Moving beyond Limitations: Designing the Helpdys App for Children with Dyslexia in Rural Areas

Dyslexia is a relatively common language disorder which is generally ignored in rural communities. It hinders children’s learning processes and, in some cases, is the cause of dropouts or violence in schools. The present work strives to create a web and mobile app as a preliminary step towards the diagnosis and treatment of dyslexic children. Apps providing didactic educational games and activities improve literacy skills for students with reading disabilities. The current work incorporates user experience and prototyping to fulfill app requirements. The authors evaluated the apps with the Mobile App Rating Scale (MARS) tool to assess engagement, functionality, aesthetics, and information. The app’s improvements were immediately implemented and tested in the “Escuela Linea Equinoccial” (Ecuador) school, proving its utility for future use in the education system. The app can be a valuable tool for children with dyslexia to progress successfully through school, raising their self-confidence and, thereby, helping them reach their full potential as adults able to make a positive contribution to society.

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A Model Rural Inclusive Postsecondary Program for Students With Intellectual Disability

Rural Special Education Quarterly ◽

10.1177/87568705211032380 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 40 (4) ◽

pp. 191-202

Author(s):

Gerlinde Beckers ◽

Colleen Klein-Ezell

Keyword(s):

Intellectual Disability ◽

Rural Communities ◽

Rural Areas ◽

College Experience ◽

Full Potential ◽

Program Outcomes ◽

Federal Financial Aid ◽

Employment Skills ◽

Rural Settings ◽

Postsecondary Program

Lions Connected (LC) is an inclusive postsecondary program approved by the U.S. Department of Education; thus meeting rigorous program standards and accountability. Equally important is that it gives eligible students from rural areas the opportunity to receive federal financial aid to attend college. The purpose of developing LC was to meet the needs and desires of the surrounding rural communities by providing postsecondary opportunities for students with intellectual disability (ID) to enhance their social, academic, and employment skills alongside peers without disabilities. This article describes the program in detail as well as program outcomes, including employment in rural home communities. LC students receive a true college experience while preparing to become contributing members in society regardless of where they live. By following LC’s program structure, there are multiple opportunities for supporting students with ID in rural settings and helping them garner a college experience and become successfully employed in their community and reach their full potential.

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THE SHIFT FROM THE RURAL LIVELIHOOD IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM TO A MOVEMENT IN JAPAN

Journal of Asian Rural Studies ◽

10.20956/jars.v5i2.2969 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 5 (2) ◽

pp. 111

Author(s):

Kazuko Tatsumi

Keyword(s):

Rural Communities ◽

Rural Women ◽

Rural Areas ◽

Active Role ◽

Improvement Program ◽

The Sustainable Development ◽

Self Confidence ◽

Rural Livelihood ◽

Livelihood Improvement

Rural communities have long endured poverty, and they continue to tackle the problems of depopulation, a declining birth rate, and an aging population in Japan. Some rural communities face a crisis of survival. The question of this study are how sustainable communities in rural areas are being created. This study examine the process by which rural women have transformed the Livelihood Improvement Program (LIP) into a movement. The process was to expand rural women’s activities to enable them to play an active role in their family, women’s groups, and their community. This expansion reflects the effects of the LIP in rural areas. The LIP was started by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry in Japan in 1948 to develop self- reliant farmers. The women tried to find solutions to their problems using LIP approaches including problem-solving and the three-by-five cognitive method in group discussions. The LIP was a long-term program and officially ended in 2004. However, the LIP has been continued as a movement for the sustainable development of their community by the women. This study focuses on a case study at the community level involving an update of the LIP program in Yamaguchi Prefecture. The analysis is based on a literature review, secondary and historical data, and fieldwork carried out between 2004 and 2020. From a medium- to long-term viewpoint, their self-confidence improved and they became self-reliant famers. Now women in the older generations are creating employment opportunities through community businesses so that the younger generations may choose to remain in the rural areas in the future. There has been an increasing tendency for young people who moved to the cities to study or work to return to their hometowns. This study found that the most important aspects in susutainable community development are people’s initiative, identity, and pride.

