Community-Based Organizations as Effective Partners in the Battle Against Misinformation.

Community - based organizations (CBO) have implemented various activities and have contributed to the successful responses to HIV/AIDS epidemic in Vietnam. However, in the context of donor phase-out, little information of current CBO’s activities has been published. This study aims to describe the diversity of CBO’s activities and to assess factors associated with implementing activities. A survey of CBO established before October 2014 and still operated after June 2014 was conducted from November 2014 to June 2015 in Vietnam. Their characteristics and participation in implementing any activities, related or not related to HIV were collected. Majority of 277 CBOs were established 2 to 10 years ago (83%) and were the group of people living with HIV (45%). Ten percent of them had legal status but most of them had leadership and an organization goal. Among 30 activities enlisted, Vietnamese CBOs provided approximately 14 activities on average. Disseminate HIV-related knowledge, outreach most at risk-people and support people to do HIV testing are three most popular activities implemented by Vietnamese CBOs. On the contrary, support for elderly/ homeless people, non-profit activities and other relevant activities are least implemented. A multiple linear regression model found six factors associated with increased activities: Older establishment, having leadership, having legal status, experienced CBO founders, having specific organization goal, and the number of partners. Vietnamese CBOs are implementing diverse activities in terms of types and numbers, remaining the key actor in HIV/AIDS prevention. Future interventions and investment in CBO are necessary to end the epidemic.

This study tests observations regarding the dynamics of fraternal organizations in urban and semi-urban Ontario communities against those in a rural settlement. The study focuses on Freemasonic and Orange Lodges that operated in a southwestern Ontario town of less than 2,000 persons between the late 1860s and the early 1900s. Exceptional results indicate fraternal organizations operating in rural Ontario during the late nineteenth century may have had some unique characteristics. Further study could test the wider applicability of these results and serve to shed further light on the role of fraternal organizations in community- and identity-building in rural Ontario during this period.

Ormas, which are familiarly referred to as community organizations, are organizations that exist and are formed from the community voluntarily based on the same needs, interests, common aspirations, activities and goals in participating in development for the sake of the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia based on Pancasila. The purposes of this study are to reveal the scope of government authority in the dissolution of civil society organizations in Indonesia and the mechanism for the dissolution of civil society organizations in Indonesia. The research method used is normative legal research with a statutory approach. Sources of legal materials used in the form of secondary and primary legal sources through recording and documentation studies in which legal materials and data are managed using interpretive analysis. The results of the study indicate that the scope of government authority in the dissolution of community organizations is based on the attribution authority. Regarding the mechanism for dissolving community organizations, it refers to the provisions of Law Number 16 of 2017 concerning Ormas. The author suggests that the government always conduct socialization and supervision related to the activities of community organizations so that the community and mass organizations must be guided by the 1945 Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia and Pancasila because it is the most important principle in establishing community organizations.

The Baltimore Community-Based Organizations Neighborhood Network: Enhancing Capacity Together (CONNECT) Cluster RCT

Land is the most important asset for Myanmar population dependent on access to land for their livelihoods. During the past several years, land dispossession has accelerated causing social, political and economic ramifications. Historical land dispossession also remains a significant challenge until the present day. This has provoked a response from civil society actors and farmers who have engaged with different approaches to battle land disputes. This thesis is a result of a qualitative field research utilizing various methods: documentary research, exploratory research, focus group discussions, in-depth and expert interviews all including 21 people and focused detail on three CBOs based on diverse approaches, having different levels of achievements and failure over the past several years. Maubin Township is one of the most land problem areas in Myanmar and CBOs are working to solve their problems. The analyses are made by looking at land tenure security and land dispossession, farmers’ access to justice for land losses, and the role of civil society organizations in promoting access to justice and eliminating land issues. Even though CBOs’ role in battling land issues and mobilizing farmers to promote their access to justice can be considered to have had positive impact, there are gaps and barriers in process and implementation. Farmers and CSOs have yet to see good results because there are restrictions created by the government’s centralized control and weak legal mechanisms. CBOs have used different approaches to promote farmers’ access to justice; however, their work is affected by their weaknesses, for instance the lack of strong coordination among themselves. There have also been cases where there was friction among themselves because of their political inclinations. Other civil society stakeholders focus their work on pushing forward better land laws and policies for the longer-term benefits. Even though this is a right approach, these groups need the government’s cooperation as the government is still in favor of using a controversial and manipulative mixture of old and new laws in accordance with the problematic constitution. This thesis argues that the work of CBOs has both strengths; using different strategies and awareness providers on land issues to communities, and weaknesses; less influence on land management bodies and companies and limited resources and their informal or casual way of working can affect their performances. To facilitate access to justice, CBOs should have better networking, managing community expectation and harm reduction among stakeholders, and cooperate formal or structured patterns with different level of stakeholders. Furthermore, Myanmar’s current legal mechanisms are struggling with corruption and inefficiency, therefore improving land laws and policies would be the key solution for the long-term gain and for mitigating land issues.

