Education Commons^™

Giving A Voice To The Powerless: Participatory Monitoring & Evaluation As A Tool For Inclusive Development Through Microfinance, Evan T. Burke

Capstone Collection

The greatest experts on the situation of the marginalized peoples of the world are the marginalized communities themselves. This paper explores how participatory monitoring & evaluation can be a powerful tool for giving voices to marginalized communities, ensuring that the voices of beneficiaries and local stakeholders are heard and inform sustainable project design. It analyzes a participatory monitoring and evaluation methodology implemented for women’s credit cooperatives in Gujarat, India by the Human Development & Research Centre, and examines lessons to be learned to design evaluations facilitating inclusive development.

Strategies for the monitoring and evaluation of microfinance have evolved along with …

Museum Activism And Social Responsibility: Building Museum Education Programs For Juvenile Offenders, Elizabeth E. Sirhall

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Museums are important to their communities and serve many significant purposes to society. The traditional viewpoint of a museum’s function is that they are there to preserve and interpret collections for the sake of facilitating deeper understanding and education for museum audiences. However, museums are also viewed as institutions that can bring people in the community together, promote social activism, and develop programs aimed towards creating positive changes within communities. In today’s world, museums are finding this task increasingly difficult due to financial challenges and struggling to stay socially relevant for diversified audiences. In facing this challenge, it is imperative …

Spoken Language To Be Embraced And Avoided Around Disability: Words That Impact Identity And Sense Of Achievement, Jessica M. Rodrigues

Capstone Collection

The focus of this capstone is verbal language spoken to or about persons with disabilities. Language in this case study is discussed as words and phrases that are supportive and less supportive of how students see themselves, their identity, and sense of achievement. Three focus groups were held with students at Landmark College in Putney, Vermont to collect samples of their experiences and input their voices into this case study, adding value and depth to the existing literature. Disability is looked at through the lens of multiculturalism; as experiences that people with disabilities have with others and their environment are …

The Benefits Of Giving Back: Volunteerism In Adolescence And Emerging Adulthood, Kaitlyn Bouthillette

Honors Theses

Volunteerism has been on the rise on college campuses for the past few decades. In response to this growing interest, opportunities to volunteer through local service, mission trips, and service learning classes have expanded. Researchers of this fairly new phenomenon have focused on the short and long term benefits of undergraduate volunteerism and why students volunteer. Research has also been conducted on high school volunteerism and its benefits. This study adds to the knowledge of volunteerism across the life span, focusing particularly on adolescence and young adulthood. This thesis attempts to fill in the gaps of previous research by looking …

Racism Vs. Social Capital: A Case Study Of Two Majority Black Communities, Bruce W. Strouble

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Several researchers have identified social capital as a means to improve the social sustainability of communities. While there have been many studies investigating the benefits of social capital in homogeneous White communities, few have examined it in Black homogeneous communities. Also, there has been limited research on the influence of racism on social capital in African American communities. In this dissertation a comparative case study was used within a critical race theory framework. The purpose was to explore the role of racial oppression in shaping social capital in majority African American communities. Data were collected from 2 majority Black communities …

Walls Have Ears But They Also Speak –A Comparative Study Of Two Playgrounds, Anna Hirson-Sagalyn

Senior Projects Spring 2015

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

A Study Of Factors That Influence Partnerships Between Universities And Nonprofit Organizations, Vicki L. Jozefowicz

Online Theses and Dissertations

This study examined factors that influence partnerships between universities and nonprofit organizations. Specifically, the study examined how nonprofit leaders characterize “effective” University-Nonprofit Partnerships; strategies that nonprofit leaders have employed to develop effective relationships with universities; and barriers that nonprofit-leaders perceive as inhibiting these partnerships. The study utilized qualitative analyses to learn strategies that have contributed to effective University-Nonprofit Partnerships, to recognize barriers to these partnerships, and to identify strategies for overcoming the barriers. The study examined the experiences of seven nonprofit leaders who had worked in partnership with universities.

The results of this study show evidence that while University-Nonprofit Partnerships …

The Art Of Voluntelling: Research On Mandated And Altruistic Volunteers, Tyler Kalahar

Masters Theses

A comparison of mandated and altruistic volunteers that completed community service hours was conducted. Participants were enrolled at a mid-sized, mid-Western university. T-test and correlational analysis were conducted on data gathered through the Community Service Attitudinal Scale (2000). The data was used to compare and contrast the characteristics of mandated and altruistic volunteers. Mandated volunteers (M = 5.73, SD = 1.40) reported feeling like they were not making as much of an impact performing community service compared to altruistic volunteers (M = 6.61, SD = 1.17) at significance level (t(72) = 2.88, p< 0.01). Altruistic (M=6.25, SD=1.35) …

Experiential Language Learning: A Short-Term Study Abroad Program To Quetzaltenango, Guatemala For Canton High School, Michelle Traub

Capstone Collection

Canton High School (CHS) is a 485 student, small upper-middle class public school located in Canton, Connecticut. The mission of the school involves preparing productive, tolerant and responsible citizens with the character and independence to embrace and contribute to the global world. However, CHS is limited in its ability to provide students with opportunities to connect with the world outside of Connecticut and the United States, both linguistically and culturally. Although the majority of Canton students take a language class freshman year, the number of students continuing on in learning a language drops every year thereafter. Many students state that …

School Gardens: Cultivating A Child’S Nutritional Habits, Environmental Knowledge, And Sustainability Practices, Jeffrey Meltzer

Honors Theses

School gardens have existed since the late nineteenth century and today are becoming increasingly popular in many parts of the world, including where I studied in Maine and Australia (AUS). Multiple organizations support school gardens in Maine, including the Maine School Garden Network, which has over 125 registered school gardens. In AUS, the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation primarily supports the school garden movement and has over 800 registered school gardens. While many researchers have studied school gardens, few have compared two countries, focused on environmental sustainability, or investigated Maine in particular. This thesis combines information from literature reviews, and …