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Emergent Literacy in Spanish-Speaking Children With Developmental Language Disorder: Preliminary Findings of Delays in Comprehension- and Code-Related Skills

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research ◽

10.1044/2020_jslhr-19-00239 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 63 (12) ◽

pp. 4193-4207

Author(s):

Amy S. Pratt ◽

John A. Grinstead ◽

Rebecca J. McCauley

Keyword(s):

Emergent Literacy ◽

Language Disorder ◽

Literacy Skills ◽

Future Research ◽

Developmental Language Disorder ◽

Writing Ability ◽

Transparent Orthography ◽

Spanish Speaking ◽

Phonological Structure ◽

Name Writing

Purpose This exploratory study describes the emergent literacy skills of children with developmental language disorder (DLD) who speak Spanish, a language with a simple phonological structure and transparent orthography. We examine differences between children with DLD and their typically developing (TD) peers on a battery of emergent literacy measures. Method Participants included 15 monolingual Spanish-speaking children with DLD (who did not present with cognitive difficulties) and 15 TD controls matched for age, gender, and socioeconomic status, ranging in age from 3;10 to 6;6 (years;months; M age = 4;11). All children completed a battery of comprehension-related emergent literacy tasks (narrative retell, print concept knowledge) and code-related emergent literacy tasks (beginning sound, rhyming awareness, alphabet knowledge, and name-writing ability). Results On average, children with DLD performed significantly worse than TD controls on a battery of comprehension- and code-related emergent literacy measures. On all code-related skills except rhyming, children with DLD were more likely than their TD peers to score “at risk.” Conclusions The results suggest some universality in the effect of DLD on reading development. Difficulties with emergent literacy that are widely documented in English-speaking children with DLD were similarly observed in Spanish-speaking children with DLD. Future research should explore long-term reading outcomes in Spanish for children with DLD.

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TURNING FARMERS INTO SOCIAL FARMER ENTREPRENEURS FOR DISADVANTAGED PEOPLE

NORDSCI Conference proceedings, Book 1 Volume 3 ◽

10.32008/nordsci2020/b1/v3/31 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Remus Runcan

Keyword(s):

Rural Communities ◽

Low Income ◽

Rural Areas ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Health And Safety ◽

Physical Work ◽

Healthy Environment ◽

Rural And Urban Areas ◽

Rural Development Programme ◽

Rural And Urban

According to Romania’s National Rural Development Programme, the socio-economic situation of the rural environment has a large number of weaknesses – among which low access to financial resources for small entrepreneurs and new business initiatives in rural areas and poorly developed entrepreneurial culture, characterized by a lack of basic managerial knowledge – but also a large number of opportunities – among which access of the rural population to lifelong learning and entrepreneurial skills development programmes and entrepreneurs’ access to financial instruments. The population in rural areas depends mainly on agricultural activities which give them subsistence living conditions. The gap between rural and urban areas is due to low income levels and employment rates, hence the need to obtain additional income for the population employed in subsistence and semi-subsistence farming, especially in the context of the depopulation trend. At the same time, the need to stimulate entrepreneurship in rural areas is high and is at a resonance with the need to increase the potential of rural communities from the perspective of landscape, culture, traditional activities and local resources. A solution could be to turn vegetal and / or animal farms into social farms – farms on which people with disabilities (but also adolescents and young people with anxiety, depression, self-harm, suicide, and alexithymia issues) might find a “foster” family, bed and meals in a natural, healthy environment, and share the farm’s activities with the farmer and the farmer’s family: “committing to a regular day / days and times for a mutually agreed period involves complying with any required health and safety practices (including use of protective clothing and equipment), engaging socially with the farm family members and other people working on and around the farm, and taking on tasks which would include working on the land, taking care of animals, or helping out with maintenance and other physical work”

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Tackling Rural Health, Energy, … and Technological Issues All at Once: A Call for a Global Interdisciplinary Platform for Strengthening Rural Setting Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic

Challenges ◽

10.3390/challe12020016 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 (2) ◽

pp. 16

Author(s):

Farshad Amiraslani

Keyword(s):

Rural Communities ◽

Rural Health ◽

Rural Areas ◽

Rural Setting ◽

Global Challenges ◽

Rural Settings ◽

Research Studies

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has revealed flaws in rural settings where most people live without the necessary tools, income, and knowledge to tackle such unprecedented global challenges. Here, I argue that despite the research studies conducted on rural areas, these have not solved rising rural issues, notably poverty and illiteracy. I propound a global institute to be formed by governments that provides a platform for empowering rural communities through better training, skills, and competencies. Such global endeavour will ensure the remaining rural communities withstand future pandemics if they occur.

