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The usual crisis mode of economic operations in Palestine intersects with the adverse consequences of COVID-19 and necessitates an innovative response to survive. This research builds on potential synergies between industry and university to expand the Palestinian agriculture sector resilience. We report on an explorative study that sought to understand the reality of the university–industry linkages (UILs) by considering information and experience gathered from 29 interviews in January 2020 and April 2021. Interviewees represent five key actor groups: farmers and agribusinesses, private institutions, universities, the Ministry of Agriculture, and NGOs. Content analysis revealed a nascent collaboration scope and uncovered the lack of a confident attitude among farmers towards agriculture research efforts, the poor communication performance, and misalignment of purpose. University actors need to encompass the UILs in their mission and touch farmers' needs by providing novelty evidence research. Yet, farmers and agribusinesses may take the initiative to communicate their problems and search for renovation. We developed a framework of underpinnings to enhance collaboration and a healthier agriculture sector. We suggest activating the cooperatives and diversifying farmers' income as deemed more resilient to face the pandemic.
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This paper deals with COVID-19-hit Kenyan slums and the numerous interventions civil society organizations implemented during the first waves of the pandemic since it was initially detected in March 2020. As part of a comprehensive project using mixed methodology, including desk research and key informant interviews, community-based organizations and non-governmental organizations, together with other stakeholders of their collaborative networks, were investigated regarding the roles that they played, the projects they carried out, and the interventions they were involved in in the mitigation of the negative impacts of COVID-19. This paper investigates how COVID-19 actually hit Kenyan slums and how it affected civil society organizations during the pandemic. © 2023 by the authors.
ABSTRACT
The Third-sector organizations, known as Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) working on had an essential role in improving education, building human capital, sustainable development, humanitarian aid, and raising entrepreneurs, especially in the areas of political conflict and increased poverty. This research aims to analyze the effect of Emotional Intelligence on Job Performance in three selected Educational and human aid NGOs in the Kurdistan Region/Iraq during the Covid-19 pandemic. This research is claimed to be novel to study the concepts in businesses on NGOs. The author used a self-administered questionnaire with included two validated measures and demographic items. The data has been collected from 83 respondents working as employees in the NGOs selected. The author used Pearson correlation, ANOVA, and linear regression to justify the hypothesis developed. The results show a strong positive relationship between EI and job performance. The EI positively and significantly affects Job Performance and there is no difference between the genders of the study in terms of Emotional Intelligence and Job performance. The study recommends educational and human aid NGOs consider EI as an important factor in increasing the performance of their employees, and this research is to be a foundation for further research to understand the application of management concepts of Businesses in the context of NGOs.
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PurposeIn March 2020, the UK entered its first lockdown responding to the Covid-19 pandemic. In the same month, the Domestic Abuse Bill had its first reading in Parliament. Charities and non-governmental organisations critiqued the Bill for failing to protect migrants from domestic abuse, and not complying with the Istanbul Convention. Drawing on interviews with staff from Southall Black Sisters, this paper aims to foreground the experiences of practitioners within the women's sector to explore the unique experiences and challenges migrant and racially minoritised women encountered when seeking support from domestic abuse during the Covid-19 pandemic. It highlights how the pandemic-related lockdowns created barriers to accessing support services and housing, creating an epidemic within the pandemic, and how minoritised women and the organisations that supported them had to overcome structural barriers and racism.Design/methodology/approachIn-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with staff from a leading women's organisation that supports migrant and racially minoritised women. Four participants were asked questions within four themes: domestic abuse before and during the pandemic;accessing support from and reporting domestic abuse;accessibility of resources;and post-pandemic challenges. A phenomenological approach was used to analyse the transcribed interviews.FindingsParticipants consistently highlighted the unique threats and barriers migrant and racially minoritised women faced when seeking support. Barriers included racism, language barriers, cultural constraints, the triple threat of destitution, detention, deportation, and political resistance to protect migrant women from destitution/homelessness.Originality/valueThis paper provides a unique insight into the experiences of staff members within a specialist by and for women's support organisation in England and their perspectives on the barriers racially minoritised and migrant women experienced during the Covid-19 pandemic. It offers rare insights into how service users' needs changed during the lockdowns and how the pandemic affected their ability to operate.
