scholarly journals Impacts of the state 4-H Council experience : a phenomenological study

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Bradd LeBow Anderson

Leadership has long been recognized as a subject central to the human experience. Prepared leaders can wield critical influence in the rise of cultures, the growth of human opportunity, and the lasting direction of world events. Studies of leadership inform the earliest writings of Aristotle, the history of warfare, the early success of the American space program, the impact of Nelson Mandela, and countless other examples of forces that have shaped our world today. It is logical to expect that the study of leadership will also inform the world of tomorrow, as young people mature to assume roles that guide the mechanisms of social change and cultural advancement. This study focuses on the impact of leadership experience, through engagement with a large-scale program designed to foster its effectiveness and success. The program is focused on the experience of adolescents and rooted at the University of Missouri, one of 69 Land Grant Universities, established by the Morrill Act of 1862 to expand access to higher education. Once established, the Smith-Lever Act of 1914 expanded the Land Grant University mission to include the Cooperative Extension Service, which will henceforth be referred to as Extension, an outreach component of Land Grant University programming which sent agents into rural areas to connect end users with the products of their university's agricultural science research. When they encountered target audiences who were unreceptive to their innovations, some of these agents found success in shifting their outreach focus from adults to youth, who were often more open to new approaches (www.4-h.org/about/4-h-history). ... The State 4-H Council model is an experiential youth development opportunity that is in line with the Missouri 4-H mission to engage youth as "valued, contributing members of their communities in partnership with caring adults" (4h.missouri.edu). It is intended to produce youth outcomes consistent with the Missouri 4-H vision to create an environment in which "youth and adults learn, grow and work together for positive change" (4h.missouri.edu). This study adds understanding to the impacts that can accrue from service on a state 4-H council and help inform the development of these councils in state 4-H programs beyond Missouri's borders. In doing so, this study will reveal elements of Missouri's State 4-H Council model that could be adapted by other avenues of leadership development, identifying factors that promote and detract from success and providing greater insight into the leadership experience.

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 174-181
Author(s):  
Maura Mbunyuza-deHeer Menlah

This article reports on a proposed evaluation plan that has been developed to assess the work done by the State Information Technology Agency (SITA). The SITA programme was implemented in response to the South African government’s call to improve the lives of the populations in some rural areas through technology. The programme was meant to address slow development in  rural  areas  that  lack  technological  innovations  and  advances.  In  the proposed evaluation plan a review is made of secondary data, deciding how strategic priorities are to be determined, as well as analysis of the rural context environment. The researcher gives an account of how the evaluation strategies are to be piloted and rolled out thereafter. Lessons learnt are recorded and reported upon. A proposed evaluation plan will be developed, based on the lessons learnt in line with the objectives of the project.


Author(s):  
Armanda Keqi ◽  
Bora Kokalari ◽  
Sabina Beqiri

Young generations are those who make lives livelier and happier, who design the future and make the change, the ones with full hope and enthusiasm to go further and make the impossible possible. As every country of Europe, Asia or America, Albania as well is surrounded by a very fruitful young ladies and gentlemen's. This paper aims to analyse the changes of the youth development in Albania during the transition period. The young development in Albania has faced many problems, such as the difference between the levels of development of the youths that live in the other cities of Albania with the ones of the capital. Rural areas and small towns are closed where a portion of youth in minor are totally dependent from family, and they are exactly that with their weak hands are inclined to do the heavy work to keep their family one more day alive. Youth at the opening of the borders, generally tended to leave towards legal immigration either as tourist or in illegal opportunities addressing major countries like Britain, Greece, Italy, Belgium etc. Albania needs to make arrangements which will be financed by businessmen, private universities in cooperation with the state to offer young people opportunities to work together and to be closer to each other and to show their skills in conversation competitions. At the same time the state has other open universities in backward areas which will provide young entrepreneurs' with more opportunities for young people to graduate and to serve different areas. Meanwhile, there is needed a strategy to separate the fields in which there is a need to have more expert in the field which is required to work also which would come more to help the country's economy with the addition of experts. Albania is a country blessed where high mountains finish in seas, where groundwater resources are numerous, and with a conductive climate to produce almost all kinds of fruits and where vegetation is very diverse. If the youth will be directed towards learning of foreign languages and in recognition of their territories, traditions and customs, thus, we would make a big step because tourism market is precisely the kind of market where young people will find themselves more comfortable than ever, where the labour force will be insufficient paid and where the demand for products would be required as the number of tourists would be great and just the requirements would change in terms of application areas during the summer as it would be for beaches and seasonal fruits, while during the winter for skiing and mountain tourism.


