Desired support system to eradicate urban homelessness: an exploratory descriptive study

Background - The new increasing homeless lately consist of women, children, youth, the elderly and marginalized ethnic or migrant groups. Some of them are working and earn salaries, however, the income is not sufficient to live modestly. Purpose – The purpose of this research is to establish a desired support system to eradicate urban homelessness in the country. Design/methodology/approach – This is an exploratory descriptive method study which employed quantitative techniques. The study employed a social ecological model to investigate behavior of homeless via multiple levels of influences including intrapersonal, interpersonal, organizational, community and public policy. Surveys have been conducted on sixty-five homeless individuals. Findings – It was found that support systems and structures should be derived from the whole streams from families, communities, organizations and government. Employment opportunities, long-term shelters within the community places and highly demanded skills are needed to improve their living condition. Research limitations – This study is only focused on the socio-economic structures of the homeless in a capital city. Originality/value – This is an empirical research using a social ecological model for the homeless in the Kuala Lumpur area. Research on homeless study has received little attention and has yet to be fully explored.

Indigenous Knowledge as Resource to Poverty

This chapter examines the ways in which African rural youths and women seek opportunities to innovate and adapt indigenous knowledge as a locally developed resource of community resilience in the attempt to reduce household poverty. Two case groups are discussed in this chapter, and both engaged in self-employment enterprises. The groups drew upon their ecological and cultural knowledge, enabling themselves through shoestring budgets to sustain their livelihood and community wellbeing. The chapter shows that unemployment affects young people and rural women from all occupations and ethnic groups, a situation that puts them in a vulnerable and precarious living condition and possibly in poverty trap. The analysis showed that for most of youth found on the Tanzania's streets and urban municipalities, a secondary education has not proven useful in practical knowledge, skills, values, or attitudes necessary to enter the world of work or to become self-employed.

The Effect of Islamic Financial Literacy and Financial Inclusion toward Financial Planning among Millennial: Financial Behaviour as an Intervening Variable

Islamic financial literacy and financial inclusion are important for improving the living condition of people. Combination of Islamic financial literacy understanding and high financial inclusion index will affect the behavioral ability of people in making financial planning. In Indonesia, Islamic financial literacy and inclusion are still low, not only for youngsters but also among adults. Even though good knowledge and access to Islamic finance will help millennials to be able to identify financial products and services as their financial planning. The aim of this study is to describe the influence of Islamic financial literacy and financial inclusion on financial planning by using financial behaviour as a intervening variable. This study is descriptive quantitative research. 96 respondents are involved in the study directly through a survey method. This study used 2 (two) stages of analysis. The first stage is to find the level of respondent Islamic financial literacy. The last stage is path analysis to determine the influence of each variable. Analysis results have shown that Islamic financial literacy has no direct impact on financial planning. However, Islamic financial literacy and financial inclusion have a significant impact on financial behaviour. Furthermore, the financial behaviour has mediated the relationship between Islamic financial literacy and financial inclusion with financial planning. It shows this affects toward financial planning is 26,4%.

SOCIAL CULTURE AND PUBLIC PARTICIPATION IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF KAMPUNG KOTA: A CASE STUDY IN BANDUNG INDONESIA

Kampung Kota has been associated with slums due to its substandard living condition despite having different characteristics to slums. To improve the quality of life of Kampung Kota community; it is important to actively involve the community itself to transform Kampung Kota to better direction and to exercise the democracy within urban development. The research aims to understand in what ways the community has been involved, how the community perceived their involvement, how the community wish to be involved and in what ways community participation could be improved in transforming Mekarjaya and maximizing its social capital. The research was conducted using qualitative methodology and case study strategy. Interviews, observation and documentary evidences are used to collect the data and to validate the date by cross-checking every information using triangulation technique. The research finds that the community has not been actively involved in many programs and projects due to the nature of the government programs that support the funding. However, most of the people; whose voice are generally represented by the head of RT/RW (Community unit/neighbourhood unit); are far more eager and willingly contribute to the development if they have the platform to do so.

Taxonomic composition and condition of tree plantations of roadside strips in Kyiv

Aim. The analysis of the taxonomic composition and living condition of tree plantations of roadside strips in Kyiv. Methods. Determination of the species composition and viability of trees and shrubs was carried out by route survey on test areas along the routes with different traffic intensity. The plants living condition was established according to the methodology developed by us, which provides an integrated vitality assessment based on a set of morphometric, reproductive and phenological features. Results. It is established that in the conditions of traffic flow of high intensity 23, of moderate 27 and of low 29 species of trees and bushes were found on the test areas. The tree plants of most common genera and species of roadside plantations are identified. The plants living condition analysis showed, that in the conditions of traffic flow of high intensity, plants of moderate and low vitality predominate; while in the conditions of moderate and low traffic intensity, the predominant numbers of plants have high vitality. Conclusions. Analysis of the range of roadside plantations indicates its limited and almost complete absence of conifers. The species composition is not optimal and is not always determined by the degree of resistance to transport pollution specific conditions. The woody plants vitality is largely determined by the traffic intensity and compliance with care technology.

