Книги з теми "Social Enterprise Initiative"

This chapter concludes The Goldilocks Challenge, summarizing key lessons about when and when not to collect data and how to build evidence systems for learning and improvement. The chapter also identifies areas for future work related to right-fit data, including social enterprise, organizational behavior, government contracting, and responsibility in the era of “big data.” Lastly, the chapter introduces Innovation for Poverty Action’s (IPA) “Goldilocks Initiative” and the Goldilocks Toolkit, efforts to help organizations apply the Goldilocks principles. The Goldilocks Initiative will complement IPA’s traditional randomized evaluation work with an aim of helping organizations find the right-fit in their monitoring and evaluation systems. The initiative provides resources and consulting services for organizations, donors, and governments seeking to design and support the implementation of cost-effective, appropriately sized monitoring and evaluation systems.

The rapid increase in slum populations in India has far outpaced the impact of interventions to date. Market-based solutions have started gaining the attention of governments, international aid groups, NGOs and entrepreneurs as they look for new ways to scale up their impact and sustain their interventions. Thousands of new social enterprises that seek to provide social benefits, and sustain largely on business revenues, have sprung up in response. Their rapid proliferation has attracted the attention of impact investors looking to create the next microfinance industry. This chapter profiles two case studies of market-based solutions in India that provide some important lessons for others fostering similar initiatives.

Incorporating Rights: Strategies to Advance Corporate Accountability examines existing and emerging advocacy strategies that could conceivably close a global governance gap that puts human rights at risk and places commercial actors at risk of becoming complicit in human rights abuses when conducting business in emerging market economies and complex environments. Corporate codes of conduct, sustainability reporting, and selected multistakeholder initiatives are presented as the building blocks of a system of soft law that could solidify to become binding baseline standards for better business practices. This book explains the conditions that have given rise to constructive change as well as those methods and mechanisms with promise for ensuring that business enterprises incorporate human rights considerations into business operations. This book explores how capital and consumer markets could provide an additional or alternative form of enforcement to promote responsible business conduct. It provides accounts of the creation of industry sector regulatory instruments and governance institutions arising from allegations of corporate complicity in human rights abuses. It examines how corporate social responsibility initiatives could close the governance gap and how codes of conduct could come to regulate like real rules. This book argues that regulation through information is essential to ensure that corporate conduct will be informed by human rights considerations and implemented consistent with respect for human rights. Where concerned consumers and investors exercise preferences for products that are not associated with abuse and have access to information on corporate performance and risks posed to human rights, there is potential to change corporate conduct. Societal expectations are increasing and evolving.

Contrary to the conventional belief that social movements cannot engage the state without becoming co-opted and demobilized, this study shows how movements can advance their struggles by strategically working with, in, through, and outside of state institutions. The success of Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement (MST) in occupying land, winning land rights, and developing alternative economic enterprises for over a million landless workers has made it an inspiration for progressive organizations globally. The MST’s educational initiatives, which are less well known but equally as important, teach students about participatory democracy, collective work, agroecological farming, and other practices that support its socialist vision. This study details how MST activists have pressured municipalities, states, and the federal government to implement their educational proposal in public schools and universities, affecting hundreds of thousands of students. Based on twenty months of ethnographic fieldwork, Occupying Schools, Occupying Land documents the potentials, constraints, failures, and contradictions of the MST’s educational struggle. A major lesson is that participating in the contentious co-governance of public education can help movements recruit new activists, diversify their membership, increase practical and technical knowledge, and garner political power. Activists are most effective when combining disruption, persuasion, negotiation, and co-governance into their tactical repertoires. Through expansive leadership development, the MST implemented its educational program in local schools, even under conservative governments. Such gains demonstrate the potential of schools as sites for activists to prefigure, enact, and develop the social and economic practices they hope to use in the future.

Development was born as aid, an expression of the modern obsession with “caring” used by disabling professions and the service industry. However, by 1980, it was already clear that there was no correlation between aid and economic growth, and that aid was an obstacle for social transformation. Development was also born in the context of the Cold War. For President Truman, the American way of life was a democratic and egalitarian ideal to overcome the communist “threat” by closing the gap between industrial and “underdeveloped” countries. In addition, development was a reaction to the initiatives of the colonized world, increasingly challenging Western domination. Since Truman, development has connoted at least one thing: to escape from the vague, indefinable, and undignified condition known as underdevelopment. However, the Age of Development—the historical period formally inaugurated in 1949—is now coming to an end. The future of development studies lies in archaeology, to explore the ruins it left behind by looking at development’s pre-history and conceptual history, as well as the development enterprise. Since the 1970s, new campaigns were launched to focus the effort in getting for the underdeveloped, at least, the fulfillment of their “basic needs.” Meanwhile, the “law of scarcity” was construed by the economists to denote the technical assumption that man’s wants are huge and infinite, whereas his means are limited though improvable. Poverty and development thus go hand in hand. Indeed, historical experience reveals that development generates poverty. By 1985, the idea of post-development has already emerged.

