Prince Chiagozie Ekoh, Patricia Uju Agbawodikeizu, Elizabeth Onyedikachi George, Chigozie Donatus Ezulike and Uzoma Odera Okoye
The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has further intensified the vulnerability of older persons in displacement and rendered them more unseen. This study aims at…
Abstract
Purpose
The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has further intensified the vulnerability of older persons in displacement and rendered them more unseen. This study aims at exploring the impact of COVID-19 on older people in displacement.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were obtained using semi-structured interviews from 12 older persons at Durumi IDP camp Abuja, while observing strict infection control measures. The data were inductively coded with Nvivo and analysed thematically.
Findings
Findings revealed that the economic and psychosocial fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic has increased older persons in displacement poverty, psychological stress and placed them at risk of ageism, social isolation and may subsequently lead to secondary displacement, thereby losing all progress, development and resilience built after initial displacement.
Social implications
This paper concluded by encouraging the need for all stakeholders to pay more attention to this invisible yet vulnerable group to ensure no one is left behind as people fight through this pandemic and its social implications.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to explore the impact of COVID-19 on older people in displacement in Nigeria. This is because they have been relatively invisible to research endeavours.
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Prince Chiagozie Ekoh, Uzoma O. Okoye, Patricia Uju Agbawodikeizu, Elizabeth Onyedikachi George and Chukwuemeka Ejimkaraonye
This study aimed at exploring support for older people in protracted displacement in Nigeria, emphasising the available support and the gap in the support provided to them.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aimed at exploring support for older people in protracted displacement in Nigeria, emphasising the available support and the gap in the support provided to them.
Design/methodology/approach
Qualitative interviews were used to collect data from ten displaced older people in New-Kuchingoro internally displaced persons (IDP) camp Abuja, Nigeria. The collected data were analysed thematically with NVivo 12.
Findings
Results show that older people received material, emotional and psychological supports from their families, neighbours, friends, religious organisations and non-governmental organisations. Several gaps were identified in the support provided to displaced older people. For example, their special nutritional or medical needs were neglected, and their support was primarily material, sporadic and spontaneous, as there is no existing framework guiding the care and support of older people in displacement.
Research limitations/implications
This study provides a foundation for further research on older people in displacement, an area that has received minimal scholarly attention.
Practical implications
The paper recommends that researchers and displaced persons’ care providers should pay more attention to the peculiar support needs of this less visible vulnerable group and adopt the internal displacement policy for the long-term protection of older people in displacement.
Originality/value
Older people in displacement remain less visible as humanitarian aid programmes and research focus more on women and children. This lack of attention may put older people in displacement at more risk as their peculiar needs may not be met. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to examine the gap in support for older people in displacement in Nigeria.
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Gina Green, Hope Koch, Peter Kulaba, Shelby L. Garner, Carolin Elizabeth George, Julia Hitchcock and Gift Norman
The purpose of this paper is to understand how to build and implement information and communication technology (i.e. ICT) to help vulnerable people when significant social…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to understand how to build and implement information and communication technology (i.e. ICT) to help vulnerable people when significant social, cultural and economic barriers exist between the stakeholders.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors followed an action research approach to design and implement a mobile health hypertension education application to help India's most vulnerable populations. The authors used interpretive analysis, guided by the sustainable livelihoods framework, to uncover key findings.
Findings
Successfully implementing information and communication technology for development (ICT4D) requires understanding that all stakeholders (i.e. donors, facilitators and the beneficiaries) have important assets to contribute. Facilitators play an important role in connecting donors to the beneficiaries and fostering cultural humility in donors so that the donors will understand the role beneficiaries play in success. Stakeholders may use the ICT4D in unintended ways that both improve the people's health and increase some beneficiaries' financial livelihood.
