14
Apr
Posted on 2011 under Gaming |
Writing dissertation is the important assignments in your academic final year which can determine your final mark of your academic years. Therefor, every single student who are doing their own dissertation must be so stressful and anxious about their dissertation presentation. Is it good enough? can I get A+ with my writing dissertation? all of these question always appear on the dissertation student’s mind. Writing dissertation is not an easy job, you must give 100% of your strength to do all of the dissertation preparation, formatting dissertation until the final dissertation presentation. So, if you feel that you need someone help, to help you do some dissertation things, you may seek for the dissertation writing service.
Seek for help from dissertation writing service company may be your good alternative. Because this writing service company will help you do the hard part of writing dissertation, such as statistic and data analysis. All you need to do is finding the trusted writing service company which have the professional freelance academic writer. Then, you fill out the order form and upload all of your specification instruction. The writer which responsible to do your dissertation progress will give you report regularly. After the dissertation things is done, you can download the complete version and you are ready to get A+ dissertation result.
17
Mar
Posted on 2011 under Gaming |
One of the best ways to spend time is playing game. Playing game can be so addictive that we do not realize that we have spent so much time sitting in front of our computer set. There are many mac games that you can download online to play. You will not run out of games as your online source provides you ample collections of games. This is the easiest and faster way to get mac games online because you don’t have to tire yourself walk in to a store to find the game that you want. In order to help you with the details about the game that is worth buying, you can get computer game news.
There are many types of simple games that you can download for free online. There are many types of games that you can find online, such as adventure games, championship games, or cascade games. Those games are available in different type of games that you can choose based on your preference. There are games that train reflect and brain, such as solitaire. Download solitaire game is free because it is the kind of game that you can always find everywhere. Solitaire requires strategy to win but it can be very addictive because you want to win the game. Just like many other games, winning is the main goal that have to be achieved. This make games are so much interesting to do.
3
Mar
Posted on 2011 under Communities |
Community development is more effective when it utilizes principles of self-help, felt needs, and participation (Bhattacharyya, 1995). When a community displays higher levels of felt needs, individuals are more likely to think of problems as relevant and a priority for instituting change. However, Stone (1989) points out that different cultures have distinctive views of how principles of self-help, felt needs, and participation are expressed. Her work in Nepal showed that a Western notion of development through self reliance and individualism did not compliment the Nepalese view of physical development and outside participation (Stone, 1989). This notion of cross cultural variability argues for spending time and allocating resources to develop a body of knowledge concerning the problems facing a community before change can be implemented. Community Developers should utilize participatory methods to gain insight into the strengths and weaknesses within a local cultural group or community (Rubin and Rubin, 2008). As noted by Rubin and Rubin (2008), the benefits of utilizing participatory methods in research and programs are that knowledge of problems are linked with actions needed and solutions are generated by community stakeholders who will benefit from change.
There are many different types of participatory approachess that can be utilized to help a community to define their needs. Three methods described in the Participation and Social Assessment Toolkit (1998) were Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), Self Esteem, Associative strength, Resourcefulness, Action planning, responsibility (SARAR), and the Beneficiary Assessment (BA). PRA moves from information sharing, through consultation and collaboration into empowerment with qualitative methods of semi-structured interviews, mapping, and venn diagrams. SARAR empowers stakeholders and community members to be more capable and aware of community problems by using methods of non-serial posters, mapping, pocket charts, three pile sorting, and force-field analysis. BA is the qualitative method of info gathering on beneficiary perceptions toward an activity. Through focus groups, semi-structured interview, and observations, information can be gathered, quantified, and tabulated to show how improvements will be valued by stakeholders (Reitenberg and Narayan, 1998).