Author(s):  
Takeyra Collins Coats ◽  
Ron Ramsing ◽  
Eddie Hill ◽  
Kent Reifschneider ◽  
Chet Kramer

Complications associated with a complex chronic illness, specifically, type 1 diabetes, negatively impact youth as they struggle to maintain healthy lifestyles. Type 1 diabetes is the second most common chronic illness affecting youth as well as one of the most psychologically and behaviorally demanding illnesses. Fortunately, organized camps have been shown to positively influence long-term outcomes for youth. Family Diabetes Camp, the only family medical program in the state where this study occurred, was created in collaboration with a local university, a diabetes center at a hospital, and a chapter of the Lions Club. This collaborative camp program aimed to test the effect of active participation in a Family Diabetes Camp upon youth outcomes for campers with type 1 diabetes. Specifically, the purpose was to evaluate the impact of a collaborative medical camp on campers’ resilience and youth developmental outcomes (e.g., independence). Family Diabetes Camp was designed using Outcome-Focused Programming (OFP) to promote positive youth development. The Family Diabetes Camp included 50 campers for the pre-test and post-test (n= 19 males and n= 31 females). While there were no statistically significant differences from pretest (M=4.97, SD= .53) to post-test scores (M=5.01, SD= .46), with t(50) = -.56, p= .57) researchers found a slight increase in resilience from pre to post-test. Using a retrospective measure, campers showed gains in the seven critical youth development outcomes identified by the American Camp Association. Finally, campers learned new knowledge about site injection, carbohydrate counting, and the use of exercise to help manage their diabetes. The impact associated with adapting activities and an environment to encourage, analyze, and challenge resilient behaviors is essential in encouraging independence, shared experiences, and effective disease management for youth living with type 1 diabetes. The camp, solely staffed by volunteers, included physicians, diabetes educators, certified therapeutic recreation specialists, dietitians, nurses, pump specialists, recreation professionals and students, and Lions Club Members. The camp program is unique not only in how it fills a void for youth with type 1 diabetes but how three large organizations work in concert to meet the needs of entire families. These types of data can be instrumental in establishing more camps and other out of school time programming that positively impacts quality of life, health care cost, and mortality among youth with type 1 diabetes.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (19) ◽  
pp. 8142
Author(s):  
Wubamlak Ayichew Workneh ◽  
Jun Takada ◽  
Shusuke Matsushita

Sectoral economic growth data in Ethiopia show that the agriculture sector has the lowest growth, which is caused by frequent drought and inefficient technologies, among other factors. As a result, the productivities of land and labor, as well as the income of small-scale farm households, are very low, and rural areas have a relatively high poverty rate. A quasi-experiment was applied to understand the impact of using small-scale irrigation motor pumps on farmers’ livelihood improvement. Specifically, a survey was conducted in 2019 on a sample of 92 small-scale irrigation motor pump and canal irrigation users as the treatment and control groups. The weighted propensity score matching method was applied to eliminate initial differences and adjust sampling proportions across the groups. Based on the average treatment effect on the treated estimation results, we cannot state that the mean income difference in small-scale irrigation motor pump users and canal irrigation system users is different from zero. This indicates that countries with little capital to invest in large-scale irrigation projects can introduce household-level small-scale irrigation motor pumps to improve farmers’ incomes.


Author(s):  
Ellen F. Steinberg ◽  
Jack H. Prost

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book explores the state, shape, change, and evolution of Midwestern Jewish cuisine through time. It tracks geographically based culinary recipes and changes made to them through time by presenting and analyzing ones from Midwestern Jewish sources, both kosher and non-kosher. It documents the availability of fruits, vegetables, and other comestibles throughout the Midwest that impacted how and what Jews cooked; and considers the effect of improved preservation and transportation on rural and urban Jewish foodways. Then, it examines the impact on Jewish foodways—the cultural, social, and economic practices relating to the production and consumption of food—of large-scale immigration, relocation, and Americanization efforts during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, paying special attention to the attempts of social and culinary reformers to modify traditional Jewish food preparation and ingredients.


Blood ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 116 (21) ◽  
pp. 4775-4775
Author(s):  
Katharina Schallmoser ◽  
Christina Bartmann ◽  
Eva Rohde ◽  
Simone Bork ◽  
Christian Guelly ◽  
...  

