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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social issues > Poverty
This book analyses the accessibility and success of vocational
training programmes for unemployed and disadvantaged youth in
Sub-Saharan Africa. Examining the implementation of vocational
education and training programmes, the author assesses various
internal and external enabling factors that can help foster youth
employment. In doing so, the author presents a solid base for
robust and evidence-informed practice and policy making for
vocational training programmes, analysing such themes as
employability skills, the labour market, and work-integrated
learning. It also emphasises the importance of stakeholders taking
into account the enabling and disabling environments found in a
given local, regional or national context. It will be of interest
to scholars of vocational training programmes in Sub-Saharan Africa
and elsewhere, as well as of youth poverty and unemployment.
Today's globalised world means offshore finance, airport boutiques
and high-speed Internet for some people, against dollar-a-day
wages, used t-shirts, and illiteracy for others. How do these
highly skewed global distributions happen, and what can be done to
counter them? New Rules for Global Justice engages with widespread
public disquiet around global inequality. It explores
(mal)distributions in relation to country, class, gender and race,
with international examples drawn from Australia to Zimbabwe. The
book is action-oriented and empowering, presenting concrete
proposals for 'new rules' in regard to climate change, corruption,
finance, food, investment, the Internet, migration and more.
The number of children living in families with incomes below the
federal poverty level increased by 33 percent between 2000 and
2009, resulting in over 15 million children living in poverty. Some
of these children are able to overcome this dark statistic and
break the intergenerational transmission of poverty, offering hope
to an otherwise bleak outlook, but this raises the question-how? In
Fostering Resilience and Well-Being in Children and Families in
Poverty, Dr. Valerie Maholmes sheds light on the mechanisms and
processes that enable children and families to manage and overcome
adversity. She explains that research findings on children and
poverty often unite around three critical factors related to risk
for poverty-related adversity: family structure, the presence of
buffers that can protect children from negative influences, and the
association between poverty and negative academic outcomes, and
social and behavioral problems. She discusses how the research on
resilience can inform better interventions for these children, as
poverty does not necessarily preclude children from having
strengths that may protect against its effects. Importantly,
Maholmes introduces the concept of "hope" as a primary construct
for understanding how the effects of poverty can be ameliorated. At
the heart of the book are interviews with family members who have
experienced adversity but managed to overcome it through the
support of targeted programs and evidence-based interventions.
Student leaders provide unique perspectives on the important role
that parents and teachers play in motivating youth to succeed.
Finally, professionals who work with children and families share
their observations on effective interventions and the roles of
culture and spirituality in fostering positive outcomes. Excerpts
from these interviews bring research to life and help call
attention to processes that promote hope and resilience. This book
will be invaluable for policymakers, educators, and community and
advocacy groups, as well as scholars and students in family
studies, human development, and social work.
An instant classic. --Arianna Huffington Will inspire people from
across the political spectrum. --Jonathan Haidt Longlisted for the
Porchlight Business Book of the Year Award, an essential shortlist
of leadership ideas for everyone who wants to do good in this
world, from Jacqueline Novogratz, author of the New York Times
bestseller The Blue Sweater and founder and CEO of Acumen. In 2001,
when Jacqueline Novogratz founded Acumen, a global community of
socially and environmentally responsible partners dedicated to
changing the way the world tackles poverty, few had heard of impact
investing--Acumen's practice of "doing well by doing good."
Nineteen years later, there's been a seismic shift in how corporate
boards and other stakeholders evaluate businesses: impact
investment is not only morally defensible but now also economically
advantageous, even necessary. Still, it isn't easy to reach a
success that includes profits as well as mutually favorable
relationships with workers and the communities in which they live.
So how can today's leaders, who often kick off their enterprises
with high hopes and short timetables, navigate the challenges of
poverty and war, of egos and impatience, which have stymied
generations of investors who came before? Drawing on inspiring
stories from change-makers around the world and on memories of her
own most difficult experiences, Jacqueline divulges the most common
leadership mistakes and the mind-sets needed to rise above them.
The culmination of thirty years of work developing sustainable
solutions for the problems of the poor, Manifesto for a Moral
Revolution offers the perspectives necessary for all those--whether
ascending the corporate ladder or bringing solar light to rural
villages--who seek to leave this world better off than they found
it.
In January of 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a "War on
Poverty." Over the next several years, the United States launched
several programs aimed at drastically reducing the level of poverty
throughout the nation. Now fifty years later, we have a number of
lessons related to what has and has not worked in the fight against
poverty. This book is a collection of chapters by both researchers
and practitioners studying and addressing matters of poverty as
they intersect with a number of broader social challenges such as
health care, education, and criminal justice issues. The War on
Poverty: A Retrospective serves as a collection of many of their
observations, thoughts, and findings. Ultimately, the authors
reflect on some of the lessons of the past fifty years and ask
basic questions about poverty and its continued impact on American
society, as well as how we might continue to address the challenges
that poverty presents for our nation.
