Philanthropy is commonly depicted as a universal practice and is either valued for supporting community transformation or critiqued for limiting social justice. However, dominant definitions and even popular connotations tend to privilege wealthy Western approaches. Using the Caribbean as a rich site of observance and concentrating on the island nation-state of The Bahamas,Get Involved!uncovers the hidden and under-documented activities of philanthropy from below, revealing a broader conception of philanthropy and civil society, especially within Black and other historically marginalized populations. Kim Williams-Pulferdraws on narrative analysis from enslavement to the current post-post-colonial moment, depicting the repertoires and practices of primarily Afro-Bahamians through the stories emerging from history (including the transnational observations of Zora Neale Hurston, social movements, and political and social institution building), the arts (from Junkanoo, literature, and visual practices), to the lived experiences of contemporary civil society leaders. Get Involved!shows the long history and continued significance of civil society and philanthropic engagement in The Bahamas, the circum-Caribbean, and the wider African Diaspora. Junkanoo is the national cultural festival of The Bahamas.It fosters a sense of community pride, identity, companionship, spirituality and unity. Watch a video about Junknoo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnMpMesNb1Q&t=14s
Aims: In February and March 2014, more than 300,000 households were affected by water rationing in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and the surrounding State of Selangor. Further south, reservoir levels in Singapore were dropping, prompting the government to raise the water conservation rhetoric, but falling short of implementing water rationing schemes. The region experienced a dry spell that was unprecedented in the last 30 years. Preparedness for storms has been the "talk of the town" since the 2001, 2006 and 2007 extreme high precipitation events in the southern parts of the peninsula and in Singapore resulted in costly flood damage. While resilience has been a concept used frequently in climate change adaptation, it is derived from ecology, where it refers to the capacity of the system to respond to a disturbance and resist the impact or recover from the damage of the disturbance. This paper examines the case of Singapore as an urban area in responding to a similar extreme hydrologic phenomenon by examining the climate considerations in designing climate change adaptation strategies. Place of Study: Singapore and peninsular Malaysia. Methodology: The paper reviews the rainfall extremes statistics covering the last 30 years for Singapore and then takes a hydrologic event-based case study approach to more closely examine the impact of record storms and the drought of March 2014 to discuss aspects of resilience that can serve as lessons for tropical cities in future adaptation to a climate-changing world. Results: Extreme rainfall events have become more frequent in Singapore over the past 30 years, while February, 2014 was the driest February since 1869. February, 2014 also had the lowest recorded daily relative humidity at 74.5%. Tropical cyclones are not expected to hit Singapore because of its location near the equator, yet Typhoon Vamei made history by delivering 210 mm of rain on 27 December, 2001. Between 19 and 20 December, 2007 Singapore received 366 mm of rain and within the same week another storm deposited 140 mm of rain in a 24 hour period. While there were some environmental and health impacts related to the February 2014 drought, including low dissolved oxygen levels in water and a localized fish kill, as well as reports of greater human respiratory problems, Singapore was able to weather the drought by requesting voluntary conservation measures, prudent reservoir management, and increasing the output of NEWater and desalinized water. Recent extreme rainfall events have produced localized flooding, but Singapore has progressively pursued a program of improved drainage, stream naturalization, and mplementation of Low Impact Development (LID) technology to reduce flood-prone areas from 3,200 ha in the 1970's to 36 ha today. Conclusion: We do not suggest that all countries need to have NEWater or desalinated water to solve drought problems. We do suggest that in managing rainfall related hazards, droughts and extremes have been treated rather independently. Based on the case study of extremes presented for Singapore we propose the importance of establishing a three-step preparedness program for extremes that includes Preparation (vulnerability and risk identification, adaptive capacity building, and monitoring), Response (information dissemination and relief action), and Recovery.
This article delves into the intricate ways in which anti- and postcolonial narratives shape the formation of political myths in both the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the Republic of Korea. Political myth, as a discursive system, elucidates how people are molded and what objectives they serve through a complex interplay of signs and symbols. Having established the prerequisites for when historical narrative converges with political myth (drama, significance, and political action), the authors identify three clusters of historical narratives, each associated with a significant trauma: the loss of independence, the attainment of independence through external aid, and the division of the people. Scrutinizing these narratives, the authors extract common and specific features of political myths as they manifest in the North and South, and pinpoint the key historical and political circumstances that account for these divergences and convergences.