Research limitations/implications
This research expands the definition of information systems success when implementing ICT4D in resource-constrained environments. Success is more than creating an mHealth app that was easy for beneficiaries to use and where they learned based on a pre- and post-test statistical analysis. Success involved development in all the stakeholders impacted by the social innovation collaboration. For the beneficiary community, success included getting screened for noncommunicable diseases as a first step toward treatment. For the facilitator, success involved more resources for their community health program. Amongst the donors, success was a change in perspective and learning cultural humility.
Practical implications
Although universities encourage faculty to work in interdisciplinary research teams to address serious world problems, university researchers may have to exert considerable effort to secure contracts, approvals and payments. Unfortunately, universities may not reward this effort to build ICT4D and continue to evaluate faculty based on journal publications. When universities undertake social innovation collaborations, administrators should ensure responsive and flexible university processes as well as appropriate academic reward structures are in place. This need is heightened when collaborations involve international partners with limited resources and time needed to build relationships and understanding across cultures.
Social implications
This study discovered the importance of fostering cultural humility as a way of avoiding potential conflicts that may arise from cultural and power differences. Cultural humility moves the focus of donor-beneficiary relationships away from getting comfortable with “them” to taking actions that develop relationships and address vulnerabilities (Fisher-Borne et al., 2015). This research shows how the facilitator helped the donor develop cultural humility by involving the donor in various initiatives with the beneficiary community including allowing the donor to live in a dormitory at the hospital, work in an urban slum and visit health screening campus.
Originality/value
This study (1) extends the ICT4D literature by incorporating cultural humility into the sustainable livelihoods framework, (2) provides a contextual understanding of developing cultural humility in ICT4D projects with a complex group of stakeholders and (3) describes how facilitators become a catalyst for change and a bridge to the community. The culturally humble approach suggests revising the livelihood framework to eliminate words like “the poor” to describe beneficiaries.
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When the first edition of Poems by Emily Dickinson was published in 1890, Samuel G. Ward, a writer for the Dial, commented, “I am with all the world intensely interested in Emily…
Abstract
When the first edition of Poems by Emily Dickinson was published in 1890, Samuel G. Ward, a writer for the Dial, commented, “I am with all the world intensely interested in Emily Dickinson. She may become world famous or she may never get out of New England” (Sewall 1974, 26). A century after Emily Dickinson's death, all the world is intensely interested in the full nature of her poetic genius and her commanding presence in American literature. Indeed, if fame belonged to her she could not escape it (JL 265). She was concerned about becoming “great.” Fame intrigued her, but it did not consume her. She preferred “To earn it by disdaining it—”(JP 1427). Critics say that she sensed her genius but could never have envisioned the extent to which others would recognize it. She wrote, “Fame is a bee./It has a song—/It has a sting—/Ah, too, it has a wing” (JP 1763). On 7 May 1984 the names of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman were inscribed on stone tablets and set into the floor of the newly founded United States Poets' Corner of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, “the first poets elected to this pantheon of American writers” (New York Times 1985). Celebrations in her honor draw a distinguished assemblage of international scholars, renowned authors and poets, biographers, critics, literary historians, and admirers‐at‐large. In May 1986 devoted followers came from places as distant as Germany, Poland, Scandinavia, and Japan to Washington, DC, to participate in the Folger Shakespeare Library's conference, “Emily Dickinson, Letter to the World.”
Historical research suggests that English monarchs at the start of the early modern era (ca. 1500‐1800) followed a communication model this paper tentatively names…
Abstract
Historical research suggests that English monarchs at the start of the early modern era (ca. 1500‐1800) followed a communication model this paper tentatively names “instructional”, characterised by one‐way communication intended to instruct the public in a correct worldview and to coach proper behaviour. There is evidence that this instructional model segued into recognisably modern models as the English Crown lost power between the reigns of Elizabeth I and George III, suggesting a link between the sender’s power and the communication techniques the sender employed.