Latin America and the Caribbean, unlike other regions, is still quite young demographically: people over age 60 make up around 11% of the total population. However, the region is expected to experience the fastest rate of population aging in the world over the coming decades. This projected growth of the elderly population raises challenges related to pensions, health, and long-term care. At the same time, it opens up numerous business opportunities in different sectorshousing, tourism, care, and transportation, for examplethat could generate millions of new jobs. These opportunities are termed the “silver economy,” which has the potential to be one of the drivers of post-pandemic economic recovery. Importantly, women play key roles in many areas of this market, as noted in the first report published by the IDB on this subject (Okumura et al., 2020). This report maps the actors whose products or services are intended for older people and examines silver economy trends in the region by sector: health, long-term care, finance, housing, transportation, job market, education, entertainment, and digitization. The mapping identified 245 actors whose products or services are intended for older people, and it yielded three main findings. The first is that the majority of the actors (40%) operate in the health and care sectors. The prevalence of these sectors could be due to the fact that they are made up of many small players, and it could also suggest a still limited role of older people in active consumption, investment, and the job market in the region. The second finding is that 90% of the silver economy actors identified by the study operate exclusively in their countries of origin, and that Mexico has the most actors (47), followed by the Southern Cone countriesBrazil, Chile, and Argentinawhich have the regions highest rates of population aging. The third finding is that private investment dominates the silver economy ecosystem, as nearly 3 out of every 4 actors offering services to the elderly population are for-profit enterprises. The sectors and markets of the silver economy differ in size and degree of maturity. For example, the long-term care sector, which includes residential care settings, is the oldest and has the largest number of actors, while sectors like digital, home automation, and cohousing are still emerging. Across all sectors, however, there are innovative initiatives that hold great potential for growth. This report examines the main development trends of the silver economy in the region and presents examples of initiatives that are already underway. The health sector has a wealth of initiatives designed to make managing chronic diseases easier and to prevent and reduce the impact of functional limitations through practices that encourage active aging. In the area of long term careone of the most powerful drivers of job creationinitiatives to train human resources and offer home care services are flourishing. The financial sector is beginning to meet a wide range of demands from older people by offering unique services such as remittances or property management, in addition to more traditional pensions, savings, and investment services. The housing sector is adapting rapidly to the changes resulting from population aging. This shift can be seen, for example, in developments in the area of cohousing or collaborative housing, and in the rise of smart homes, which are emerging as potential solutions. In the area of transportation, specific solutions are being developed to meet the unique mobility needs of older people, whose economic and social participation is on the rise. The job market offers older people opportunities to continue contributing to society, either by sharing their experience or by earning income. The education sector is developing solutions that promote active aging and the ongoing participation of older people in the regions economic and social life. Entertainment services for older people are expanding, with the emergence of multiple online services. Lastly, digitization is a cross-cutting and fundamental challenge for the silver economy, and various initiatives in the region that directly address this issue were identified. Additionally, in several sectors we identified actors with a clear focus on gender, and these primarily provide support to women. Of a total of 245 actors identified by the mapping exercise, we take a closer look at 11 different stories of the development of the silver economy in the region. The featured organizations are RAFAM Internacional (Argentina), TeleDx (Chile), Bonanza Asistencia (Costa Rica), NudaProp (Uruguay), Contraticos (Costa Rica), Maturi (Brazil), Someone Somewhere (Mexico), CONAPE (Dominican Republic), Fundación Saldarriaga Concha (Colombia), Plan Ibirapitá (Uruguay), and Canitas (Mexico). These organizations were chosen based on criteria such as how innovative their business models are, the current size and growth potential of their initiatives, and their impact on society. This study is a first step towards mapping the silver economy in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the hope is to broaden the scope of this mapping exercise through future research and through the creation of a community of actors to promote the regional integration of initiatives in this field.