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On Friday, March 13, 2020, academic and sport activities at a Mexican university were happening as on a normal day. However, the following Monday, students and teachers had to stay at home for an undefined period. In this work, we show how a course with problem-based learning (PBL) and social sustainability (SS) approaches was adapted to pandemic times. We start with the COVID-19 context at the Monterrey Metropolitan Area (MMA) and then provide a theoretical overview of PBL, SS, Latin American self-produced quartiers, soccer in vulnerable communities, and general aspects about pandemic times. Following this, we discuss the methodology used for reaching out to vulnerable communities in Monterrey City, Mexico, using soccer as a strategy. The students conducted a project together with a non-governmental organization (NGO) whose main task is to promote this sport practice in vulnerable communities around the world. We conclude from our study that students need pedagogical platforms that allow them to respond to the requirements of different social groups, as well as to develop skills to face real problems.
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The chapter analyzes official, religiously affiliated constructions of the pandemic at the beginning of the first COVID-19 lockdowns in Europe and North America. More concretely, it looks at the immediate, official, publicized constructions of the pandemic by members of the so-called ‘Committee of Religious NGOs at the United Nations (CRNGO)' in April 2020. By doing so, the article highlights that the respective constructions of the pandemic by representatives of the CRNGO have been dominated by a sense of broad agreement as well as immediate urgency. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.
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Malaysia is among the biggest hosts of refugees and asylum seekers (RAS) in Southeast Asia, of whom the majority are Rohingya Muslims. In Malaysia, RAS children are not allowed to enroll in public schools and therefore rely on a non-formal parallel education system that comprises learning centers run by refugee communities, NGOs, andfaith-based organizations. To date, little research is available on initiatives that attempt to integrate RAS children into Malaysian society through education. This study aims to gather evidence on the current situation of RAS children's education in Malaysia and answer the following questions: (a) what is the current state of evidence? and (b) to what extent has existing research/evidence addressed the question of RAS children integration into the national education system? We conducted a scoping review that gathers and summarizes findings from existing studies using a specific strategy: selection ofkeywords and systematic search through online databases, followed by screening of papers based on predetermined inclusion and exclusion criteria. Our findings showed that the overall body of evidence is small, with most studies describing the challenges and barriers faced by RAS children in accessing formal/non-formal and quality education. There was little focus and discussion on integrating RAS children into the national education system, which perhaps is due to the underlying assumption that Malaysia remains a transit country for RAS, and not a destination for permanent settlement.
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The COVID-19 pandemic engenders unemployment risks globally and locally. Reflectively engaging in Beck's risk society debates, this paper critically reviews the discursive effects of „risks" when employed by the government in debates about unemployment insurance since the 1997 sovereignty handover. We break down the concept of risk into four layers: moral risk, financial risk, socio-economic risk and political risk and bring to light the contradictory outcomes that colour the nuanced attitudes among the state, the NGOs and the affected subjects.
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The paper focuses on the cross-border care circulation of Slovak care workers who work in Austria, with the care crisis and the pandemic in the background. Slovak care workers often work in short-term two-week work rotas, allowing them to balance work and private life. They remain primarily responsible for the social reproduction and care of their households. The pandemic and imposed measures have fundamentally affected this transnational circulation of care. Caregivers faced the challenge of mobilizing capacities and resources to cope with emerging situations, developing new strategies, and modifying existing ones. Based on interviews with care workers, employment agencies, and a non-governmental organization focusing on the rights of care workers, the study presents how care workers coped with the measures introduced during the pandemic period, describes selected strategies of care workers to ensure social reproduction in their families despite the pandemic, and also discuss selected changes in the individual life trajectories of women, to which the pandemic period contributed. The paper argues that although women contributed to addressing the emerging care deficit reinforced by the pandemic crisis, they had to rely on their capacities for the care needs of their families.
