..
..
| Ideology,
the holding of ideas that one particular political system is better than
another, belongs to the values or aesthetics
(values) dimension of culture. |
. |
Therefore
"ideology" (meaning a set of values) does
not belong to the political dimension
of culture. |
..
.
..
| One
of the five major factors of poverty is
ignorance.
To
many, the word ignorant is an insult. What we mean is simply that
some people do not know some things; there is no shame in that. |
.... |
Also
know that ignorance and stupidity are very different things. Adults can
learn, but do not treat them as children or as inferior, or you will block
their learning. |
..
|
Ignorance
means not knowing something, stupidity means not being able to know something,
and foolishness means doing or not doing something when one knows better.
Ignorance, stupidity and foolishness are very different things.
|
.
.
..
| To
“implement”
(verb) a project, is to begin and complete the activity described in the
project design. |
. |
The
older and more correct grammatically of the word is as a noun. An “implement”
(noun)
is a tool. |
..
.
..
| Income
is wealth, usually symbolized by money,
that is received by someone, usually for services rendered |
. |
From
the point of view of the receiving individual, it is money that is "coming
in," thus the word "income." |
..
.
..
| When
income is generated (created),
then it means wealth has been created. |
. |
When
value is added to something that already has value, then wealth has been
generated. |
..
...
..
| Pure,
theoretical, absolute “independence,” where a person,
group, or community does not rely on anything or anyone outside, for survival,
for growth, for decision-making, is as impossible as a frictionless
state is in physics. |
.
|
While
your job is to encourage greater levels of independence, self reliance,
and to fight dependence, the pure level of total or absolute independence
cannot be reached. |
....
| As
the poet, John Donne, wrote “No man is an island;" we are
all, to some extent, interdependent upon each other. |
. |
Where
the empowerment methodology promotes self reliance, it is a matter of degree;
eliminating dependency means working towards partnerships. |
.
,
..
| Indigo
is a little shrub which is native to the West African rain forest.
It is used to make a deep lush blue purple die. |
. |
It
is popular today to colour the clothes of the Tuareg on the Sahara desert,
people still nick named the "Blue Men." |
.
| In
the European middle ages, the dye found its way to Europe where only the
royalty could afford to buy it. It was used to make lush purple robes popular
with kings. |
. |
In
Europe it was known to come from Timbuktu which was thought to be the end
of the world, yet was a thriving commercial city and university town. |
.
| Indigo
(Indigofera tinctoria), may have been carried from West Africa to Asia,
or vice versa |
. |
The
plant is still cultivated in the Kwawu rain forest, and is used to dye
the kente cloth, although imported
commercial dies are relentlessly replacing the indigo. |
.
.
...
..
|
Wages
or salaries your business pays to employees who are not working in production,
eg: store keeper, security guards.
|
.
...
....
....
| More
than just having or receiving unprocessed information, the strength of
the community or organization depends upon the ability to process and analyse
that information, the level of awareness, knowledge and wisdom found among
key individuals and within the group as a whole. |
. |
When
information is more effective and more useful, not just more in volume,
the community will have more strength. (Note that this is related to, but
differs from, the communication element). |
.
|
When
simulating a community to organize and act, the mobilizer needs to be aware
of the role of information in empowering or strengthening that community
or organization.
|
.
.
..
| The
process of managing information, including collecting it, storing it, retrieving
it, analysing it, communicating it, and using it. |
... |
Different
from management information. See Monitoring. |
.
.
..
| The
word "input" is used differently as a noun and as a verb.
Noun: a resource that is put into a project or a productive enterprise.
Verb: to put something into something (eg to put information into
a computer). |
. |
English
language purists object to the word input being used
as a verb; planners, managers, coordinators and mobilizers use it that
way. |
.
..
| Intelligence
Quotient (IQ): |
....
| From
a scientific perspective, social science sees the search for a universal
measure of intelligence as problematical. An IQ test can only measure the
ability of a person to get a score on an IQ test. The content of those
questions can not be divorced from culture, and are therefore dependent
upon variations in culture. |
. |
Historically,
they have been used as self justifying predictions that children of aboriginal
communities and from disadvantaged ethnic minorities are less intelligent.
The intelligence in question is that of the administrators of such tests
who put some legitimacy in their results. |
.
.
| Institutional
Dimension of Community: |
..
| The
social, interaction, or institutional dimension of community is composed
of the ways people act, interact between each other, react, and expect
each other to act and interact. |
. |
It
includes such institutions as marriage or friendship, roles such as mother
or police officer, status or class, and other patterns of human behaviour.
See Community. |
..
.
..
|
A
person of “integrity” is honest, righteous, good; essential
for any mobilizer, entrepreneur or leader.
|
.
.
..
| In
sociology, "interaction" goes beyond our ideas of action or behaviour of
individuals. Because we are social animals, we human beings behave in response
to the ideas and behaviours of other individuals and groups. Social
interaction. |
|
It
is because of this social interaction that we say a community
is more than just a collection of human beings, but consists of all the
shared ideas, expectations and communication between each other, that it
transcends
human individuals, making it superorganic. |
..
...
..
....
| What
is the extent and effectiveness of animation (mobilizing, management training,
awareness raising, stimulation) aimed at strengthening the community or
organization? Do outside or internal sources of charity increase the level
of dependency and weaken the community, or do they challenge the community
to act and therefore become stronger? |
. |
Is
the intervention sustainable or does it depend upon decisions by outside
donors who have different goals and agendas than the community itself?
When a community or organization has
more sources of stimulation to develop, it has more strength. |
.
|
When
simulating a community to organize and act, the mobilizer needs to be aware
of the role of intervention in empowering that community or organization.
|
.
.
..
| There
are basically three things you can do with wealth
(1) consume it, (2) store (save) it, or (3) invest it. |
.... |
If
you direct wealth away from direct consumption or storage, and towards
capital
it
contributes to an increase in future wealth (by foregoing immediate
consumption). |
..
.
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|