National Leadership Summit Promotes Consumer-Driven Options in LTC

As a community, aligning efforts across a community to support the safety and well-being of vulnerable and underserved individuals is extraordinarily difficult. These individuals suffer disproportionally from health issues, job loss, a lack of stable housing, high utility costs, substance abuse, and homelessness. In addition to medical care, these individuals often critically need access to community social sector organizations that provide a distinct and complementary set of services, such as housing, food services, emergency utility assistance, and employment assistance. These services are just as vital as healthcare services to these individuals’ long-term health and well-being, with data suggesting that 80–90% of health outcomes can be attributed to factors beyond direct medical intervention. This book proposes a novel approach to the coordination of medicine and social services through the use of people, process, and technology, with the goal being to streamline coordination between medical and Community-Based Organizations and to promote true cross-sector patient and client advocacy. The book is based on the experience of Dallas, TX, which was one of the first metropolitan regions to develop a comprehensive foundation for partnership between a community’s clinical and social sectors using web-based information exchange. In the 5 years since the initial launch, the authors have been able to provide seamless connection, communication, and coordination between healthcare providers and a wide array of community-based social service organizations (a/k/a Community-Based Organizations or CBOs), criminal justice entities, and various other community organizations, including non-collegiate educational systems. This practical how-to guide is the codification of transferrable lessons from successes and challenges faced when working with clinical, community, and government leaders. By reading this playbook, leaders interested in building (or expanding) connected clinical-community services will learn how to: 1) facilitate cross-sector care coordination; 2) enable community care partners to better provide targeted services to community residents; 3) reduce duplication of services across partnering organizations; and 4) help to bridge service gaps in the currently fragmented system. Implementation of services, as recommended in this book, will ultimately streamline assistance efforts, reduce repeat crises and emergency funding requests, help address disparities of care, and improve the health, safety, and well-being of the most vulnerable community residents.

Despite the efforts to reduce poverty in Nigeria, there is evidence that many people are living below the poverty line. Importance is attached to community-based organizations as a solution to social interaction for poverty reduction. This study assessed the determinants of participation in community-based organizations and its impact on poverty eradication. A multi-stage sampling procedure was employed to obtain data from 300 respondents. Data were analyzed using probit regression and the two-stage probit regression models. The study revealed that most (70%) respondents participated in community-based organizations. The poverty line was estimated to be N9377.44. The poverty prevalence (P 0), poverty depth (P 1), and poverty severity (P 2) were 0.5810, 0.1583, and 0.0503, respectively. The probit regression model revealed that farm size, formal education, age, gender, farm income, household size, access to credit, and types of community-based organizations significantly affect the participation of rural households in community-based organizations. The two-stage probit regression model shows that in addition to participation in community-based organizations, farm size, formal education, farming experience, gender, number of adults in the households, non-farm income, household size, and access to credit significantly affect the poverty status of the rural households. The study concluded that participation in community-based organizations remarkably reduces rural households’ poverty status. The study recommended that the government should encourage non-participants to participate in community-based organizations and introduce policies that facilitate an increase in the level of education and access to credit facilities to reduce poverty among rural households.

