Organising for Donor Effectiveness: An Analytical Framework for Improving Aid Effectiveness

Donors have lagged behind aid recipients in adhering to the principles of aid effectiveness. Explaining the reasons for this demands greater awareness of organisational attributes within donor entities. To date, there have been only limited attempts to relate donor organisational factors to aid‐effectiveness goals. This article elaborates on a number of such relationships based on an empirical examination of donor dynamics in Norway, the UK and Canada. Donor effectiveness provides an important lens through which to build a robust post‐Busan global partnership.     

Organising Services for People with Mental Handicap: The Californian Experience

The organisation of services for California's mentally handicapped population is outlined and critically examined. Its distinctive features are noted: a concern for rights, rather than needs; an underlying free market philosophy; an explicit attempt to combine public and private enterprise; and an elaborate system of checks and balances designed to restrain the welfare bureaucracies and ensure that they remain responsive to the changing nature of individual need. It is argued that, despite certain limitations, the Californian system does seriously address three problems that bedevil all attempts to develop a satisfactory system of care for people with mental handicaps: the inherent powerlessness of the client group; the diversity and fragmentation of services; and bureaucratic inertia.     

Constructions of child and youth advocacy: emerging issues in advocacy practice

The development of child and youth advocacy has been informed by varying theoretical perspectives and in the last decade has been increasingly incorporated into policy and legislation for young people in receipt of welfare services. Through examining the varying perspectives of young people, advocates and commissioners of advocacy services it can be seen that although there is some consensus about how advocacy should be provided, the construction of advocacy by adults may have a significant impact on how it is experienced by young people. This paper draws on material from five advocacy projects to examine how advocacy is constructed by those involved in the provision and receipt of services. It argues that there is a danger that the construction of advocacy in an adult proceduralised way is likely to compromise its potential to challenge the structures that deny young people opportunities to participate in decision making about their lives.     

Child advocacy in Norway

SUMMARY. One of the first countries to establish an ‘Ombudsman’ for children was Norway. This article outlines the principles and practice of the Office and sets it in historical context. The author, the first and current Barneombudet, argues that the post has much potential, not just in assisting individual children, but in advancing new policies and legislation concerning young people.     

TRUCE for advocacy and peer education in tobacco prevention

In response to aggressive marketing of tobacco to college students, Florida's legislature allocated multi-settlement agreement dollars to fund tobacco prevention programming at state institutions of higher learning. The Student Tobacco Reform Initiative: Knowledge for Eternity (STRIKE) was one such program. Its purpose was to increase awareness and support college student advocacy for prevention. In this program note, we introduce Targeting, Resource Identification, and Unification for College Peer Education (TRUCE), the strategy used to facilitate implementation of STRIKE tobacco prevention programming by student advocates at a metropolitan university campus.     

Organising time: contraction,synthesis, contemplation

In his exploration of ‘repetition for itself’, Deleuze (2004a), beginning with Hume, invites us to see imagination, prior to understanding, as site of contraction of instants and place of synthesis of time, through contemplation. But synthesis and contemplation here are not the deliberative work of the mind. Rather, they occur ‘in the mind… prior to all memory and all reflection’ (91, original emphasis). Working through Bergson and Butler, Deleuze moves us up and down different levels of his contraction–synthesis–contemplation triptych in dizzying whorls of mutuality of the active and passive. Down to matter, through its contemplation by the ordering of organism; up to memory and its potential for reflection and representation; down again (or is that up?) to reminiscence. In the process time slips. not by but in and out, as variously both condition and agent. Kant and Descartes are contrasted, identity put in its place, the difference between repetitions of the eternal return celebrated. Kierkegaard, Freud, Lacan, Klein and Borges circle this difference, both nurturing and threatening it as they invite in and expel the suffocations of the same. Proust, Joyce, Caroll and, finally, Plato’s Socratic cipher cross the stage of the page as imitation and resemblance transform into simulacra and ‘give… way to repetition’ (156). It is a text about time and organisation and difference worth repeating. In this paper, such repetition is enacted through a close reading of the temporal in Michel Tournier’s Friday or the other island: a repetition of Defoe (his precursors and his political economic apologist followers) through which time, organisation and their sympathies are revealed in the re‐writing of a ‘world without others’ (Deleuze 2004b Deleuze, G. 2004b. “Michel Tournier and the world without others”. In The logic of sense, Edited by: Deleuze, G., Lester, M., Stivale, C. and Boundas, C.V. 341–59. London: Continuum.  [Google Scholar]).     

