¡Canta Conmigo!

Sing, play, move, create, and experience joy with living musical traditions from Guatemala and Nicaragua. Suitable for use in families, schools, or community centers, this resource contains a playful collection of 90 songs, singing games, chants, and games the author learned from teachers, children, and families while living in several communities in both countries. While the majority of the songs are in Spanish, a few in a Mayan language, Kaqchikel, are included. Field videos, audio recordings, and select song histories are available on the companion website to witness the music in authentic contexts, guide in pronunciation, and trace musical origins. Ethnographic descriptions of locations where songs were learned and personal biographies of a few singers written in Kaqchikel or Spanish and translated to English allow the reader to develop a connection to the land and the musicians. Culturally responsive and sustaining teaching pedagogies are discussed alongside strategies to responsibly include the music in school curriculums. A brief history of Central America and an overview of music genres in the region are included to frame this song collection within historic, cultural, and musical contexts. ¡Ven a cantar y jugar! Come sing and play! The song pages are playfully and thoughtfully illustrated by Sucely Puluc from Guatemala.

Finding Central Vertices and Community Structure via Extended Density Peaks-Based Clustering

Community detection is a significant research field of social networks, and modularity is a common method to measure the division of communities in social networks. Many classical algorithms obtain community partition by improving the modularity of the whole network. However, there is still a challenge in community division, which is that the traditional modularity optimization is difficult to avoid resolution limits. To a certain extent, the simple pursuit of improving modularity will cause the division to deviate from the real community structure. To overcome these defects, with the help of clustering ideas, we proposed a method to filter community centers by the relative connection coefficient between vertices, and we analyzed the community structure accordingly. We discuss how to define the relative connection coefficient between vertices, how to select the community centers, and how to divide the remaining vertices. Experiments on both real and synthetic networks demonstrated that our algorithm is effective compared with the state-of-the-art methods.

Role of community centers in promoting sustainable regional life of community-dwelling older adults with frailty

Japan’s long-term care insurance system, which is a formal service, focuses only on older adults requiring care and support. Therefore, to create supportive communities for frail older adults, appropriate measures have been taken to establish community centers within their walking distance. However, the specific functions of these centers largely remain unknown. Accordingly, this study is aimed at clarifying the role of community centers by analyzing their services and management systems. In February 2020, we conducted a questionnaire survey (36% response rate) and four semi-structured interviews in O city, which has 36 community centers (81.45㎢, 36.4% elderly population). Results from the questionnaires revealed that the most frequent users of the community center were in their 70s (61.5%); such centers tended to provide informal services, such as exercises and cafes. Meanwhile, 57.2% of community centers collaborate with formal service providers. Community centers tend to be operated together with parent facilities, such as hospitals and nursing homes(61.2%). The results of the onsite survey showed that, in three cases, the community centers were situated within 200 meters of the parent facility. The findings show that these community centers facilitated creation of a supportive community that provides informal services to the frail elderly. Furthermore, they are operated in cooperation with formal service providers, hospitals, and nursing care facilities and are located in close proximity to one another. To summarize, the community centers continue to play a role in providing seamless services to the frail elderly even as their physical functions evolve.

Flow architecture for sustainable homes, office buildings, community centers and museums: In memory of Professor Mihály Csikszentmihalyi and poet Géza Szőcs

This trend research article accounts on a unique interdisciplinary collaboration of two highly creative personalities: psychologist Mihály Csikszentmihályi, Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Management at Claremont Graduate University and poet Géza Szőcs, President of the Hungarian Pen Club. Guidelines of Flow architecture were set: a new building should create dynamic spaces, sustain departure and return, bridge timeframes, create balance between lights and colors, and contain elements that surprise people.

THE IMPORTANCE OF “COMMUNİTY CENTERS” AS A CULTURAL INSTITUTION IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF REPUBLIC PERIOD MUSEUM

The development of museology in Turkey corresponds to the last period of the Ottoman Empire (westernization period). One of the main reasons why the idea of museology developed in a late period in Turkey was that the protection of cultural heritage did not gain importance. In this direction, the importance of protecting ancient artifacts in a building and being a museum has been understood late. However, thanks to the museum examples that Ahmet Fethi Pasha, one of the important statesmen of the period, saw during his European travels, the lack of a museum in Turkey was constantly mentioned. European museums, which influenced the Pasha, strengthened the idea of establishing a museum in Istanbul day by day. Thus, museology activities were started with the transformation of Hagia Eirene Church into a museum. Hagia Iri Church was the first example in Turkey in terms of forming the core of the idea of museology. Ottoman period museology, after the foreign directors, Osman Hamdi Bey was appointed as the museum director, and Turkish Museology was brought to life in a real sense. Osman Hamdi has spent a lot of effort to advance museology in accordance with the contemporary understanding of museology. Considering in this context, it has been a preparatory stage in the museum of the Republic Period. When we look at the museums of the Republic Period, museum activities were carried out with a rapid breakthrough under the leadership of Atatürk. Community Centers, were established in order to adopt the reforms made in this period to the public. In time, a “museum branch” was added to the Community Centers. With the museology branch, it was aimed to explain the importance of museology to the public and to be sensitive about it. In the community centers, ethnographic materials reflecting the culture of the people were collected in the first place. Thus, preliminary preparations were made for the museums to be established. The main purpose of the study is to emphasize the importance of the Community Centers established in the Republican Period in Turkish Museology. Thanks to the community centers and cultural institutions established under the leadership of Atatürk, the adoption of museology to the public and its contributions to museology will be expressed. In the study, the historical background of the community centers will be included and the connection of these institutions with museology will be tried to be expressed.