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This is a brief study of the character, and the professional career, of one of the most spectacular and prolific of all the huge medley of book‐publishers in Victorian London…
Abstract
This is a brief study of the character, and the professional career, of one of the most spectacular and prolific of all the huge medley of book‐publishers in Victorian London. George Smith is perhaps today somewhat overshadowed by other famous names. Nevertheless, in 1944, the Cambridge historian, G.M. Trevelyan, singled him from the rest: as the publisher of the monumental Dictionary of National Biography. As the nineteenth century’s cult of printed books inevitably now recedes in favour of information technology, perhaps the time is ripe for this succinct evaluation of an extraordinary publisher from Victorian times who promoted not only works by Leslie Stephen, Thackeray, and many other literary men but particularly works by women‐novelists, such as Charlotte Bronte and Elizabeth Gaskell, despite the fact that he was far from being a “feminist”, in our own contemporary sense.
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Nancy Phaswana‐Mafuya, George Petros, Karl Peltzer, Shandir Ramlagan, Nkululeko Nkomo, Gorden Mohlala, Margaret Mbelle and John Seager
The paper's aim is to determine the role of non‐profit organizations (NPOs) in filling possible gaps in primary health care (PHC) service provision.
Abstract
Purpose
The paper's aim is to determine the role of non‐profit organizations (NPOs) in filling possible gaps in primary health care (PHC) service provision.
Design/methodology/approach
District (n=10) and sub‐district needs (n=14) analyses were conducted in five South African provinces. In each case, the district/sub‐district manager was interviewed using a semi‐structured interview guide.
Findings
The service gaps identified were understaffing/lack of capacity, difficulty in retaining and recruiting staff, service disparities, inaccessibility of services/low‐service utilisation and limited funding. It was believed that NPOs could fill these gaps. About 83 per cent perceived the relationship between government and NPOs as good. Contract monitoring, quality of service, communication and quality control were said to be unsatisfactory. The majority of sub‐districts (11) indicated that they provided supplies to NPOs; 50 per cent perceived the relationship between the sub‐districts and NPOs as good or very good. NPOs have critical role to play in PHC service delivery.
Originality/value
The study provides critical information required to make informed effective strategic decisions that support district/sub‐district performance and sustainability in a decentralized health system.
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Graziella Pagliarulo McCarron, Steven Zhou, Alec Campbell, Elizabeth Schierbeek and Kailee Kodama Muscente
The purpose of this study was to explore how variables such as student demographics, pre-college leadership activities, and perceived pre-college parenting behaviors predict…
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to explore how variables such as student demographics, pre-college leadership activities, and perceived pre-college parenting behaviors predict students’ leader self-efficacy (i.e., individuals’ confidence in themselves to lead and belief that others will support their leadership [Hannah et al., 2008]) in college and leader emergence (i.e., college-based leadership involvements [DeRue & Ashford, 2010]) in college. Undergraduate students (n = 420) at a large, public university in the Mid-Atlantic were surveyed to examine these relationships and data were analyzed using hierarchical and logistic regression, with appropriate controls and moderators. Findings included discovery that pre-college engagement with sports team positional leadership, community service, extracurriculars, and positive parenting behaviors, such as family routine and greater quality time with parents, predicted leader self-efficacy. Further, findings noted that pre-college community service, extracurriculars, peer tutoring and perceptions of parental quality time and proactive parenting predicted leader emergence. This study suggests that students’ leadership development is influenced by myriad systems across the lifespan and demonstrates that, as educators committed to student development, we must engage the full arc of our students’ leadership journeys and provide for intentional partnerships between higher education and the K-12 community.
TO HAVE HER NAME PERPETUATED in the cocktail bar of a plush modern South African hotel may seem an odd fate for an eighteenth‐century Scottish poetess. You may not even be able to…
Abstract
TO HAVE HER NAME PERPETUATED in the cocktail bar of a plush modern South African hotel may seem an odd fate for an eighteenth‐century Scottish poetess. You may not even be able to guess her identity. For there are certainly not many women's names to be found in the pages of Scottish literature before the twentieth century, and none in retrospect comparable in stature with George Eliot, Elizabeth Browning, Jane Austen or the Brontes south of the border.