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Evaluating the quality and safety of health-related apps and e-tools: Adapting the Mobile App Rating Scale and developing a quality assurance protocol

Internet Interventions ◽

10.1016/j.invent.2021.100379 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 100379

Author(s):

Anna E. Roberts ◽

Tracey A. Davenport ◽

Toby Wong ◽

Hyei-Won Moon ◽

Ian B. Hickie ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Quality Assurance ◽

Rating Scale ◽

Mobile App ◽

Quality And Safety ◽

Health Related

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Solid Biomass Energy Potential as a Development Opportunity for Rural Communities

Energies ◽

10.3390/en14123398 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 14 (12) ◽

pp. 3398

Author(s):

Mariusz Jerzy Stolarski ◽

Paweł Dudziec ◽

Michał Krzyżaniak ◽

Ewelina Olba-Zięty

Keyword(s):

Rural Communities ◽

Rural Areas ◽

Renewable Energy Sources ◽

Biomass Energy ◽

Energy Sources ◽

Energy Potential ◽

Development Opportunity ◽

Biomass Resources ◽

Administrative Units ◽

Solid Biomass

Conventional energy sources often do not fully satisfy the needs of a modern economy, especially given the climate changes associated with them. These issues should be addressed by diversification of energy generation, including the development of renewable energy sources (RES). Solid biomass will play a major part in the process in Poland. The function of rural areas, along with a well-developed agricultural and forest economy sector, will be a key aspect in this as these areas are suitable for solid biomass acquisition in various ways. This study aimed to determine the solid biomass energy potential in the commune of Goworowo to illustrate the potential in the smallest administrative units of Poland. This research determined the environmental and natural conditions in the commune, which helped to identify the crucial usable solid biomass resources. The total energy potential of solid biomass resources in the commune of Goworowo amounted to 97,672 GJ y−1. The highest potential was accumulated in straw surplus (37,288 GJ y−1) and the lowest was in wood from roadside maintenance (113 GJ y−1). This study showed that rural areas could soon play a significant role in obtaining solid biomass, and individual communes could become spaces for the diversification of energy feedstock.

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Rwanda’s Land Policy Reform: Self-Employment Perspectives from a Case Study of Kimonyi Sector

Land ◽

10.3390/land10020117 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 10 (2) ◽

pp. 117

Author(s):

Mireille Mizero ◽

Aristide Maniriho ◽

Bosco Bashangwa Mpozi ◽

Antoine Karangwa ◽

Philippe Burny ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Rural Areas ◽

Policy Reform ◽

Binary Logistic Regression ◽

Literacy Skills ◽

Land Policy ◽

Binary Logistic Regression Analysis ◽

Self Employment ◽

Expropriation Risk ◽

Main Activity

Rwanda’s Land Policy Reform promotes agri-business and encourages self-employment. This paper aims to analyze the situation from a self-employment perspective when dealing with expropriation risk in rural areas. In this study, we conducted a structured survey addressed to 63 domestic units, complemented by focus groups of 47 participants from Kimonyi Sector. The binary logistic regression analysis revealed that having job alternatives, men heading domestic units, literacy skills in English, and owning land lease certificates (p < 0.05) are positively and significantly related to awareness of land expropriation risk. The decision of the head of the domestic unit to practice the main activity under self-employment status is positively influenced by owning a land lease certificate, number of plots, and French skills, while skills in English and a domestic unit’s size have a positive and significant influence on involvement in a second activity as self-employed. Information on expropriation risk has no significant effect on self-employment. The domestic unit survey revealed that 34.9% of the heads of domestic units only have one job, 47.6% have at least two jobs in their everyday life, 12.7% have a minimum of three jobs, and 4.8% are inactive. The focus group synthesis exposed the limits to self-employment ability and facilities.