Engaging Vulnerable Romani Youth in Provision of Early Childhood Services

In this chapter, the importance of early childhood services to the later educational achievement, well-being, and future income of Romani youth is elaborated, especially from the perspective of the roles that youth can play in supporting their younger peers. Education policies may have different consequences for young Roma who sometimes choose assimilation to avoid discrimination—sometimes without success. As a result of the cross-generational neglect of Romani ethnicity, some Romani children and youth believe that success is only part of the identity of non-Roma, while performing well at school can be perceived by Romani youth as a non-Roma behavior. Involvement of young people in the provision of early childhood education and care (ECEC) may be an answer, dealing with both the youth and the absence of non-formal ECEC. There are many approaches to building positive awareness about ethnic identity. Initiatives such as the Romani Early Years Network support greater involvement of Roma and successfully promote the idea of ECEC provided in local contexts such as homes or community centers. The role of Romani youth is irreplaceable in this work.

Serial Readers United

Through an exploration of Kuwait’s independent bookstores, the article challenges the reputation of Gulf Arab monarchies as generally lacking a reading culture. It treats independent bookstores as urban spaces designed to enable participation in the practices and rituals of reading books and as indicators of reading microcultures in the country. Run by readers and writers, independent bookstores fill a gap in the cultural landscape in order to cultivate highbrow readership. They nurture emerging communities of readers, creating intimate spaces that blur the boundaries of public and private. They balance art and commerce to assume roles as arbiters of taste, community centers, and literary-cultural societies. Aided by social media, their activities spill over into the wider community and expand beyond the borders of Kuwait, attesting to the resilience of historical patterns of the Arab world of letters and the emergence of the Gulf as a new center in the circuit.

Impact of Radiation Oncology Alternative Payment Model on Community Cancer Centers

PURPOSE: An episode-based payment model, the Radiation Oncology Alternative Payment Model (RO-APM), is scheduled to go into effect in January 2022. This article investigates the effects of RO-APM on hospital-based and freestanding community centers. METHODS: Historical Medicare data used to generate the RO-APM base rates were reviewed. A sensitivity analysis was performed to show how the RO-APM reimbursements compare with current reimbursements for commonly accepted treatment schedules and with current reimbursements at a large community practice. RESULTS: The RO-APM base rates represent a 2.2% decrease in overall Medicare reimbursement. Freestanding centers have historically billed at higher rates than hospital-based centers, however, and the RO-APM base rates represent a 6% decrease in global reimbursement for freestanding centers. The sensitivity analysis showed that, except for proton therapy, moderately hypofractionated treatment schedules will receive comparable reimbursement under RO-APM. Treatments using higher numbers of fractions of intensity-modulated radiation therapy or protons will see larger decreases in reimbursement. Application of the RO-APM base rates to the 2020 Medicare treatments in our health care network would result in small changes in expected reimbursement, but our sensitivity analysis indicated that Medicare reimbursement reductions could be as large as 23%. CONCLUSION: Compared with historical Medicare reimbursement, RO-APM base rates provide lower reimbursement for many common treatment scenarios, and this will have a larger effect on centers that use complex treatment techniques and longer fractionation schedules or have a large Medicare population.

The History and Current Challenges of Libraries in Japan

Japan's libraries have many positive attributes and continue to evolve. However, many library sectors struggle with serving users because of staff outsourcing, library leadership, and a focus on circulation statistics that prevent them from developing into 21st-century information and community centers. This paper reviews the history and current status of each library sector, including their services and staffing. It then examines their current challenges and how professionalism, librarian education, and community engagement are the main challenges to their success and suggests recommendations to elevate them to compete in the global arena.

The Role of Community Centers in Promoting the Sport Practicing in Saudi Society – The Descriptive Study on Community Centers in Jeddah –: دور مراكز الأحياء في تعزيز الممارسة الرياضية لدى المجتمع السعودي – دراسة وصفية على مراكز الأحياء بمدينة جدة –

This study aims to reveal the role of the community centres in promoting sports activities the in Saudi society, and to identify the motives that enhance practicing sports in the Saudi society, and to identify the obstacles that limit practicing sports in the Saudi society, and in order to reach these goals the study relied on the descriptive approach and on the questionnaire tool for collecting data, and the sample members were beneficiaries of sporting activities in community centres in Jeddah. The study concluded that community centres have increased practicing sports among Saudi society, and that individuals who benefit from sports activities in community centres are mostly the age group between 19-30 years old, the study has also found that practicing sports activities decreases when the age variable increases. Entertainment motivations for practicing sports have obtained the highest rating among beneficiaries of sports activities in community centres, where it has scored more than health, psychological, and social motives, the study has also found that social motivations enhance sports practice in Saudi society, especially the tendency of those who actually practice sports in the community centres to play sports with other people. And finally; the study points to the bearing that a percentage of the sample members find "societal obstacles" limiting the physical exercise of Saudi society to some degree.