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This article compares two Islamic organisations, a non-governmental and a national one, in their methods of collecting and distributing zakat, and analyses how they addressed the COVID-19 crisis with these funds in the period 2020–2021. The study examines Islamic Relief as a Muslim non-governmental organisation involved in humanitarian response, and the National Board of the Zakat Republic of Indonesia (BAZNAS) as a centralised national institution. Both of them are working to improve zakat management, due to the awareness of its untapped potential, but the measure of impacts and allocation of resources diverge in strategies and efforts. Considering their different structures, a comparison based on parallel analysis of collecting methods, distributing channels and programmes financed shows the limits, potentials and best practices of these two institutions committed to zakat management and its improvement.
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This perspective is a qualitative meta-analysis study using a critical interpretive synthesis that narrates three future and equally plausible scenarios of social and economic development in the State of Kuwait over the next 15 years. The first scenario follows what we call the ‘Sustainable Growth' model as defined by the United Nations Development Goals and the Kuwait Vision 2035 presented by the Amir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah. As a polar opposite, the next scenario is what we call the ‘Mismanaged Resourced-Based Autocracy' model, a negative reflection of the worst-case scenario. The third scenario is in between these two, and we call it the ‘Equality of Outcome Between Societal Groups' model. So as not to lay blame for past actions or point fingers, which could prove counterproductive to a consensus-building process for needed actions, we chose to use the pasts of other countries for future projections for the State of Kuwait. Our search through recent socio-economic pasts revealed that Singapore was the best fit for the first scenario, Venezuela for the second, and Lebanon for the third. All these countries became fully independent at approximately the same time as the State of Kuwait and share many other similarities. The three future projections were used as input variables to the outcome, which was a bottom-up and top-down consensus-making process regarding utilitarian action for Kuwait to be used by Non-Government Organizations (NGOs), Think-Tanks, Development Agencies, the government and the parliament.
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The article analyzes the institutional transformation of the sphere of social services in the context of the development of the non-profit sector. The institutional transformation in the field covers the issues of changing public attitudes, the level of public trust and prevailing stereotypes. Besides, online interactions that are spreading while providing and receiving services influence the processes of the individual choice under constantly changing market conditions. The results are based on two sociological surveys devoted to studying the attitude of citizens towards the non-profit sector of social services. The surveys were conducted in Russian regions in 2019(n=1204) and 2020 (n=2047). Among the factors influencing public attitudes towards NGOs are citizens' understanding of the meaning of social services, awareness of non-state service providers and the opportunities of NGO social service sector. During the COVID-19 pandemic, people tended to resort to online services more often, we assume that this hastened the transition to the online format of interaction in the analyzed field. The revealed relationship of attitudes towards state and nonstate type providers has demonstrated that the attitude of citizens towards one type of social service provider has an impact on the formation of attitudes towards another type of provider confirming that public trust is systemic. We have identified the key stereotypes that determine the choice of the type of provider by the recipients of services. It has also been found that the personal experience of interaction with social services organizations plays an important role for establishing trust in state and non-state social services organizations. The dynamics of the public trust in the non-profit sector of social services has been analyzed based on the identification of age subgroups.
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Purpose: The implementation of the lockdown on 28th March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted business and economic activities completely, which has serious consequences for SMME survival in South Africa and the world at large. Subsequently, there was a contingent need to provide funding to SMMEs to ensure their survival. This study, therefore, explored the meaning of SMME in the South African context and their experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study further investigated the palliative funds given to SMMEs during COVID-19 by the South African government, the challenges encountered during its implementation process, and the measures to improve the funding implementation. Methodology: The study adopted a qualitative research approach with an exploratory research design, and this enhanced in-depth findings through the adoption of interviews as the only source of primary data collection. Data collected from the participants were analyzed using a thematic analytical technique with the help of Atlas-ti software (Version 22). Findings: Findings obtained from the study revealed that SMMEs are separate and distinct business entities, including co-operatives and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), managed by one or more owners, including their branches and subsidiaries. Another finding revealed that during the COVID-19 period, SMMEs experienced supply chain disruptions, inventory shortages, cash flow issues, and low income due to the inability to engage in active business. In the empirical study, participants attested that the scoring system, lack of business and managerial experience, communication barriers, and business registration requirements are some of the challenges encountered in funding implementation by the government departments. Furthermore, the participants highlighted that funding based on merit, consideration of the scoring system, and the application of communication dynamics to reach SMMEs should be applied to improve SMME funding implementation. Originality/Value: This study is meant to inform the government on how to handle SMME funding and measures to assist them to enhance employment and to improve economic development.
