Ramon Borges-Mendez

Environmental ascription in Worcester County, MA: toxic pollution and education outcomes

As a replication and extension of two previous studies [Pastor, M. Jr., Sadd, J., and Morello-Frosch, R., 2004. Reading, writing and toxics: childrens health, academic performance, and environmental justice in Los Angeles. Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, 22 (2), 271–290, Lucier, C., et al., 2011. Toxic pollution and school performance scores: environmental ascription in East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana. Organization & Environment, 24 (4), 421–441], the current study seeks to expand on the growing literature linking environmental inequality and disparities in educational outcomes among vulnerable populations by identifying the environmental determinants of variation in school performance in Worcester County, Massachusetts. Our findings show that schools rating lower in school performance were more likely to be located in more polluted areas, and that these schools had higher percentages of low-income and minority students. Our newly introduced, more targeted measure of toxicity is significant in all three equations in the present study. It is important to note that these significant impacts are found in a county that has much lower levels of overall pollution than in the sites studied previously. That is, the effect of toxins is significant even where pollution levels are modest.

Sustainable development and participatory practices in community forestry: the case of FUNDECOR in Costa Rica

Abstract Between 1950 and 1994, the pace of deforestation in Costa Rica was one of the most rapid in the western hemisphere. This is a case study of FUNDECOR (Fundación para el Desarrollo de la Cordillera Volcánica Central/Foundation for the Development of the Central Volcanic Range), an NGO created to stop deforestation and to promote alternatives for sustainable forest development. FUNDECOR emerged when Costa Rica was undergoing a process of structural economic adjustment as a result of the 1980s debt crisis. The Costa Rican state was reducing its intervention in many policy areas, especially in agricultural production, and re-assessing its natural resource management policies. Such a volatile context explains FUNDECORs decision to challenge the conventional wisdom regarding NGO participatory practices in community forestry. It decided not to “organise first” its constituency as a prerequisite for stopping deforestation. Rigid organising would have jeopardised the take-off and development of the anti-deforestation initiative. The results have been positive since FUNDECOR has contributed to stopping deforestation.

The Restructured Landscape of Economic Development Challenges and Opportunities for Regional Workforce Development Collaborations

Regional workforce development collaborations have emerged as a notable approach to tackle complex problems within workforce development systems. While much of the existing research on workforce development documents the importance of promoting regional workforce development collaborations, little research exists that adequately identifies the specific barriers that organizations encounter in establishing and maintaining these collaborations. Through several sets of interviews over a 10-year period, this article examines the experiences of three detailed case studies of regions—Greater North Bay area, CA; Greater Fort Wayne/Northeastern IN; and Greater Pittsburgh/Southwestern PA—to identify the barriers and emerging strategies for creating regional workforce development systems. The authors identify three primary barriers: high initial upfront costs, competition, and fragmentation. They also find that an effective regional workforce development system is promoted primarily through an anchor organization that possesses programmatic and jurisdictional authority throughout a region.

Diversity in the Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector

In this introductory essay to the special issue of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly on diversity, we begin by reviewing management research on diversity in nonprofits. The preponderance of this research focuses on demographic representation. While more contemporary approaches emphasize inclusion in decision making, even this approach falls significantly short because group categorization and identity have become increasingly complex and fluid. We ultimately explore a values approach to diversity, where the fact that people are inherently diverse is recognized and valued in all organizational activities. The final section of this introduction reviews articles included in the special issue. We conclude that the diversity concept must move well beyond a managerial approach to include broader social theories, giving deep consideration to concepts of identity, power dynamics and hidden interest conflicts in diversity efforts, and the ways that societal diversity affects the dynamics of volunteering and the structuring of nonprofit organizations.

Growth in IT and organizational experience in BATEC

The growth of the IT sector masks important dynamics: occupational complexity; the spread of the IT workforce into other sectors, and a transformation in traditional human resource practices. Handling these tensions is demanding regional workforce development strategies, especially to create institutional connections, or labor market intermediaries, that can assure the flow of talent through specific segments of the educational pipeline, from high school to higher education, and into specific employers, industries, and local sub-regional labor markets. The Boston Area Advanced Technical Education Connections (BATEC) is one of such intermediaries. BATEC has created the a basic template of practices that can be used to up-scale its efforts and contribute to shape a regional workforce development system.

Competitiveness and Workforce Development: The Case of the Boston Area Advanced Technological Education Connections (BATEC)

The Boston Area Advanced Technological Education Connections (BATEC) is a STEM education (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Education) and workforce development partnership created in 2003 to improve technological education and the supply of information technology (IT) workers for the knowledge-based and high-tech industrial sector of the Greater Boston Area. It is funded by the Advanced Technological Education (ATE) initiative of the National Science Foundation (NSF). BATEC has accomplished its educational goals but wants to expand and regionalize more broadly its workforce development functions as a labor-market intermediary. This case study suggests that such an adaptation must be informed by and analysis of the structure, growth and geography of the regional IT labor market and of the human resource development practices of employers. Conceptual and strategic insight is drawn from workforce and regional development literature. Initiatives such as BATEC can promote “high-road” approaches to workforce development and help other NSF-funded ATE centers seeking to enhance their workforce development functions.