The concept of "waterscapes" is examined, with a focus on applications in secondary schools and the pedagogy for undergraduate geography students. The waterscape emphasis on external flows of capital, political relations, and policy that interact with the physical watershed, as well as the hydrosocial cycle, are particularly well suited to support teacher pedagogical content knowledge because of the flexibility in interpreting and applying concepts using what we have termed "the shallow sustainability approach". Employing case studies from the Singapore geography curriculum, we explore new pathways for the traditional interpretation of waterscapes that include linking mathematical modelling of hydrologic systems with rich local narratives. ; Published version
Cold, damp and mouldy housing arises from the degradation of the housing stock over time due to weathering and a lack of maintenance. Living in such houses is associated with many adverse impacts on human health, especially for those with existing health issues. This paper presents a systematic review, using the PRISMA protocol, consisting of an exploratory analysis of housing-related risk factors associated with respiratory disease. The review consisted of 360 studies investigating 19 risk factors associated with respiratory conditions. Each fall into one of four categories, namely, (1) outdoor environment-related factors; (2) indoor air pollution-related factors; (3) housing non-structure-related factors; or (4) housing structure-related factors. The results show that effects of poor housing conditions on occupants' respiratory health is a growing research field, where poor indoor air quality, mainly due to a lack of adequate ventilation, was found to be the most influential risk factor. Usage of solid fuel and living in an urban area without a pollutant-free air filtration system are the main risk factors related to inadequate ventilation. Therefore, an adequate and reliable ventilation system with air-infiltration was considered to be the main mitigation solution to improve indoor air quality. It is suggested that government organisations and health practitioners could use the identified risk factors to measure the healthiness of existing dwellings and take measures to improve existing conditions and develop regulations for new housing construction to promote the healthy home concept. Further research is needed for risk mitigation strategies to reduce the respiratory health burden attributed to housing.
Myanmar's stated commitment to women's role in public life is longstanding; women were granted the right to vote in 1935, one of the earliest countries in Asia to do so. Myanmar endorsed the Beijing Declaration in 1995 and became a signatory to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women in 1997. The National Strategic Plan for the Advancement of Women 2013-2022 identified a key priority as ensuring women's equal participation and leadership in governance at all levels of society. In practice, however, women's ability to take part in Myanmar's political life has been very limited, made even more so by more than 60 years of military rule. This dynamic began to change with the 2010 general elections which marked the historic transition from military rule to civilian government. Members were elected to both a new national bicameral parliament with an upper and lower house and 14 parliaments in the states and regions.
OBJECTIVE: In children, lead can cause serious permanent damage as a neurotoxicant. The objectives of the study were to evaluate potential exposure to lead-based paint in family housing units at a typical U.S. military installation and determine blood lead (PbB) levels in children ages 6 years or younger residing in these housing units. METHODS: The authors conducted a risk assessment of 1,723 housing units and occupants at Fort Devens in Massachusetts. Data from the military dependent cohort was compared to estimates for the U.S. national population as reported from Phase 1 of the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III). RESULTS: A total of 1992 individuals (1,009 males and 983 females) were screened for PbB, stratified into age groups, and separated into racial/ethnic categories. Four (0.3%) dust samples and 59 (11.6%) internal and 298 (77.8%) external paint chip samples contained hazardous levels of lead. The geometric mean PbB concentration for people ages 1 year and older reported by NHANES III was 2.8 micro g/dL, compared with 1.5 microg/dL for the military installation cohort (p10 microg/dL for all age groups was 1.6% in the military cohort, compared with 4.5% for the general population. For ages 1-2.9 years, no blacks or Hispanics and 0.6% of whites had PbB levels >10 micro g/dL, compared with 21.6% of blacks, 10.1% of Hispanics, and 8.5% of whites for the general population. For ages 3-5.99 years, 0.15% of blacks, 0% of Hispanics, and 0.3% of whites had PbB levels > or = 10 microg/dL, compared with 20.0% of blacks, 6.8% of Hispanics, and 3.7% of whites for the general population. CONCLUSION: Lead exposure for occupants of on-post military housing is much less than for those residing in the civilian sector.