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Drawing on the concept of sociomateriality, this paper investigates the digitalisation of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) in developing countries during the COVID-19 pandemic. NGOs represent one sector in which the consequences of digitalisation have been particularly striking. Nationwide lockdowns, travel restrictions and strict government guidelines led to NGOs embarking on a transition towards digitalisation for their continuity and survival. Adhering to a qualitative approach, data for the study have been derived through semi-structured interviews with stakeholders, focus group discussions with beneficiaries and a review of documentary sources. Outlining both the benefits and consequences of digitalisation, the findings of the study illustrate the way how the NGOs' digitalisation has triggered changes in both their operations and modes of communication, altered their relationships with beneficiaries and other stakeholders, and transformed their identity. The key contribution made by the paper involves moving beyond the human-centred and techno-centric approaches to digitalisation, which dominate the existing accounting literature, and illustrating how the performance of technologies evolves in everyday life. In doing so, the paper delineates the role that the technology itself can play in shaping NGOs' day-to-day practices in developing countries. © 2023 The Author(s)
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Partnerships between Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) and the local government are crucial to ensure optimal governance at the local level. In the last 2 decades in Bangladesh, NGOs have become essential actors in local development and governance. The present study investigated the role of NGOs for ensuring local governance in Bangladesh during the post-pandemic era. Periphery areas (two sub-districts) of the Natore District were selected for the field study. The qualitative analysis was mainly based on primary data. Four categories of respondents were targeted, namely NGOs (11), elected representatives and government officials (28), local elites (20) and general citizens (64) belonging to different genders, and educational and economic levels. In depth interviews, survey questionnaires and focus group discussions were used as the tools for collecting data from sampled respondents. Focus was placed on eleven issues including five development and administration related, five political and participation related, and management of the COVID-19 crisis. A qualitative matrix for the performance of NGOs on governance issues from the perspective of other actors in governance-local elected representatives and executive, local elites and general citizens was developed. The matrix revealed an optimistic story for NGO partnerships and social and governing issues such as women empowerment, disaster management, environment conservation, support during COVID-19 pandemic. On the other hand, indicators such as vote and election, people's awareness, dispute resolution, local tax collection and budget making revealed that the NGOs need to work more with the local government to ensure participation in the processes of governance. The findings directly from the peripheral field were not only based on investigation of the NGOs but also included the perception of other actors of governance so these results can definitely contribute to national social policy reforms and revision of NGO strategies. © 2023, The Japan Section of the Regional Science Association International.
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In this article, we draw on community-led housing, non-confrontational resistance, and feminist crisis management literature to analyse the response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the military coup in a community-led housing scheme in Yangon, Myanmar. Based on the direct involvement with a women's grassroots network and a local NGO between 2018 and 2022, we focus on the impacts of the double crisis on low-income populations, their responses to overlapping challenges, the emergent forms of mutual care, and the extra and intra-community learnings. We argue that, in the context of authoritarian regimes, community-led housing practices constitute a modality of non-confrontational resistance that, in times of crisis, revealed how collective housing members had an important safety net-in material, emotional, and social terms—sustained through collective mobilisation and mutual care. This analysis contributes to expanding the debates on housing justice struggles, non-confrontational resistance, and care from the standpoint of grassroots women's organisations.