We live in an increasingly prosperous world, yet the estimated
number of undernourished people has risen, and will continue to
rise with the doubling of food prices. A large majority of those
affected are living in India. Why have strategies to combat hunger,
especially in India, failed so badly? How did a nation that prides
itself on booming economic growth come to have half of its
preschool population undernourished?
Using the case study of a World Bank nutrition project in India,
this book takes on these questions and probes the issues
surrounding development assistance, strategies to eliminate
undernutrition, and how hunger should be fundamentally understood
and addressed.
Throughout the book, the underlying tension between choice and
circumstance is explored. How much are individuals able to
determine their life choices? How much should policy-makers take
underlying social forces into account when designing policy? This
book examines the possibilities, and obstacles, to eliminating
child hunger.
This book is not just about nutrition. It is an attempt to uncover
the workings of power through a close look at the structures,
discourses, and agencies through which nutrition policy operates.
In this process, the source of nutrition policy in the World Bank
is traced to those affected by the policies in India.
This book offers a detailed account of the employment promises made
to local East Londoners when the Summer Olympic Games 2012 were
awarded to London, as well as an examination of how those promises
had morphed into the Olympic Labor market jamboree from which local
communities were excluded. Regarding the global job market of
London, this study provides a nuanced empirical view on how the
world's biggest mega event was experienced and endured in terms
employment by its immediate hosts, in one of the UK's poorest, most
ethnically complex, and transient areas. The data has been
collected through ethnographic observation and interviews with
local residents, and expert interviews with the Olympic delivery
professionals. Using Bourdieusian theory of contested capital, the
findings provide an important bearing on the reproduction of
inequality in the local labor markets of Olympic host cities.
The book is a compilation of the best and still-most-relevant
articles published in Poverty & Race, the bimonthly of The
Poverty & Race Research Action Council from 2006 to the
present. Authors are some of the leading figures in a range of
activities around these themes. It is the fourth such book PRRAC
has published over the years, each with a high-visibility foreword
writer: Rep. John Lewis, Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. Bill Bradley,
Julian Bond in previous books, Rep. Luis Gutierrez of Chicago for
this book. The chapters are organized into four sections: Race
& Poverty: The Structural Underpinnings; Deconstructing Poverty
and Racial Inequities; Re(emerging) Issues; Civil Rights History.
In "A People's War on Poverty," Wesley G. Phelps investigates
the on-the-ground implementation of President Lyndon Johnson's War
on Poverty during the 1960s and 1970s. He argues that the fluid
interaction between federal policies, urban politics, and
grassroots activists created a significant site of conflict over
the meaning of American democracy and the rights of citizenship
that historians have largely overlooked. In Houston in particular,
the War on Poverty spawned fierce political battles that revealed
fundamental disagreements over what democracy meant, how far it
should extend, and who should benefit from it. Many of the
program's implementers took seriously the federal mandate to
empower the poor as they pushed for a more participatory form of
democracy that would include more citizens in the political,
cultural, and economic life of the city.
At the center of this book are the vitally important but
virtually forgotten grassroots activists who administered federal
War on Poverty programs, including church ministers, federal
program volunteers, students, local administrators, civil rights
activists, and the poor themselves. The moderate Great Society
liberalism that motivated the architects of the federal programs
certainly galvanized local antipoverty activists in Houston.
However, their antipoverty philosophy was driven further by
prophetic religious traditions and visions of participatory
democracy and community organizing championed by the New Left and
iconoclastic figures like Saul Alinsky. By focusing on these local
actors, Phelps shows that grassroots activists in Houston were
influenced by a much more diverse set of intellectual and political
traditions, fueling their efforts to expand the meaning of
democracy. Ultimately, this episode in Houston's history reveals
both the possibilities and the limits of urban democracy in the
twentieth century.
Poverty is not an individual's choice. Nor, as David Brady
demonstrates, is it necessary. Building on the latest scholarship
in poverty studies, this book points out that among affluent
Western societies, there is immense cross-national and historical
variation in poverty. Brady seeks to determine what makes poverty
so entrenched in some affluent democracies whereas it is a solvable
problem in others. He illustrates that, among these democracies,
the United States is in the worst shape, with three times as much
poverty as some West European countries. In the U.S., nearly 20% of
the population is poor, as are almost a fourth of U.S. children and
elderly. Searching for the causes of this dilemma, Brady puts forth
a sweeping new theory to explain that the fundamental cause of
poverty is politics, starting from the simple claim that the
distribution of resources in states and markets is inherently
political. Societies make collective choices about how to divide
their resources, and these choices are institutionalized. Brady
points out that where poverty is low, equality has been
institutionalized, and where poverty is widespread, as most visibly
demonstrated by the US, there has been a failure to
institutionalize equality. Hence, it is a society that collectively
decides how much of the population will be economically secure.
