. Management plans for community-based resource management have been completed. However promotion of such management requires integrated measures, which are beyond jurisdiction of Forest Department. A holistic approach with political commitment concerning buffer zone villages and economic incentives with income generation opportunities supported by external inputs are expected to be implemented as a matter of urgency.

Income and Employment Generation Opportunities and Potential of Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs)

The study reveals that a greater potential lies in generating income and employment through development of NTFPs for the underprivileged tribal population in Gujarat. It is estimated that NTFPs generate, on an average, employment equal to some 3.7 million man-days and an income of Rs 62.7 million (approximately $1.8 m) per annum. In addition, many NTFPs, are collected for household consumption and thus provide food security to several needy people. Most NTFPs have potential for value addition at local level so that more employment and income can be generated in the village economy. The multiplier impacts of this is expected to be substantial in the local economy. The scope for value addition is high and is possible by 200% or more of the value of the raw or unprocessed NTFPs. Enforcement of grades and standardization is another way of adding value to raw produce of NTFPs. The concerns about the diminishing stocks of NTFPs are raised and the need for a national economic policy for the NTFPs is established.

Women and Development - A Case for Development of Women Entrepreneurship? With Special Reference to Indian Women

Economic independence is a pre-requisite for women's movement towards gender equality. It is high time that the planners realise that women are contributories in the development process and not mere beneficiaries- they do not need welfare schemes but income generation opportunities. Regardless of social taboos more and more women are being pushed towards paid employment because of economic hardships. Development of women entrepreneurship will serve the dual purpose of empowering women and speeding up the process of economic development. For governments and planners are increasingly realising that economic growth cannot be manufactured by fine tuning, tax and regulatory policies alone, for the existence of a basketball and a court does not guarantee the game and the players. It is the entrepreneur who acts as a spark plug and propels the economy to higher levels of growth and development. An effort to assess the role of women entrepreneurship, in emancipation of women and in the development of the nation is vital to the needs of our times. In accordance with the issues cited above, this paper is divided into four sections, section 1 tries to capture the relationship between women and development. Section 2 highlights the need for promoting entrepreneurship among women, section 3 outlines the profile of a women entrepreneur, her enterprise and the impediments faced by her whereas the last section contains the summary and suggestions.

The economic advancement of the mentally ill in the community: 1. Economic opportunities

Consumer cooperatives have been shown to be feasible in Europe for generating adequately reimbursed jobs for the mentally ill, and may be viable in the U.S.. Such businesses can gain a market advantage by offering goods and services to mental health agencies or to the consumer group. Interviews with 50 mentally ill people living in Boulder, Colorado, identified sizable markets controlled by consumers: the average mentally ill person in the sample consumes $2,000 a month in psychiatric treatment, accommodation, food, medication and other goods and services. The findings suggest several income-generating opportunities. Consumers can be employed as mental health service providers, under certain conditions a consumer-cooperative pharmacy may be established, and some types of housing cooperative are viable.

New technology for rural women: Paradoxes of sustainability

This article discusses the difficulties of reaching relatively poor populations with labour-saving technologies. Taking the case of milling and dehulling technologies in Senegal and The Gambia, it presents a simple analytic model that helps to explain why the vast majority of these labour-saving machines are under-utilised in rural areas. Though donors continue to support such projects widely, in few cases do they provide significant benefits to the broad population in the short term, and nor are they sustainable in the longer term. The key constraint is the lack of effective demand, owing to rural women's limited income-generating opportunities. In the time saved by using a machine to dehull or mill their coarse grains, they are unable to earn enough money even to pay the fees to use the machine, much less to earna surplus.

Maternal employment and child nutrition in Panama

The major question addressed in this research is: ‘Does maternal employment affect child dietary intake and nutritional status and if so, what mediating factors are important?’ Maternal employment has been seen to have two conflicting effects on child nutrition—via increased income and decreased time available in the household. Efficiency and preferences of the household will vary and are likely to be of major importance in these relationships. A comprehensive measure of these inputs was devised using the concept of ‘differentiation’, defined as the capacity to process a diversity of information types. Various indicators of this concept were identified at both the household and the maternal levels and entered into a principal component analysis which generated composite variables. The data, including weighed dietary intakes and observed time use for mothers and substitutes, were collected during a 1 year stay in Panama. The results of a series of stepwise and multiple regression analyses lead to the conclusion that maternal employment, in this population, has a positive effect on child nutrition. In most cases, employment status enters into interactions with a variety of effect modifiers, suggesting the highly situational aspect of the relationships. Maternal time in home production decreases with her employment but total household time in these activities does not, due to the inputs of other household members. Maternal income seems to be of key importance to dietary intake. The maternal differentiation variable is consistently and positively related to dietary and anthropometric outcomes. The results are highly congruent, indicating that improved opportunities for womens' employment, income generation, education and personal development should have payoffs for child welfare, provided that adequate substitute care is available.

Jamaican Working-Class Women: Producers and Reproducers

Jamaica's economy is underdeveloped, creating and maintaining relatively few income-generating opportunities for its population. To survive, working-class women who assume primary economic and social responsibilities for their children must be economically active, whether in the retrenching formal sector or in the growing informal sector. The following article examines how their culture and economy merge to define Jamaican women and their roles.

Integrated approach of pond based farming systems for sustainable production and income generation

Integrated farming with poultry, fish and crops can play a significant role in increasing manifold production, income, and nutrition and employment opportunities of rural populations. The research work was carried out at nine farmers’ ponds covering area of 0.12 ha each in Farming Systems Research and Development (FSRD) site, Goyeshpur, Pabna during the year 2000-01 to 2002-03 to assess integrated pond based production, income and employment opportunity of the rural farm households. Three different components like fish, poultry and pattern based vegetables production were employed in the investigation. The results indicated that in integrated pond management, two additional enterprises viz., poultry and year round vegetables exhibited encouraging production over traditional management. The average fish production obtained from integrated pond management was 330.92% higher over the traditional management. The total economic return in terms of gross return and gross margin achieved from integrated pond management was Tk.59 133 and 38684 which were 1297.94 and 1496.53% higher over traditional pond management. The utilization of family labour round the year in pond based integrated production system contributed to improve the production as well as to create employment opportunity for income generation. The overall results revealed that the integrated pond management with poultry, fish and vegetables was an excellent approach for sustainable production, income generation and employment opportunity of the resource poor rural households. Key Words: Pond based farming systems; production; income generation; employment opportunity. DOI: 10.3329/bjar.v34i4.5834Bangladesh J. Agril. Res. 34(4) : 577-584, December 2009