Community Development

Forthcoming seminars on Community Development: November 2014 to May 2015

The following seminars to be held at the University of Glasgow will be of interest to academics, policy makers and practictioners from a variety of areas including community development, youth work, adult education, housing and regneration.

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Wednesday, 29 October, 2014

Scotland and Malawi: an old partnership, a new approach?

Scotland and Malawi have a shared history dating back more than 155 years to the travels of Dr Livingstone. Today, it is estimated more than 94,000 Scots are involved in a people-to-people link with Malawi, and 46% personally know someone working with Malawi. This is a unique national effort defined and underpinned by a spirit of dignified two-way partnership, in which the government is working in synergy with civic society, mobilising support and engagement from communities across Scotland.

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Friday, 24 October, 2014

Reducing Poverty and Income Inequality to Deliver Social Inclusion

This briefing will give you an in-depth look at the steps being taken to tackle poverty and develop income equality across Scotland. Benefit from informed debate and discussion and take advantage of a platform to learn and to share best practice solutions for delivering a socially inclusive Scotland.

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Thursday, 23 October, 2014

CR&DALL Seminar Series 2014-15: Institutionalising Community Based Research ‐ Not as Easy as it Sounds: A Conversation

Community University Research Partnerships, Community University Engagement and Public Engagement in Higher Education are amongst the most often discussed topics in Higher Education in many parts of the world.

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Tuesday, 21 October, 2014

CR&DALL visits Ethiopia

Submitted by Rod Purcell on

In early September Rod Purcell and Dave Beck from CR&DALL visited the University of Jimma in Ethiopia.

The University of Jimma is rated as the No 1 public university in Ethiopia and 39th in Africa. It has 42,000 students and offers a full spectrum of course provision including Medical and Agricultural Schools. The city of Jimma has a population of around 120,000 and is a major regional centre in the south west of of Ethiopia.

What makes Jimma unusual is its extensive and well developed commitment to community engagement. This is reflected in the university strap line: ‘we are in the community’. The university runs the local hospital, health centres, has a free legal aid centre, and establishes local social enterprises. Without doubt the university is a major contributor to the economic and social development within its local region.

Students across all undergraduate and post graduate programmes are organised into inter-disciplinary teams, undertake training courses and are then located in the community. The students work with local leaders and organisations on problem solving schemes including schooling, health, housing, and transport provision. The students receive academic credit for this work.

Rod and Dave held a series of meetings with the President of the University and members of his senior management team. Under discussion were  possible joint research and development initiatives with CR&DALL around community engagement, the role of schools in the community and the contribution to social justice from the community engagement programme.

Sports Shoes | Nike

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Adult education and place: a vital link for learning cities

The importance of adult education has been affirmed in recent policy documents in several countries, justified in terms of its benefits to individuals and the wider benefits society draws from having a better educated population.

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Thursday, 4 September, 2014

Education: What's the smartest post-2015 target?

The Copenhagen Consensus Center has just released its latest research series on Education targets for the post-2015 agenda. What is the smartest education target? Reduce by 50% the proportion of children not in pre-school in sub-Saharan Africa. For every dollar spent, the net benefit is 33 dollars:

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Friday, 29 August, 2014

Education for All - the Muscat Agreement

One of the most interesting documents in relation to Education for All initiated by UNESCO in Jomtien in 1990 and reaffirmed in Dakar in 2000 is the Muscat Agreement which I attach for reference of subscribers.

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Saturday, 23 August, 2014

International Winter School 2015

The international Winter School ‘Comparative Studies on Adult and Lifelong Learning’ is dedicated to
analysing and comparing international and European strategies in Lifelong Learning. Based on social policy models, Lifelong Learning strategies in Europe, including selected European countries, will be subjected to a critical analysis.

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Tuesday, 12 August, 2014

Cities, Universities and Science

Submitted by Dummy on

In a government reshuffle in Britain in July 2014, newly appointed universities Minister and Cabinet Member Greg Clark assumed a role expanded from that of his predecessor David Willetts. Cities were added to his portfolio. The Times Higher Education leader for 24 July, Closing the “town-gown” gap, mentions a concern that this further signals ‘the reduction of universities into economic tools or “engines of growth”’. More positively, and more in line with the mission and purposes of PASCAL (see Learning Cities 2020), the Editor notes recognition of ‘the day-to-day focus of many UK universities, whose effort are often overshadowed by the attention-grabbing research elite’; and concludes that ‘cities might not be the most glamorous addition to the universities and science brief but… it should be a valuable one’.

The same issue of THE carries an article by the Conservative former Deputy Prime Minister Michael (Lord) Heseltine noting that universities already play a vital local and regional role: Clark’s appointment ‘indicates the government’s determination to empower Britain’s great cities and their economies’. Certainly for the ‘rest-of-England’ regions that watch resources and qualified people draining into the London-and-the-South-East corner - and who if of historical bent might recall William Cobbett’s scathing descriptions of the Great Wen and its financiers and dealers - the initiative should be welcome. Policy-watchers might be forgiven a little scepticism as they recall an early action by the same Administration: abolition of the Regional Development Agencies (RDAs), with competitive bidding for a modest part of the lost revenue by new local enterprise partnerships. If what Heseltine calls rebalancing our economy and rebuild our cities does ‘rebalance’ the huge advantage enjoyed by the London region (albeit trivial compared with the Korean rebalancing of Seoul and the rest of the Republic of Korea a decade ago) that must surely be a welcome and overdue initiative, and an indirect boost for Britain’s many potential ‘learning cities’.

We should note however that the discourse is couched just in terms of economic growth. PASCAL government-watchers – and lobbyists – might bear in mind the title of one of the Observatory’s earliest books, published in 2005: Rebalancing the social and economic. This notion looks if anything still more fanciful than it did a decade ago.

 

Chris Duke 9 August 2014

Sport media | Releases Nike Shoes

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