There is an increasing call for a governmental organisations such as local health departments and federal health and human service agencies to partner with community based organisations (CBOs) for health promotion. There is a large body of literature suggesting that CBOs need capacity building or empowerment to do this work, but less literature about the necessary culture shift at governmental organisations who fund public health work. This study aimed to examine the knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs of CBO leadership who do not want to partner with state funders, and understand which structures and practices demonstrate power-sharing in a community-led approach. We conducted six interviews with community-based organisation leaders and conducted a thematic analysis and a secondary, inductive discourse analysis of the transcripts to analyse why organisations chose not to apply for a government funded initiative and how they talked about power-sharing for community-led public health. Themes about the decision for CBOs to apply to the public health funding initiative: how it related to the CBO's scope of work, meeting the needs of the community, having the technical capacity, and cross-cutting themes of putting the community first and having a long-term positive impact. Organisations rejected the opportunity for this funding due to poor fit, even if they could fulfil the scope of work. A community-led approach was described as one that includes the government giving up control, creating spaces for meaningful participation and power-sharing, and systems demonstrating trust in CBOs. These findings reiterate that in order for public health to be community-led, there needs to be system-wide transformation and intentional investment that supports an infrastructure for community-led public health. State funders can learn from practices in trust-based philanthropy, such as flexible funding and reporting requirements. The results of this study can support the wider participation of CBOs in collaboration with state actors, maximising the transformative potential of collaboration, ultimately transforming power structures and advancing health equity.

Interpersonal Social Work Skills for Community Practice

Community Organization in Indian Settings: Insights, Practices and Scope

The article explores the connections and contradictions between community organizing and curriculum. Huckaby distinguishes coordinated habits that move a. populace in a particular direction from community organizing that is intentional collective work that is corrective in nature as it aims to advance freedom, rectify injustices, and amend inequalities. Community organizing also functions to expose and reveal the oppressive structures and processed bolstered by hidden curricula that implicitly inform individual actions and practices enacted by people en masse. Community organizing builds movements that are collective in nature, taking into consideration the wisdom and experiences of the community without imposing a prescribed solution or agenda to the issues. This piece specifically attends to grassroots community organizing around neoliberal impositions on education. To disrupt, resist, and refuse neoliberal policies, laws, and structures that further marginalize individuals, grassroots efforts must go beyond networking. Huckaby turns Haraway’s cyborg theory to understand the necessity of weaving, rather than simply networking, to create and sustain solidarity that binds different kinds of things, moving in different directions together. Weaving makes for transformation through connection, affinity, coalition, and political kinship. This process, a process toward not only transformation but also toward freedom offers reciprocal, yet unguaranteed benefits for individuals and the world. As individuals work in groups to better understand their needs, the world, too, has an opportunity to learn. While community organizing as curriculum may not solve all the problems of the world, it acts as a robust vehicle for collective steps toward various types of freedom as individuals demand rights for themselves and others. This text offers examples and forms of community and grassroots organizing including testimonies, teachers’ strike, #hashtags, and teach-ins conceptualized via participatory democracy, critical pedagogy, Kaupapa Maori research, cyborg weaving, freedom from, and freedom for. Community organizing as curriculum and for curriculum critique and reform has a corrective purpose that reveals injustices and seeks to unravel inequalities, while weaving relations that create and sustain solidarity and conjoined liberation.

This paper offers theoretical insights to contribute to the discussion on the role of community in organization theory. In contemporary modern society, organizations face a paradox: They invoke traditional community ideals to project stability and authenticity, but their operational realities are often shaped by cultural rationalization arguments of modernity. The paper relies on neo-institutional organizational theory and Bauman’s work on liquid modernity to explain why community is deployed as an explicit organizing strategy in the context of constantly shifting identities and environments. To understand how organizations navigate the swinging paradoxes of liquid modern living, the paper introduces the concept of an institutional anchor. Institutional anchors are an intentional organizational tool for navigating change while maintaining an image of continuity and authenticity. They provide organizations with a flexible yet stable foundation to organize around and help explain how organizations selectively incorporate particular values, beliefs, or ideas into their identity and actions. As an institutional anchor, community, in particular, allows organizations to blend the symbolic aspirations of traditional community logic by approximating it to adhere to the demands of modernity, especially through digital platform technology. Therefore, the culturally rationalized and individualized version of community in modern organizations ought to be treated as an entirely new concept.

