Increasing aging and advocacy competency: the intergenerational advocacy pilot project

The Council on Social Work Education's (CSWE) Strengthening Aging and Gerontology Education for Social Work (SAGE-SW) project, funded by the John A. Hartford Foundation partnered with the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare (NCPSSM) to develop an Intergenerational Policy and Advocacy Project (IAP). This curriculum pilot project, based on a community organization model, was conducted with 13 baccalaureate social work (BSW) and master's social work (MSW) programs across the country and 122 students. The project was one method to pursue CSWE SAGE-SW's efforts to infuse aging content into social work foundation curricula, to support intergenerational teaching, to strengthen social work advocacy skills, and to provide social work students with positive experiences working with older adults. Pilot sites were asked to carry out the project as part of an existing course foundation or field practicum course. Project activities included collaboration with a variety of community agencies, holding issues or "town hall" forums in order to educate community members about critical policy issues affecting older adults; making contacts and establishing relationships with local, state and/or federal legislators; and conducting assessments of the service needs of older adults in the students' communities. Questionnaires, feedback, pre-post evaluations as well as brief accounts of each project are presented. Participants considered the IAP to be a successful project in terms of the objectives of increasing awareness and competency among social work students of aging issues and of promoting intergenerational linkages between older people and social work students.     

Intentional youth programs: taking theory to practice

Early adolescents benefit most from program opportunities where they can be actively engaged in their own learning and development and where there is a good fit between their developmental needs and the intentional learning opportunities provided by the program. The theoretical framework presented here suggests that the two most important features of an engaging youth program are an intentional ethos of youth development and an intentional strategy to design and implement developmentally appropriate learning experiences. Practical examples from research and community practice are used to illustrate program strategies for early adolescents that emphasize intentional thought, decisions, and actions every step of the way.     

Sources of Volunteer Motivation: Transformational Leadership and Personal Motives Influence Volunteer Outcomes

We examined the separate influences of volunteers' personal motives and their team leaders' behaviors on volunteer satisfaction and contributions, along with mediating processes suggested by self‐determination theory. Participants were 302 volunteers who worked in teams at various sites through a central agency. As predicted, both personal motives for volunteering and transformational leadership influenced volunteer satisfaction through enhanced work meaningfulness and higher‐quality team relationships. However, motives that predicted volunteer contribution were different from those that predicted satisfaction. Whereas satisfaction was positively associated with motives concerning esteem enhancement and value expression, contribution was positively associated with motives to gain understanding and negatively related to motives pertaining to esteem enhancement and social concerns. Transformational leadership was positively associated with volunteer satisfaction, but not with volunteer contributions. The theoretical ramifications of these findings are discussed, along with practical implications for the recruitment and retention of volunteers.     

A PRACTICAL SETTING FOR EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING ABOUT SUPPLY CHAINS: SIEMENS BRIEF CASE GAME SUPPLY CHAIN SIMULATOR

Siemens Brief Case Game Supply Chain Simulator provides a practical setting for experiential learning exercises about supply chains. The game, drawing upon an actual situation, models the jobs of nine supply chain activities required to transform an order placed by the customer into a delivered product. Using the detail and complexity of the game, instructors can develop learning exercises that focus on a wide range of supply chain management issues. This paper describes two learning exercises with different objectives and for different audiences that we successfully delivered using the Brief Case Game. One exercise provides a concrete example of typical activities in a supply chain and their interactions. The other exercise leads students to discover what creates a need for coordination, what activities in a supply chain require coordination, and what methods work well. These exercises are suited for small upper level undergraduate and graduate courses in logistics and supply chain management. While significant resources were used to develop exercises and deliver the game, students were enthusiastic about the approach and demonstrated that they learned about the complexity inherent in managing supply chains.     

The Waterbirth Project: São Bernardo Hospital experience

Introduction

The following quantitative observational study aimed to analyse the maternal and neonatal outcomes of 90 low-risk pregnant women who gave birth in water at São Bernardo Hospital.

Climate-induced cross-border migration and change in demographic structure

Population and Environment - As climate change threatens livelihoods in Bangladesh, migration to neighboring countries in South Asia may accelerate. We use multiple types of data to predict how...     

Journey towards independent living: resilience processes of women leaving residential care in South Africa

Among the many youth transitioning to young adulthood, a group that has been found to be particularly vulnerable is young people transitioning out of care, particularly residential care. Research on this population of youth has burgeoned over the past few decades, but in South Africa it remains limited. This article focuses on the resilience processes that facilitate better transitions of young women out of care and towards independent living. It replicates the research design of a previous study with young men, with the aim of determining to what extent the resilience process of young women are similar to those of men. A sample of nine women was purposively selected, interviewed in-depth and data analysed using grounded theory methods. The findings indicate that the same resilience process found among male care-leavers are evident also in the narratives of female care-leavers, confirming the findings of the previous study. However, these processes had a slightly stronger relational focus among women than was seen among men. The authors conclude that similar resilience-building programmes can be implemented to prepare both males and females for leaving care.