Abstract Abstract 4775 Background: Based on promising experimental studies with mesenchymal stem and progenitor cells (MSPCs) multiple clinical trials have been initiated. In previous studies we have observed genomic stability of MSPCs after efficient short-term expansion in a humanized GMP compliant system with pooled human platelet lysate (pHPL) replacing fetal bovine serum (FBS) as the cell culture supplement (Schallmoser K. and Strunk D., Journal of Visualized Experiments (32) DOI: 10.3791/1523, 2009). Notably, depending on culture protocols, an extensive propagation with highly variable cell culture duration may be necessary to yield enough MSPCs for therapy. The decline in proliferation rates of MSPCs in the course of the different long-term expansion procedures may indicate a propensity for replicative senescence which may hamper long term functionality in vivo. We have therefore initiated a molecular profiling of senescence-associated regulated genes to determine the state of senescence before MSPC transplantation. Methods: Human bone marrow-derived MSPCs were cultured following a highly efficient two-passage protocol (primary culture of unseparated bone marrow and subsequent large scale expansion; Schallmoser K. et al., Tissue Engineering 14:185-196, 2008) compared to conventional serial passaging in three different growth conditions with regularly more then four passages to obtain comparable final cell numbers. Culture media were either supplemented with FBS in different concentrations or pHPL. Gene expression changes were tested by microarray analysis and selected targets were reanalyzed by quantitative real-time PCR. The genomic stability of MSPCs after long-term culture was determined by array comparative genomic hybridization (CGH). Results: Despite high proliferation rate large scale expanded MSPCs showed genomic stability in array CGH. Long-term MSPC growth induced similar gene expression changes in MSPCs irrespective of isolation and expansion conditions. In particular, genes involved in cell differentiation, apoptosis and cell death were up-regulated, whereas genes involved in mitosis and proliferation were down-regulated. Furthermore, overlapping senescence-associated gene expression changes were found in all MSPC preparations. The genomic copy number variations detected in MSPCs of early and late passages in all culture conditions did not coincide with differentially expressed genes. Conclusion: Our data indicate that MSPC expansion can induce gene expression changes independent of isolation and FBS-supplemented as well as FBS-free expansion conditions. A panel of genes will be presented that might offer a practicable approach to assess MSPC quality with regard to the state of replicative senescence in advance of therapeutic application. Determining the impact of senescence acquired during cell expansion on the therapeutic potential of MSCPs for both immune modulation and organ regeneration may help to develop more efficient treatment strategies. Disclosures: No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.


2009 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 667-673 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold Alderman ◽  
Biram Ndiaye ◽  
Sebastian Linnemayr ◽  
Abdoulaye Ka ◽  
Claudia Rokx ◽  
...  

AbstractThere are few studies of community growth promotion as a means of addressing malnutrition that are based on longitudinal analysis of large-scale programmes with adequate controls to construct a counterfactual. The current study uses a difference in difference comparison of cohorts to assess the impact on the proportion of underweight children who lived in villages receiving services provided by the Senegal Nutrition Enhancement Project between 2004 and 2006. The project, designed to extend nutrition and growth promotion intervention into rural areas through non-governmental organisation service providers, significantly lowered the risk of a child having a weight more than 2 sd below international norms. The odds ratio of being underweight for children in programme villages after introduction of the intervention was 0·83 (95% CI 0·686, 1·000), after controlling for regional trends and village and household characteristics. Most measured aspects of health care and health seeking behaviour improved in the treatment relative to the control.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rick Piccinelli

Due to a lack of emerging young talent, in 2012 the Football Federation Australia (FFA) created the National-Premier-League (NPL) to promote a greater focus on youth development. One of the main objectives was that elite players would transition through the state clubs’ youth systems with greater opportunities to play senior football. The success of this reform has often been questioned and thus this project assessed the number of homegrown players in senior NPL rosters, their age and game time participation during the 2018 Victorian season. The overall proportion of homegrown players is approximately 12%. Only three State NPL metropolitan clubs have successfully produced internally for over 20% of their rosters demonstrating that it is still possible to compete at a senior level without relying on an internal youth system. It was also discovered that over a quarter of all homegrown players are produced in rural areas and that on average homegrown appearance in senior games is only 5.7 %. These results overall show that the NPL succeeded in restricting the signing of older players but in comparison to overseas homegrown production, proportions are far inferior confirming the concerns expressed by authors in regard to Australian youth football development and its environment.


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