Although participatory methods are valuable in mobilizing communities to achieve their goals, they can inadvertently give more power to already empowered community groups. Groups in a community that have more power are more engaged and already have their voice and perspective heard. Some groups have less power because of under representation and exclusion stemming from economic and cultural differences. I experience this in my own Hartford neighborhood, which is made up of affluent condo owners on one side and less affluent Latino residents on the other. In the middle of the neighborhood is a methadone clinic and last year state officials engaged our community group in participatory methods to decide if the clinic should be relocated to encourage development. Unfortunately, our group is mostly made up of those who definitely would like to see the clinic moved. The focus group approach did little to access the opinions and needs of less affluent individuals in the community who might be utilizing the clinic for services. A better approach in avoiding giving affluent and engaged residents more power in this example would have been to conduct focus groups and interviews with Latinos who might be underrepresented in a community group. A variety of participatory methods should be strategically used in a community to develop solutions that are inclusive of all stakeholders regardless of how engaged they are in community activities.
Whenever we speak of participatory approach, it is important to bring up the concept of accountability. Accountability plays a central role in ensuring the maintenance of solid relations between the different stakeholders involved in a development project. There are two types: first is the upward accountability “associated with relationships that face up the aid chain” (from NGO to donor). Second is the downward accountability in contrary “associated with relationships that face down the aid chain” (from NGO to local beneficiaries) (BOND, 2006). We feel like when done right, the participatory approach would be tied to the downward accountability. Making the leaders of the project be accountable to their beneficiaries, would encourage the community members to be involved and committed to its success, and thus its sustainability. On the other hand, if the project defines participatory approach as mainly a top-to-bottom relationship between leaders and beneficiaries, the participation of the locals then becomes limited. As a result, the sustainability of the project becomes at risk. Another issue of the participatory approach is that increasing the participation of the locals could cause deep conflicts within the community when not all groups are represented in the development process. Furthermore, with a large number of participants in the planning process of a project, communication and information sharing could get ambiguous and troublesome (Rogers, 2008).
The first step into evaluation participatory approaches is to evaluate the social and cultural norms of the society. Many staff members from the West determine the best method of creating community participation is by encouraging participants to “take matters in their own hands” and to participate in their own development. There are often gaps in between the ideals and rhetoric of community participation and “the actual practices of so called participatory programs” (Stone, 1989). Those staff members believe egalitarian self reliance is important to the community development project, for without this key ingredient, participants will continually rely on the project with an “antithesis of development” (Stone, 1989). Without self reliance, the participation will depend on those organizers to continually motivate development. However, another person may view development as buildings and other visible structures. Just as in Nepal, the community was surveyed and did not view messages like “bikas,” as development (Stone, 1989). Therefore the people may not be motivated to change behaviors or attitudes relating to a project that they do not view as development.
It is vital to the success of a project to help the locals develop a sense of its ownership. When the members of the community are involved in the decision making process, they develop a sense of ownership towards the project at hand (Rogers et. al, 2008). Sustainability depends on the level of ownership that the locals feel they have over the project. “Self reliance” and “taking initiative” are Western cultural values that may not be accepted by all communities. Therefore multiple strategies should be used. Instead of labeling the community as independent from the government and NGOS, label the organizations as dependent on them. Without the participation of the community, the project will not work, thus in reality the institutions are dependent on the community’s participation. The expression “build it and they will come” is relevant to participatory approach because people need motivation. As in a watershed project in Nepal, as the project became more realistic, the community increased creative ideas as well (Stone, 1989). A sustained communication effort is a must in the community to involve participation in planning, decision making and implementation of the project. In Nepal, the participatory approach was more familiar to the community as “obey” rather than self rely (Stone, 1989). We believe and agree with Stone that rather than independence, there should be interdependence between the community and outsiders (Stone, 1989).
