Arctic Floods: Impacts on the Lives of Local Communities in Russia and the United States

ABSTRACT The literature suggests that nonprofit organizations provide civic benefits by promoting engagement within local communities. However, there exists minimal empirical evidence describing the ways in which nonprofits actually undertake this role. In order to address this omission, we conducted interviews with personnel of nonprofit organizations in one rural community in the United States. Our preliminary findings indicate that nonprofit organizations promote civic engagement through programs and activities that: 1) engage volunteers and donors; 2) bring community members together; 3) collaborate with organizations within and beyond the community; and 4) promote community education and awareness. Together, these findings help to develop a working model to understand the civic footprint of nonprofit organizations with methodological implications for future research that would seek to measure the extent to which nonprofits promote civic engagement. Il est normal de supposer que les associations à but non lucratif favorisent l’engagement du citoyen dans les communautés locales. Cependant, il existe peu de données empiriques sur la manière dont ces associations assument véritablement ce rôle. Pour combler ce manque, nous avons mené des entretiens semi-directifs approfondis auprès du personnel d’associations à but non lucratif dans une petite communauté rurale aux États-Unis. Nos résultats préliminaires indiquent que ces associations motivent les citoyens à s’impliquer quand elles offrent des programmes et des activités qui : 1) intéressent les bénévoles et les donateurs; 2) rassemblent directement ou indirectement les membres de la communauté; 3) collaborent avec d’autres associations tant au sein de la communauté qu’au-delà de celle-ci; et 4) encouragent l’éducation et la conscientisation communautaires. Ces constats aident à établir un modèle pour mieux comprendre la présence civique des associations à but non lucratif dans les communautés et indiquent une piste à suivre pour des recherches futures qui examineraient l’influence de ces associations sur le niveau de participation civique.

Download Full-text

Bicycling, Birding and #BLM across America in a Summer of Chaos

Biodiversity Information Science and Standards ◽

10.3897/biss.4.59303 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 4 ◽

Author(s):

Scott Edwards

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Social Media ◽

National Level ◽

Political Stability ◽

The United States ◽

Local Communities ◽

Rural America ◽

The Pacific ◽

The Us ◽

White Violence

From 6 June to 20 August, 2020, I undertook a 76-day, ~3800 mile bicycle trip across the United States from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans. In this talk I will share with you some of the amazing people, landscapes and birds I encountered, mostly in rural towns and along blue highways. The gradually changing birdscape, both in sight and sound, underscored the sensitive ecological gradients to which birds respond, as well as the ability of some species to thrive in agricultural monocultures. Rivers large and small regularly benchmarked my progress, as well as the western journey of Lewis & Clark over 200 years ago. The recent incidents in the US involving African Americans as targets of white violence inexorably caused me to festoon my bicycle with #BlackLivesMatter (#BLM) signs and share my experiences on social media. I encountered a variety of reactions, often positive and occasionally sharply negative, in a sea of generosity and extraordinary kindness as I wheeled my way through towns on the brink of collapse, vast private ranches and the occasional city. Rural America exhibits an abundance of loyalty and empathy for local communities, yet it is sometimes hard for Americans – myself included – to empathize with people they have never met in person. Two imperatives I took away, with ramifications for both biodiversity and political stability, were the need to somehow bring divergent communities together and to encourage empathy at the national level, among communities that otherwise experience each other only on TV.

Download Full-text

Community College Leadership and Technology

Technology and Its Impact on Educational Leadership ◽

10.4018/978-1-4666-0062-1.ch015 ◽

2012 ◽

pp. 187-201

Author(s):

Petra A. Robinson ◽

Tyra Metoyer ◽

David Byrd ◽

Dave Louis ◽

Fred A. Bonner

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Community College ◽

Community Development ◽

The United States ◽

Junior Colleges ◽

Local Communities ◽

Community College Leadership ◽

College Leadership ◽

Virtual Age ◽

College Leaders

Community colleges serve an important role in local communities across the United States. These institutions, based on their mission, seek to fulfill a social contract as partner in community development in the 21st century. Their function in local and the wider US community is undeniably important; more than half of the college students enrolled in the United States attend community, technical, and junior colleges (Pew Research Center, 2009). Community college leaders face especially challenging times given the economic, social, political, and technological contexts within which these institutions operate. This chapter brings focus to the various nuances of community college educational leadership with specific focus on technology in this new virtual age.