Child care policy: A need for greater advocacy

While some scholars have recognized the importance of child care to families in the United States (Kamerman, 2001; Waldfogel, 1998), child care has not been viewed as a core social policy concern in the United States. In this article, we provide an overview of child care needs in the U.S. followed by an analysis of three major federal programs that shape U.S. child care policy. The first, the Child Care Development Fund (CCDF), provides financial child care supplements to low-income parents to enable them to engage in paid labor. The second policy, The Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA), is technically a universally applicable policy enabling people to care for a family member in need, including all parents who choose to spend a few weeks of unpaid leave with a newborn child. The third is the U.S. tax policy, including child care exemptions, deductions and credits. We suggest that, though all of these policies exist to help families care for children, they fail the children and families that they are purportedly designed to help. We then discuss the crucial role that professionals who work with families and children can play in shaping U.S. child care policies.     

Young people's views of children's rights and advocacy services: a case for ‘caring’ advocacy?

This paper looks at some preliminary findings from research with young people in foster and residential care in the UK who have received advocacy services from a range of local authority and voluntary agencies. The study also includes the views of professionals, from both children's rights and social services. The initial findings highlight the importance to young people of their relationship with rights professionals. They speak about the value to them of care and respect, aspects not always seen as fundamental to rights work. Caring, in its various guises is seen by young people as a vital component of their relationship with children's rights workers. They also see this as important within advocacy work itself since caring about the outcome is often key. A pure individual rights focus with an emphasis on challenge and ‘being heard’ may not take account of the complexity of their situation and may pose difficult dilemmas for young people, especially in dealings with their carers. This ‘caring’ advocacy is not the paternalistic approach of a professional who ‘knows what's best for you’ but is a model based on a strong awareness of ways that young people are excluded and oppressed. It is also about placing a positive value on their contribution as citizens and links to a view of society that gives importance to an ethic of inter‐relationship and care as well as an ethic of individual rights. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Research project on advocacy and autism

This article presents the findings of a qualitative research project about the difficulties in accessing advocacy faced by adults labelled as having autism and Asperger's Syndrome in the Northwest of England. It is also an example of partnership working between three organisations. The article examines both the process of team-led (emancipatory) research and the project findings. Seven main themes emerged throughout the research: late diagnosis and lack of service support; bad experiences with systems of care; feelings of 'not belonging' (identity issues); barriers around communication and sensitivity towards individuals; lack of awareness and access to advocacy and rights; difficulties of 'fitting into' what is already available; and interest in developing knowledge around advocacy. Examination of the main themes pointed to a disturbing link between poor service response, episodes of crisis and mental ill health. The Carlisle People First Research Team is made up of 6 researchers who are labelled as having 'learning difficulties' who work in partnership with one other researcher.     

Judeo-Christian principles for employment organisation

Principles for organising employment in contemporary Western society can be interpreted from orthodox Judeo-Christian thought. The formulation of such principles and their implications are shown as derived from a current Protestant interpretative stream. This is not to detract from the contribution of Catholic Social Thought in this area, but to suggest an allied and compatible Christian emphasis. The approach constitutes an alternative basis from conventional reasoning for deducing forms of economic organisation, although it is still susceptible to economic assessment. The final section discusses feasible options applicable to intra-firm forms of private sector employment organisation by which the Judeo-Christian principles might be approached.     

The Indian diaspora in global advocacy

The activities of Indian diasporic activists in the subcontinent and North America are explored in order to question the simple dichotomies and categories through which advocacy networks are often understood. These dichotomies include West/non–West, violence/non–violence and local/global. The argument illuminates some of pressures, contradictions and fissures shaping the Indian diaspora’s involvement in advocacy issues. There are culturally specific spaces and strategies for advocacy practice, at the same time as advocacy issues acquire new meanings through involvement in more transnational networks.     

Laughing matters: humour as advocacy in education for the disabled

Humour is an advocacy tool used by women organisers in Sāmoa, an Independent State in the Pacific. Examining the use of humour (jokes, sarcasm, banter, and clowning) in social action research reveal creative ways that advocates and activists can challenge systems of normalcy. This paper examines humour as an informal conversational and non-confrontational strategy used by (non)disabled Indigenous women to support the creation of schools for disabled students. Thematic analysis of the data shows that the women’s use of humour supports their agenda of transforming exclusive structures in education and policy. Using humour as an organising strategy also shifts mainstream thinking about disabled people as easy targets of offensive and degrading humour. The paper explores humour as an organising strategy that provides new supports into inclusive spaces for the education of disabled people in the global South.     

Effectiveness of persuasive frames in advocacy videos

Using a three-condition, between-subjects experimental design (N = 152), this study investigates the persuasive effects of fear and humor in nonprofit advocacy-style videos. Findings indicate both fear and humor positively affect a behavioral willingness to change behaviors. Mediation analysis of the antecedent variables in the theory of planned behavior model also revealed significant indirect effects of each form of appeal through attitudes. Findings advance current conceptual and practical understanding of the persuasive power of nonprofit advocacy-style videos.