BackgroundLAI-PrEP requires innovative strategies to increase access to underserved communities and support adherence. EquiPrEP is an implementation science study launched at a NYC municipal hospital in partnership with 4 community-based organizations (CBOs). We developed collaboratively a bi-directional referral process to link CBO clients to LAI-PrEP and to connect patients to CBOs for health-related social needs. We describe the CBO/clinic referral model, 6-month adherence for patients referred from CBOs, and results from interviews with CBO staff to evaluate this partnership.MethodsFrom 02/2023 – 12/2024, referral source, enrollment status, and adherence at 6-months (defined as on-time injections +/- 7 days) were collected among participants at baseline and follow up. In-depth interviews were conducted among 9 CBO staff (case managers, navigators, and director of client services) involved in referral processes and analyzed by 2 qualitative experts for barriers and facilitators to LAI-PrEP access and adherence.ResultsFigure 1 illustrates the bidirectional referral process. CBOs referred 28 individuals, 61% (n=17) enrolled into EquiPrEP and initiated LAI-PrEP, the 11 individuals referred but not enrolled were offered routine clinical care. Of those enrolled, 71% (n=12) were fully adherent to LAI-PrEP at 6-months. CBO staff identified the following factors as key to facilitating LAI-PrEP initiation and adherence: (1) provision of comprehensive primary and sexual health services in addition to LAI-PrEP for HIV prevention, (2) provision of services in Spanish, and (3) a welcoming and proactive clinic staff that creates an environment fostering trust and inclusion. Major barriers identified by CBO staff include: (1) lack of proximity of the hospital to CBOs, (2) cost of LAI-PrEP, (3) CBO staff turnover, (4) communication challenges, and (5) prolonged wait-time for initial appointment (Table 1 & 2).ConclusionThe support to patients/clients is strengthened by availability of bi-directional referrals to clinical and support services through a coordinated, mutually beneficial partnership. Healthcare systems should continue to invest resources to improve the ability for CBOs and clinics to collaborate and support HIV prevention as part of comprehensive sexual health care.DisclosuresRobert Pitts, MD MPH, Gilead Inc: Advisor/Consultant|ViiV: Advisor/Consultant Ofole Mgbako, MD, MS, Gilead Sciences: Advisor/Consultant Emma Kaplan-Lewis, MD, gilead: Grant/Research Support

Nepal in recent times has witnessed a proliferation of community-based organization (CBOs). Established by local residents, CBOs are small level organizations that promote and defend the rights and interests of people especially that of minorities and the disadvantaged. One such minority group that CBOs greatly focus on are women. Despite dramatic increase in the number of CBOs in Nepal its impact on women is understudied. The purpose of this dissertation is to analyze the relationship between Nepalese women's participation in CBOs and their autonomy. Autonomy comprises of four different dimensions; physical mobility, financial autonomy, household decision-making, and reproductive autonomy. Modifying the conceptual framework used by Mahmud, Shah, and Becker in 2012, I hypothesize that women who participate in CBOs experience greater autonomy. Data from the 2008 Chitwan Valley Family Study is used for analysis. Using SPSS, separate logistic regressions are run to analyze the relationship between CBO membership and the dimensions of autonomy. The results support three of the four proposed major hypotheses. Nepalese women who participate in CBOs have greater autonomy in terms of physical mobility, financial autonomy, and household decision-making. No evidence was found to establish link between CBO membership and reproductive autonomy. The variables that are controlled for in the study include age, caste, religion, education, marital status, exposure to television, exposure to radio, and relationship with one's mother-in-law.