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Community readiness for collecting stray dogs in Aradan County: a quantitative‐qualitative study

Irish Veterinary Journal ◽

10.1186/s13620-021-00184-4 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 74 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Tahereh Kamalikhah ◽

Somayeh Mirrezaei ◽

Tahereh Rahimi ◽

Leila Sabzmakan ◽

Safiye Ghobakhloo

Keyword(s):

Rural Areas ◽

Rating Scale ◽

Public Awareness ◽

City Council ◽

Community Readiness ◽

Community Knowledge ◽

Stray Dogs ◽

Community Readiness Model ◽

Six Dimensions ◽

Community Climate

Abstract Background Paying more attention to free-roaming dogs’ population control seems to be necessary because of public health and environmental problems. The present study used the community readiness model to determine the readiness of Aradan County in terms of collecting stray dogs. Methods This study is a quantitative-qualitative research study conducted in Aradan County in Semnan Province of Iran. The semi-structured questionnaire uses the six dimensions of the Community Readiness Model as guideline, with 36 items used for the interview. The interviews lasted 45 to 100 minutes with 11 key members including the governor, prefect, mayor’s assistant, city council chairman, key trustees, officials responsible for environmental health network, officials responsible for environmentalism of the city, and governors of a rural district. In quantitative part two, assessors read the interviews carefully and assigned scores based on the rating-scale form suggested by the guideline itself for scoring each dimension. A qualitative directed content analysis with deductive approach was used for analyzing the collected qualitative data. Results The study involved 11 key members of Aradan County, all of whom were male. Most of the participants were over 40 years old and with five years of work experience (73.6 %). The mean score of each six dimensions in Aradan County were: Community efforts (4.78), Community knowledge of efforts (4.28), Leadership (4.90), Community climate (4.38), Community knowledge about the issue (4.20) and Resources related to the issue (3.29) respectively. Community readiness in Aradan County and Aradan City was generally estimated to be in the preplanning stage, whereas vague public awareness was found in the rural areas. In the qualitative part, 870 initial open codes, 589 refund codes, 19 subcategories and 6 themes emerged, including (a) community efforts, (b) community knowledge of the efforts (c) leadership, (d) community climate, (e) community knowledge of the issue, and (f) resources related to the issue. Conclusions For improving the process of collecting the stray dogs, it is necessary to focus on holding educational sessions for the public to increase their partnership and justify the responsible organizations’ activities to collaborate and provide the necessary financial resources.

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Evaluation of Community Resilience in Rural China—Taking Licheng Subdistrict, Guangzhou as an Example

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health ◽

10.3390/ijerph18115827 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 18 (11) ◽

pp. 5827

Author(s):

Jianhong Fan ◽

You Mo ◽

Yunnan Cai ◽

Yabo Zhao ◽

Dongchen Su

Keyword(s):

Spatial Distribution ◽

Rural Communities ◽

Rural Areas ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Rural China ◽

Social Resilience ◽

Learning Abilities ◽

The Sustainable Development ◽

Guangzhou City ◽

Local Sustainability

Resilience of rural communities is becoming increasingly important to contemporary society. In this study we used a quantitative method to measure the resilience regulating ability of rural communities close to urban areas—in Licheng Subdistrict, Guangzhou City, China. The main results are as follows: (1) Rural systems close to urban areas display superior adapting and learning abilities and have a stronger overall resilience strength, the spatial distribution of which is characterized by dispersion in whole and aggregation in part; (2) the resilience of most rural economic subsystems can reach moderate or higher levels with apparent spatial agglomeration, whilst the ecological subsystem resilience and social resilience are generally weaker; the spatial distribution of the former shows a greater regional difference while the latter is in a layered layout; (3) some strategies such as rebuilding a stable ecological pattern, making use of urban resources and cultivating rural subjectivity are proposed on this basis, in order to promote the sustainable development of rural areas and realize rural revitalization. This work also gives suggestion for the creation of appropriate and effective resilience standards specifically targeted for rural community-aiming to achieve the delivery of local sustainability goals.

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