Lived Experiences, Academic Performance, and Aspirations of a Muslim Learner in a Public High School

This study was conducted to narrate the experiences, academic performance, and aspirations of a Muslim learner in a public high school. The findings of the study served as the basis for understanding the learning situation and performance of the learner. Specifically, this study sought to: describe the living condition of the Muslim learner in terms of family income and size and how these affected her academic performance; discuss the aspirations, experiences, and challenges of the Muslim learner in a public high school; and describe the academic performance of the Muslim learner during her stay in a public high school. The researcher employed the qualitative research design, particularly the case study method of research. The researcher, later on, came up with themes to describe the experiences and performance of the Muslim learner and a recommendation for future research was also made by the researcher. These were the themes presented in this paper: (1) Experiences in a public high school. (2) Quality of education. (3) Family support. (4) Academic performance. (5) Dreams and aspirations. It can be noted that the respondent had positive experiences in her stay in a public high school. She did not feel any discrimination and untoward incident of her being a Muslim. However, she pointed that she would have wanted to have Muslim teachers or included in the curriculum will be lessons specifically for them, as specified in Madrasah education. She had struggled a lot, though, in her academic performance, because of difficult situations she had experienced.

Remittances and Economic Growth in Niger: An Error Correction Mechanism Approach

Migration has for a long time been a significant source of revenue for a huge number of persons in the Republic of Niger. In order to improve their families living condition, a great number of young people in Niger follow the migration path. In 2019, a total of 293 million U.S. dollars has been sent by migrants to their family members in Niger (World Bank, 2019), that is 3% of Niger GDP. The study used various time series econometric techniques including unit root test, Engle-Granger cointegration test, vector equilibrium correction method and some diagnostic tests on the residuals to inspect the connection between remittances and economic growth in Niger. The empirical results showed that there is the existence of a long run relationship between remittances and economic growth in Niger. The error correction term’s coefficient shows that about 51.62% of the discrepancy between long run and short run is corrected with a yearly data suggesting an acceptable rate of adjustment to equilibrium. Also, in the short run ceteris paribus a 10% increase in the remittances would lead to 2.03% increase in Niger Gross Domestic Product.

Diogenes Syndrome: Identification and Distinction from Hoarding Disorder

“Severe domestic squalor” or Diogenes syndrome is characterised by extreme self-neglect of environment, health, and hygiene, excessive hoarding, squalor, social withdrawal, and a distinct lack of concern or shame regarding one’s living condition. This report presents a case of a 51-year-old male admitted to the hospital psychiatric ward following the police removing him from his home. Police officers attended the man’s home following the alarm being raised by his stepfather that he had not been seen or heard from in 3 weeks. His home was covered in several feet of rubbish, rotting food, and debris and smelled intensely of rotting mould, urine, and faeces. He was found lying nude on top of garbage with a rug over him. Diogenes syndrome is highly comorbid with psychiatric and somatic disorders, including depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, personality disorder, and stress. This case report provides a rare opportunity to better understand the distinction of Diogenes syndrome from the closely related condition hoarding disorder. Furthermore, creating an agreed-upon constellation of symptoms representative of Diogenes is essential to creating a formal Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) entry, which would facilitate the much-needed development of assessment measures to enable accurate diagnosis and treatment.

Re-imagining freedom as elderly female porters: A study of buruh gendong at Beringharjo traditional market of Yogyakarta

This paper expects to reveal the struggle of elderly female porters or buruh gendong who mostly had a historical background of working in industrial production (factory) but ended up being self-employed at Beringharjo traditional market of Yogyakarta. They used to work as factory workers. However, most factories collapsed in the aftermath of the 1997 economic crisis, especially in Southeast Asia. These older people from peri-urban (and rural) areas with lower-class status ended up in urban areas to be self-employed and became precarious workers. Therefore, the research questions are how they cope with the income uncertainties only to meet their daily needs and still desire their children to have a better living condition. Observations and interviews were done with 25 elderly female traditional porters as the research methods from 2020. They are primarily in the age range of late 50-80 years old. The results show that income uncertainties and social insecurity bring about precariousness. Buruh gendong have to work every day only to make ends meet. However, these conditions could also open up alternative perspectives that they often found themselves liberated from the control of industrial production. They do not work for capital owners or bosses; they work for themselves (self-employed). They are free or more flexible on working hours, but, at the same time, they have to accept their insecure employment. Buruh gendong also have desires for their children to be able to achieve a higher education level. Eventually, the desires are mostly unfulfilled; their children get unfortunate work and still live barely.

Evaluation of the United States COVID-19 vaccine allocation strategy

Background Anticipating an initial shortage of vaccines for COVID-19, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the United States developed priority vaccine allocations for specific demographic groups in the population. This study evaluates the performance of the CDC vaccine allocation strategy with respect to multiple potentially competing vaccination goals (minimizing mortality, cases, infections, and years of life lost (YLL)), under the same framework as the CDC allocation: four priority vaccination groups and population demographics stratified by age, comorbidities, occupation and living condition (congested or non-congested). Methods and findings We developed a compartmental disease model that incorporates key elements of the current pandemic including age-varying susceptibility to infection, age-varying clinical fraction, an active case-count dependent social distancing level, and time-varying infectivity (accounting for the emergence of more infectious virus strains). The CDC allocation strategy is compared to all other possibly optimal allocations that stagger vaccine roll-out in up to four phases (17.5 million strategies). The CDC allocation strategy performed well in all vaccination goals but never optimally. Under the developed model, the CDC allocation deviated from the optimal allocations by small amounts, with 0.19% more deaths, 4.0% more cases, 4.07% more infections, and 0.97% higher YLL, than the respective optimal strategies. The CDC decision to not prioritize the vaccination of individuals under the age of 16 was optimal, as was the prioritization of health-care workers and other essential workers over non-essential workers. Finally, a higher prioritization of individuals with comorbidities in all age groups improved outcomes compared to the CDC allocation. Conclusion The developed approach can be used to inform the design of future vaccine allocation strategies in the United States, or adapted for use by other countries seeking to optimize the effectiveness of their vaccine allocation strategies.