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This article argues that despite new legislation to fulfill the requirements of international mandates (such as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child & International Labor Organization Convention 182 on the worst forms of child labor), rights-based programming does not sufficiently incorporate the perspectives of poor children & their family members. This article draws on recent ethnographic research that pioneered a collaborative model in which government, voluntary, private, & trade union organizations conducted research to compare the impact of current approaches to child labor on the livelihoods of working children. It shows that in failing to incorporate sociocultural understanding in program planning, services fail to maximize their potential in offering children opportunities to end the cycle of poverty. 1 Table, 25 References. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractThe transfer between two‐year and four‐year colleges is a critical path to baccalaureate attainment. Yet students face a number of barriers in transfer pathways, including a lack of coherent coordination and articulation between their community colleges and four‐year institutions, resulting in excess units and increased time to degree. In this paper we evaluate the impact of California's Student Transfer Achievement Reform Act, which aimed to create a more seamless pathway between the California Community Colleges and the California State University. We investigate whether the reform effort met its intended goal of improving baccalaureate receipt, and greater efficiency in earning these degrees, among community college transfer students. We tease out plausibly causal effects of the policy by leveraging the exogenous variation in the timing of the implementation of the reform in different campuses and fields of study. We find an overall positive effect on bachelor's degree attainment. This increase is driven entirely by increased transfer rather than an increased probability of earning a BA/BS conditional on transfer. We find only suggestive evidence that the policy led to greater efficiency (i.e., fewer units at graduation) in BA/BS receipt for transfer students. These findings are broadly consistent across student subgroups.

One response to the major societal challenge of financial exclusion in the United Kingdom (UK) is microcredit lending for enterprise. Typically delivered via Community Development Finance Institutions (CDFIs) in the UK, these lending institutions can be conceptualised as 'alternative' economic spaces. Yet the nature of their alterity is unclear as categorisations of alternative-oppositional or alternative-substitute institutions are possible and could also be influenced by complexities in the UK relating to the welfare system and sustainability. Alterity is rarely static, being influenced by policies and regulation, and the nature of institutions' alterity could have consequences for wellbeing, as different values and ideals underpin different conceptions of alterity which affect how these institutions operate. In this paper, the complexities of microcredit for enterprise lending within the UK are explored through in-depth interviews with UK 'supply-side' stakeholders. Conceptions of alterity are then used as an analytic lens to examine these results. Results suggest that these lenders remain in opposition to the mainstream as the needs of low-income individuals are embedded within their operating model. Microcredit lending is conceptualised in terms of responsible lenders offering fair credit to financially-excluded individuals using relationship banking practices. Such a conceptualisation provides a touchstone against which to assess shifts in lenders' alterity and a platform from which to introduce legislative and regulatory changes to protect these 'alternative-oppositional' economic spaces. This paper begins to outline these responses that could help to ensure and grow a more community-engaged and varied local financial infrastructure within the UK.

AbstractThere is a move towards partnership working across the global north and south but there remain questions about how to do it most effectively. This paper reports on the findings from a project that built a partnership between women in Scotland and India in order to transfer knowledge about Indian Self Help Groups. By creating peer to peer relationships that challenged traditional roles of 'teacher' and 'learner', the project was effective in transferring learning from south to north and generating meaningful outcomes for those involved. Despite the contextual differences, the successful transfer of key components of the model, savings, and loans, has led to a sense of empowerment in the Scottish women that is comparable to their Indian counterparts. As the project continues, it will be important that the dialogue between the partners continues, so there is ongoing learning as the Scottish groups expand and develop.

Social isolation and loneliness has been classed as a major public health concern due to its negative physical and mental health implications, and living in a remote or rural area is a prominent contributing risk factor. Community-led social enterprise models are recognised in government policy as a potential preventative measure for social isolation and loneliness, yet there is a lack of understanding of their application in rural contexts. The objectives of this paper are to investigate the role of social enterprise in addressing social isolation and loneliness in rural communities, and to explore the pathways in which social enterprise activity may act upon the health and wellbeing of social enterprise beneficiaries. We also discuss the capacity of rural community members to deliver and sustain such services. The study used in-depth interviews over a three-year period with 35 stakeholders from seven social enterprises in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, including board members, staff, volunteers and service users. Findings showed that social enterprises are successfully providing activities that counteract factors contributing to social isolation and feelings of loneliness, leading to wider health and wellbeing benefits for individuals. However, the sustainability and continuity of social enterprises are questionable due to the burden on smaller populations, limited expertise and knowledge of running social enterprises, and effects on the personal lives of social enterprise volunteers and staff. This study supports suggestions that social enterprises can be generators of health and wellbeing through their varied remit of activities that impact on the social determinants of health. However, it also shows that relying on social enterprise as a particular solution to social isolation and loneliness is precarious due to complexities associated with rurality. Therefore, rural policy and practice must move away from a 'one size fits all' approach to tackling social isolation and loneliness, recognise the need for local level tailored interventions and, through harnessing the potential or rural social enterprises, enable flexible service provision that correlates with rural context.

Test de validité des stratégies de réponses aux risques terrifiants Cet article rapporte les résultats d'un test de validité d'une procédure développé pour explorer l'impact du contexte et des risques de base sur le taux de substitution marginal des individus entre richesse et risque de mortalité à travers différents contextes, en utilisant une méthodologie de risk-risk trade-off. L'analyse de ces interviews qualitatifs montre que l'effet du contexte est différent pour différents individus. Pour quelques individus le contexte n'avait presque aucun effet, ces individus se focalisant principalement sur leurs risques de base, tandis que pour d'autres il avait un effet considérable sur leur trade-off entre les risques. Notamment, seule une minorité décrivait une stratégie cohérente avec la maximisation de l'utilité espérée. Ceci a des implications importantes sur l'utilisation des mesures de risk-risk trade-off et des consentements-à-payer pour la réduction de mortalité dans les analyses coût-bénéfice.