Approaches towards the formal learning of piano playing with respect to musicianship is one that demands the understanding of musical concepts and their applications. Consequently, it requires the boldness to immerse oneself in performance situations while trusting one’s instincts. One needs only to cultivate an amazing ear and a good understanding of music theory to break down progressions “quickly”. Like an alchemist, one would have to pick their creative impulses from their musical toolbox, simultaneously compelling their fingers to coordinate with the brain and the music present to generate “pleasant sounds”. My exploration leading to what will be considered Keyboard Musicianship did not begin in a formal setting. Rather it was the consolidation of my involvement in playing the organ at home, Sunday school, boarding school at Presec-Legon, and playing at weekly gospel band performances off-campus and other social settings that crystalized approaches that can be formally structured. In fact, I did not then consider this lifestyle of musical interpretation worthy of academic inclusivity until I graduated from the national academy of music and was taken on the staff as an instructor in September, 1986. Apparently, what I did that seemed effortless was a special area that was integral to holistic music development. The late Dr. Robert Manford, the then director of the Academy, assigned me to teach Rudiments and Theory of Music to first year students, Keyboard Musicianship to final year students, and to continue giving Piano Accompaniment to students – just as I have been voluntarily doing to help students. The challenge was simply this; there was no official textbook or guide to use in teaching keyboard musicianship then and I was to help guide especially non-piano majors for practical exams in musicianship. What an enterprise! The good news though was that exemplifying functionalism in keyboard, organ, piano, etc. has been my survival activity off campus particularly in church and social settings.Having reflected thoroughly and prayerfully, it dawned on me that piano literacy repertoires were crafted differently than my assignments in Musicianship. Piano literacy repertoires of western music were abundant on campus but applied musicianship demanded a different approach. Playing a sonata, sonatina, mazurka, and waltzes at different proficiency levels was different from punching chords in R&B, Ballard style, Reggae, Highlife or even Hymn playing. However, there are approaches that can link them and also interpretations that can categorize them in other applicable dimensions. A “Retrospective Introspection” demanded that I confront myself constructively with two questions: 1. WHAT MUSICAL ACTIVITIES have I already enjoyed myself in that WARRANT or deserve this challenging assignment? 2. WHAT MUSICAL NOURISHMENT do l believe enriched my artistry that was so observable and Measurable? The answers were shocking! They were: 1. My weekend sojourn from Winneba to Accra to play for churches, brass bands, gospel bands and teaching of Choirs – which often left me penniless. 2. Volunteering to render piano accompaniment to any Voice Major student on campus since my very first year. 3. Applying a principle, I learnt from my father – TRANSFER OF LEARNING – I exported the functionalism of my off-campus musical activities to compliment my formal/academic work. 4. The improvisational influences of Rev. Stevenson Alfred Williams (gospel jazz pianist), Bessa Simmons (band director & keyboardist) and at Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, Mr. Ray Ellis “Afro Piano Jazz Fusion Highlife” The trust and support from lecturers and students in the academy injected an overwhelming and high sense of responsibility in me which nevertheless, guided me to observe structures of other established course outlines and apply myself with respect to approaches that were deemed relevant. Thus, it is in this light that I selected specific concepts worth exploring to validate the functionalism of what my assignment required. Initially, hymn structures, chords I, IV, V and short highlife chordal progressions inverted here and there were considered. Basic reading of notes and intense audiation were injected even as I developed technical exercises to help with the dexterity of stiff fingers. I conclude this preface by stating that, this “Instructional guide/manual” is actually a developmental workbook. I have deliberately juxtaposed simple original piano pieces with musicianship approaches. The blend is to equip learners to develop music literacy and performance proficiencies. The process is expected to compel the learner to immerse/initiate themselves into basic keyboard musicianship. While it is a basic book, I expect it to be a solid foundation for those who commit to it. Many of my former and present students have been requesting for a sort of guide to aid their teaching or refresh their memories. Though not exhaustive, the selections presented here are a response to a long-awaited workbook. I have used most of them not only in Winneba, but also at the Callanwolde Fine Arts Center (Atlanta) and the Piano Lab (Accra). I found myself teaching the same course in the 2009 – 2013 academic year in the Music Department of the University of Education, Winneba when Prof C.W.K Merekeu was Head of Department. My observation is that we still have a lot of work to do in bridging academia and industry. This implies that musicianship must be considered as the bloodline of musicality not only in theory but in practice. I have added simplified versions of my old course outlines as a guide for anyone interested in learning. Finally, I contend that Keyboard Musicianship is a craft and will require of the learner a consistent discipline and respect for: 1. The art of listening 2. Skill acquisition/proficient dexterity 3. Ability to interpret via extemporization and delivery/showmanship. For learners who desire to challenge themselves in intermediate and advanced piano, I recommend my book, “African Pianism. (A contribution to Africology)”