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While youth are routinely lauded as "change-makers,” they are often underserved and unsupported in refugee responses. As the Rohingya face protracted displacement in Bangladesh, what is the state of youth inclusion in the response? Do youth and adolescents feel supported, or are they ignored and left behind?To answer these questions, the paper uses: Literature on youth participation and inclusion in humanitarian programming;Key informant interviews with practitioners from national and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and UN agencies;Focus group discussions and key informant interviews with refugee individuals and groups across nine camps for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. It finds that: Refugee Rohingya youth and adolescents remain firmly on the margins of humanitarian programming, and are largely excluded from decision-making processes;Approximately 96 percent of surveyed youth between 18 and 24 years of age report being unemployed;For surveyed women aged 18–24 years, unemployment rates bordered on 99 percent;and Stress and anxiety are omnipresent amongst the community: an overwhelming majority of respondents reported experiencing disturbing thoughts and resorting to negative coping mechanisms. The paper ends with a series of recommendations to the Strategic Executive Group (SEG) and the Inter-Sector Coordination Group (ISCG), to donors, the international community, and the government of Bangladesh. 1
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Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, international access to COVID-19 vaccines and other health technologies has remained highly asymmetric. This inequity has had a particularly deleterious impact on low- and middle-income countries, engaging concerns about the human rights to health and to the equal enjoyment of the benefits of scientific progress enshrined under articles 12 and 15 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. In response, the relationship between intellectual property rights and public health has reemerged as a subject of global interest. In October 2020, a wholesale waiver of the copyright, patent, industrial design, and undisclosed information sections of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS Agreement) was proposed by India and South Africa as a legal mechanism to increase access to affordable COVID-19 medical products. Here, we identify and evaluate the TRIPS waiver positions of World Trade Organization (WTO) members and other key stakeholders throughout the waiver's 20-month period of negotiation at the WTO. In doing so, we find that most stakeholders declined to explicitly contextualize the TRIPS waiver within the human right to health and that historical stakeholder divisions on the relationship between intellectual property and access to medicines appear largely unchanged since the early 2000s HIV/AIDS crisis. Given the WTO's consensus-based decision-making process, this illuminates key challenges faced by policy makers seeking to leverage the international trading system to improve equitable access to health technologies.
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The Adventist Development and Relief Agency- Zimbabwe (ADRAZimbabwe) is one of the non-governmental organizations that has been conducting a cash transfer programme to help alleviate poverty in Zvishavane District, Zimbabwe. The unexpected Covid-19 outbreak posed significant socio-economic shocks on female headed households, further exacerbated by a crippling state support for vulnerable groups. The objective of the study was to explore the challenges faced by female headed households in the Basic Agricultural Assistance, a cash transfer programme in Zvishavane, Zimbabwe. In-depth and Focus group discussions were used to gather data on the challenges that women face in the cash transfer program. Findings indicated that although the Basic Agricultural Assistance programme was introduced as a micro economic stability tool to buffer income risks faced by the poor, external factors like the political and economic crises have deterred the cash program to comprehensively reduce poverty in female-headed households. The constraining cultural and patriarchal norms deterred most women in achieving autonomy. Furthermore, cash transfers only targeted a portion of the female-headed households. Most of these women experienced difficulty in accessing markets to purchase farm implements amidst the Covid-19 pandemic. This paper recommends that the Basic Agriculture Assistance Programme should consider grassroots approaches in project initiation and implementation. In other words, the beneficiaries themselves should be consulted and should have a say on projects to be initiated in their communities and these projects should be line with their needs.
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This article examines the ways in which educated yet unemployed young people attempt to configure ways of being productive in a small hill town in North India. Young people who do not migrate to large urban centres from this township are the subject of contradictory discourses: in some moments they are seen as an antidote to the ‘problem of migration', but in other moments they are ridiculed for not making good use of their time. Both discourses suggest a present wherein young people are not productive. Drawing on ethnographic material gathered over a ten-month period, this article frames youth sociality as a mode registering a sense of productivity and navigating unemployment. I argue that while hanging out at a computer shop, young men were distancing themselves from notions of idling and creating masculine youth cultures in which they sought to situate themselves as productive young people. I make this argument by unpacking exchanges between these young men and by analysing the tangible ways they helped the shop function. I also draw debates about youth sociality into dialogue with theoretical insights from rural geography to illuminate how educated youth attempt to imbue rural and peri-urban space with new possibilities. I show how educated youth attempt to reanimate rural space and forge affirmative rural futures by emphasizing their connections with Indian modernity. Attending to the ways in which educated yet unemployed youth attempt to situate themselves within productive relations is set to become of increasing importance given the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.