Countries with a relatively low level of poverty in fact socialize
the responsibility of preventing citizens from being poor. This
book effectively tackles the issue of how this collective
responsibility is conceived and institutionalized, by defining the
mechanisms that shape this ideology, or prevent it from coming into
being. David Brady offers promising new directions for
understanding the politics of social equality, and takes an
ambitious step forward in the struggle against poverty.
Income disparity for students in both K-12 and higher education
settings has become increasingly apparent since the onset of the
COVID-19 pandemic. In the wake of these changes, impoverished
students face a variety of challenges both internal and external.
Educators must deepen their awareness of the obstacles students
face beyond the classroom to support learning. Traditional literacy
education must evolve to become culturally, linguistically, and
socially relevant to bridge the gap between poverty and academic
literacy opportunities. Poverty Impacts on Literacy Education
develops a conceptual framework and pedagogical support for
literacy education practices related to students in poverty. The
research provides protocols supporting student success through
explored connections between income disparity and literacy
instruction. Covering topics such as food insecurity, integrated
instruction, and the poverty narrative, this is an essential
resource for administration in both K-12 and higher education
settings, professors and teachers in literacy, curriculum
directors, researchers, instructional facilitators, pre-service
teachers, school counselors, teacher preparation programs, and
students.
International Advances in Education: Global Initiatives for Equity
and Social Justice is an international research monograph series of
scholarly works that primarily focus on empowering students
(children, adolescents, and young adults) from diverse current
circumstances and historic beliefs and traditions to become
non-exploited/non-exploitive contributing members of the 21st
century. The series draws on the research and innovative practices
of investigators, academics, and community organizers around the
globe that have contributed to the evidence base for developing
sound educational policies, practices, and programs that optimize
all students' potential. Each volume includes multidisciplinary
theory, research, and practices that provide an enriched
understanding of the drivers of human potential via education to
assist others in exploring, adapting, and replicating innovative
strategies that enable ALL students to realize their full
potential. Chapters in this volume are drawn from a wide range of
countries including: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Finland,
Georgia, Haiti, India, Italy, Kyrgyzstan, Portugal, Slovenia,
Tanzania and The United States all addressing issues of educational
inequity, economic constraint, class bias and the links between
education, poverty and social status. The individual chapters
provide examples of theory, research, and practice that
collectively present a lively, informative, cross-perspective,
international conversation highlighting the significant gross
economic and social injustices that abound in a wide variety of
educational contexts around the world while spotlighting important,
inspirational, and innovative remedies. Taken together, the
chapter's advance our understanding of best practices in the
education of economically disadvantaged and socially marginalized
populations while collectively rejecting institutional policies and
traditional practices that reinforce the roots of economic and
social discrimination. Chapter authors, utilize a range of
methodologies including empirical research, historical reviews,
case studies and personal reflections to demonstrate that poverty
and class status are socio-political conditions, rather than
individual identities. In addition, that education is an absolute
human right and a powerful mechanism to promote individual,
national, and international upward social and economic mobility,
national stability and citizen wellbeing.
This book presents a multidimensional, psychosocial and critical
understanding of poverty by bringing together studies carried out
with groups in different contexts and situations of deprivation in
Brazil, Mexico, Paraguay, Nicaragua and Spain. The book is divided
in two parts. The first part presents studies that unveil the
psychosocial implications of poverty by revealing the processes of
domination based on the stigmatization and criminalization of poor
people, which contribute to maintain realities of social
inequality. The second part presents studies focused on strategies
to fight poverty and forms of resistance developed by individuals
who are in situations of marginalization.The studies presented in
this contributed volume depart from the theoretical framework
developed by Critical Social Psychology, Community Psychology and
Liberation Psychology, in an effort to understand poverty beyond
its monetary dimension, bringing social, cultural, structural and
subjective factors into the analysis. Psychological science in
general has not produced specific knowledge about poverty as a
result of the relations of domination produced by social
inequalities fostered by the capitalist system. This book seeks to
fill this gap by presenting a psychosocial perspective with
psychological and sociological bases aligned in a dialectical way
in order to understand and confront poverty. Psychosocial
Implications of Poverty - Diversities and Resistances will be of
interest to social psychologists, sociologists and economists
interested in multidimensional studies of poverty, as well as to
policy makers and activists directly working with the development
of policies and strategies to fight poverty.
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