Download Full-text

The Woods around the Ivory Tower: A Systematic Review Examining the Value and Relevance of School Forests in the United States

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su12020531 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 12 (2) ◽

pp. 531

Author(s):

Kimberly J. Coleman ◽

Elizabeth E. Perry ◽

Dominik Thom ◽

Tatiana M. Gladkikh ◽

William S. Keeton ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Higher Education ◽

United States ◽

Systematic Review ◽

Ecosystem Services ◽

The United States ◽

Local Communities ◽

Ivory Tower ◽

Institutions Of Higher Education ◽

Cultural Ecosystem Services ◽

Research And Teaching

Throughout the United States, many institutions of higher education own forested tracts, often called school forests, which they use for teaching, research, and demonstration purposes. These school forests provide a range of benefits to the communities in which they are located. However, because administration is often decoupled from research and teaching, those benefits might not always be evident to the individuals who make decisions about the management and use of school forests, which may undervalue their services and put these areas at risk for sale, development, or over-harvesting to generate revenue. To understand what messages are being conveyed about the value and relevance of school forests, we conducted a systematic literature review and qualitatively coded the resulting literature content using an ecosystem services framework. While school forests provide many important benefits to academic and local communities, we found that most of the existing literature omits discussions about cultural ecosystem services that people may receive from school forests. We discuss the implications of this omission and make recommendations for addressing it.

Download Full-text

Providing Hearing Education and Resources for Underserved Populations (HEAR-UP) in our Local Neighborhoods

Seminars in Hearing ◽

10.1055/s-0040-1708509 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 41 (02) ◽

pp. 124-132

Author(s):

Kathleen Costigan Coyan ◽

Elaine Mormer

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Community Service ◽

Hearing Aids ◽

Underserved Populations ◽

Healthcare Services ◽

The United States ◽

Local Communities ◽

Local Form ◽

Educational Organizations ◽

The Past

AbstractHealthcare services in the United States are difficult to access for at least 10% of our population. Moreover, hearing healthcare services, including hearing aids, are largely inaccessible even for those individuals who may have health insurance and access to healthcare. Humanitarian audiology has been recognized as a means of supplying hearing services and devices to underserved populations around the globe. However, little has been publicized about humanitarian audiology projects taking place in local communities within the United States. This article describes one such project that has been in place in Pittsburgh, PA, for the past 4 years. This service results from collaboration across a collection of healthcare, community service, charitable, and educational organizations. The resources necessary to create similarly sourced services in other U.S. locations are described. Challenges and solutions for this local form of humanitarian audiology are discussed.

Download Full-text

The problem with the expanding horizons model for history curricula

Phi Delta Kappan ◽

10.1177/0031721719834024 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 100 (6) ◽

pp. 20-26

Author(s):

Kevin S. Krahenbuhl

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Content Knowledge ◽

The United States ◽

Local Communities ◽

Elementary Grades ◽

Specific Content ◽

The Past ◽

History Curriculum ◽

Child Centered ◽

Oriented Approach

The history curriculum in the United States, particularly in the elementary grades, has long been in need of a revamp, argues Kevin Krahenbuhl. The predominant model of history education, expanding horizons (EH), which begins with students’ local communities and expands outward, is built on incorrect assumptions about what young people are able to understand. In addition, the child-centered nature of the EH approach can lead to “presentism,” in which the past is evaluated in terms of present-day understandings. The focus on skills over content in EH also denies the extent to which growth in historical skill requires content knowledge. Krahenbuhl proposes an expertise-oriented approach that includes specific content and practices and a broad and deep examination of content.