Participatory approaches certainly do add to sustainable development. While much research can be done online, face to face interviewing still has benefits not provided by web collection. As Rubin and Rubin (2008) point out, “Going door to door to talk with people informally or to survey them on their concerns expands the capacity of the organization by becoming part of recruitment.” Activism often follows with those being surveyed wanting to get involved. The depth interview is a participatory approach that stirs feeling which goes a long way in appealing for action or resources. These interviews, like focus group interviewing can bring clarity to initial observations and help those in a community know they are not alone in what they experience or feel. “Depth interviews elicit rich, detailed accounts of events as well as individual feelings, experiences, and perceptions. These individual narratives of suffering become the human face of social problems that must be solved.” (Rubin & Rubin, P.159).
Stone (1989), in her caution of not forcing ownership and independence when capacity building cultural environment is not in line with this, shares how participatory approached can foster “interdependence between villagers and their government development agencies and institutions, or between villagers and outsiders.” The participatory approach thus teaches participants and outsiders, whether government agencies or international NGO’s, to better understand, relate, and help one another. Participatory approaches could give also give more power to powerful groups if left unchecked. Power is neither inherently good or bad. Power is the ability to act and accomplish what you want. Getting things done in the world takes power. This is the basic law of physics ( Brown, 2006). The tools and techniques that could be used in preventing powerful groups from having more powers are; first, employing democratic principles in all decision making that will give equal power to all
2
Mar
Posted on 2011 under Gaming |
Car needs protection to prevent damage on the car. There are so many harmful things form the outside that can damage the car. Bad weather is one thing that can harm car both exterior and interior. Rain and sunlight can make the car paint dull and damage. For car paint protection we can use silicon that apply regularly on the car surface after the car washed.
Rain can also enter the car due to hard wind and cause the interior dump and wet. It will easily damage the interior material that susceptible for dump air such as leather seat, wooden board or other fabric material. Dump air is also a habitat for germs and bacteria to grow up. It will bring illness for both driver and passenger. There are so many germs and bacteria on our environment, if we are not careful they will easily grow up and infect us.
To prevent rain drop enter the car, you should use car wind deflectors on each car windows. It is a little device but very useful for us. Car manufacturer has put wind deflector for their new car, but if you want to modify your car with custom wind deflector you car appearance will be special.
22
Feb
Posted on 2011 under Online |
Unless you’ve been living under a rock or on a remote island, you will know that online dating has become second nature and a choice by instinct for busy and smart singles.
We’ve all heard of the horror stories shared by the media and online dating reviews about liaisons gone wrong with online dating. Some pretty common bad experiences we sometimes hear about include people mis-representing themselves when comparing their real life appearance to their online dating profile. We hear stories about online daters meeting up only to discover their picture doesn’t match them in person, or their profile picture is 10 years old, we even hear about cheeky online singles posting photos on their dating profile of someone else!
Ever heard how one bad apple can spoil the whole batch? With online dating, we don’t hear enough about the thousands of successful outcomes experienced by technologically savvy singles!
In America alone, there is an average of 3 million marriages each year, with online dating accounting for an average of 360,000 of these marriages which is basically 10% of all marriages in America each and every year. So to those people who are inclined to knock online dating sites, you can hardly argue with this statistic. Then you need to factor in the de-facto relationships and casual relationships discovered through online dating, and we are realistically talking about over 1 million new relationships each year in America thanks to online dating.
And who could argue or find fault with the concept of online dating – the facts speak for themselves. If you know how to pick a non-genuine online dater, and have an eye for the real deal, the internet has an array of free online dating sites with real people. A recent media report from Australia claims that online dating usage is up more than 200% compared to last year (2008). And unlike many so called free offers we see around these days by marketing companies, a select number of free online dating sites are ad-funded and have no need to charge member subscriptions, so they really do offer the lot for free – free to browse – free to join – free to contact – free to chat.
Even though we can date for free online, some online singles prefer to stick with the tried and trusted established online dating sites, and are prepared to pay for their membership, which is fair enough, sometimes it’s better to stick to what you know and trust especially when it comes to finding someone to share your life with.
Match.com is the worlds largest online dating site and charge their members a subscription to use their dating service which proves that many singles are first and foremost selecting their choice of dating service by reputation over cost.