Download Full-text

Landside Access to Seaports in Urban Areas: A Case Study

Transportation Research Record Journal of the Transportation Research Board ◽

10.3141/1602-08 ◽

1997 ◽

Vol 1602 (1) ◽

pp. 49-56 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Arun Chatterjee ◽

Joseph E. Hummer ◽

David B. Clarke ◽

Scott M. Ney

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

North Carolina ◽

Land Use Planning ◽

Urban Areas ◽

East Coast ◽

The United States ◽

Local Communities ◽

Planning Processes ◽

Local Levels

Seaports in the United States usually are located in urban areas. They are major traffic generators on the landside. However, the landside access needs of ports often are overlooked by the transportation and land-use planning processes. A case study of three ports on the East Coast of the United States was performed: Savannah, Georgia; Wilmington, North Carolina; and Morehead City, North Carolina. Both highway and rail access issues were examined at regional and local levels. Several serious issues and problems are identified and discussed in the paper, including effects on local communities.

Download Full-text

Nation

Practices of Hope ◽

10.18574/nyu/9781479818273.003.0002 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Christopher Castiglia

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

National Identity ◽

Cold War ◽

The United States ◽

Local Communities ◽

The Other ◽

Ideology Critique ◽

National Belonging ◽

European Culture ◽

The Cold War

Taking the Cold War state to be the origin of diffused suspicion, abstract enemies, and totalizing explanations, this chapter contends that contemporary ideology critique—based on the same dispositions—melancholically reproduces rather than challenges Cold War epistemologies. As an alternative, the chapter offers the practice of hope Granville Hicks and Constance Rourke developed around the empty signifiers nation, exceptionalism, and activism, concepts most often targeted by New Americanists (and New Historicists in general). Hicks argued for two Americas, one synonymous with capitalism and hence worthy of critique, and the other based on local communities that use nationhood to organize against capitalism and the models of national exceptionalism it requires. For Hicks, patriotism is an organizing concept for the economically disadvantaged majority who are weakened by their denied access to rhetorics of national belonging. Constance Rourke, turning to folkways that transform European culture into something distinctly American, focused on the specificity of cultures produced by distinctive communities within the United States, yet she used the particularity of cultural formations as the basis, rather than simply a renunciation, of national identity.

Download Full-text

Fracked Taxpayers and Communities

The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Environmental Politics ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197515037.013.38 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Shanti Gamper-Rabindran

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

United States ◽

Oil And Gas ◽

Institutional Support ◽

Indigenous Communities ◽

The United States ◽

Local Communities ◽

Environmental Costs ◽

Formidable Challenge ◽

The Us

The US and Argentinian shale industry enjoyed staunch support from domestic political, financial, and legal institutions, which enabled the industry to expand while externalizing financial, public health, and environmental costs to the general public. The Argentinian government’s decision to finance shale investments and the US and Argentinian governments’ decisions to finance the industry bailout sustained the industry even as its poor financial outlook that predated the COVID-19 crisis became widely acknowledged. State and provincial governments in both the United States and Argentina employed the legal system to prohibit local government and local communities, including Indigenous communities, from restricting shale development and infrastructures in their localities. Politicians’ support for the industry, cloaked as concerns for workers and communities, fortified the industry’s privileges. Reforming the entrenched institutional support for the industry, although a formidable challenge, is necessary for these countries to shift away from oil and gas dependency.

Download Full-text

A Little Reverse Missions: In Search of a Global Perspective in Worship

Review & Expositor ◽

10.1177/003463730910600208 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 106 (2) ◽

pp. 207-220

Author(s):

C. Michael Hawn

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

The United States ◽

Local Communities ◽

Global Perspective ◽

First Century ◽

The Past ◽

Current Century ◽

Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽

To Receive ◽

The Church

Throughout history the church has often been slow to recognize developments in the sciences and reorder its thinking about God's creation accordingly. The church in the northern world is now facing the reality that Christians in the southern hemisphere outnumber them two to one. The seeds of the gospel planted during the great mission movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have taken hold and Christianity is flourishing in many places in the south. Are Christians in the northern hemisphere ready to receive the gifts of worshiping communities through song and prayer from their southern sisters and brothers? Given the patterns of immigration to the United States, this is not an academic proposal but a reality of the twenty-first century. Congregations in the current century will need a global perspective in local communities. We dare not be as slow to respond to this reality as the church has been to scientific discoveries in the past. This article offers strategies for reciprocal mission mindedness in our worship.

Download Full-text