#nationalpolicy

[tuftsuep]

Cassandra Bull: UEP Thesis Award Winner, 2022

Statewide Farm to School Procurement Incentives: Design Thinking and Analysis of the National Policy Landscape

More details to come on the UEP Practical Visionaries Blog

Outstanding empirical analysis and cataloguing of a food program within a policy framework.

Cassandra Bull’s thesis is an exemplary practitioner-oriented project. Farm to School incentive policies strive to increase schools’ purchasing of local foods by offsetting the cost of local ingredients through monetary reimbursements. At least 15 states have adopted incentive programs for Farm to School programs since 2001. They have great flexibility but little guidance in designing these policies. The thesis presents a classification system for Farm to School incentives as well as a guide to inform the design of programs that take into account states’ priorities and contexts. The thesis draws on scholarly articles and professional reports for nationwide and state programs as well as extensive interviews with state officials responsible for designing and reviewing such programs. In addition to the report itself, the thesis project includes a comprehensive digest of state Farm to School Incentive programs. Farm to School policymakers and practitioners have already conveyed their appreciation of these tools to guide their efforts to design, assess, and promote such policies.

Abstract

Farm to School incentive policies strive to increase institutional local food purchasing by offsetting the cost of local ingredients through a monetary reimbursement. At least 15 states have adopted incentive programs since 2001, more than half established since 2018. States have tremendous flexibility in designing these policies, but little guidance on the range of models in which they can use to develop an incentive program. This thesis uses grounded theory design, informed by interviews and secondary sources, to describe and characterize the variation in 15 statewide Farm to School incentives with respect to their (a) design, (b) context, and (c) alignment to policy goals often attributed to Farm to School. The aggregated collection of experiences and classification schemes presented in this thesis will give advocates who wish to adopt similar incentive policies a way to identify program elements that are aligned with their specific vision, capacity, and regional context

[global-initiatives]

COVID Policy Comparisons: USA vs Australia For International Students 

The COVID pandemic caused unprecedented disruptions for overseas students amidst shifting travel barriers, campus closures and lost working hours. Evaluating the impacts across key destinatiprovides crucial insights on how universities managed support throughout crises.

 Within the USA, inconsistent federal leadership meant mitigation policies varied widely across different states causing confusion. While Ivy League and other reputed colleges tried restricting campus spread by continuing classes online, international students faced massive uncertainties around stays, travel permissions and hybrid learning barriers that could have led to deportations if not for immigration policy lawsuits eventually preventing worst case scenarios.

 In contrast, Australian institutions adopted clear communication channels with overseas students as the government coordinated with universities ensuring continuous virtual degree progression was enabled while fast tracking over 100,000+ offshore students return through sustained charter flights once conditions improved. Dedicated financial assistance covering emergency housing, telehealth access and academic fee reliefs further mitigated COVID stresses that overseas students faced through responsibly framed national policies. 

 Therefore, Australia’s unified efforts minimizing COVID fallouts for international students through proactive wellness initiatives, two-way communications and balanced travel provisions emerged a benchmark other mature destinations can emulate, creating templates to manage overseas enrolment vulnerabilities better if future black swan disruptions appear. 

#unprecedenteddisruptions #travelbarriers #campusclosures #lostworkinghours #inconsistentfederalleadership #confusion #ivyleague #onlineclasses #uncertainties #deportations #travelpermissions #clearcommunicationchannels #virtualdegreeprogression #financialassistance #nationalpolicies #telehealthacess #Australiaunifiedefforts #twowaycommunications #balancedtravelprovisions  #EnvoyOverseas #EthicalCounselling #EnvoyStudyAbroad #EnvoyEducation #Envoystudyoverseas #EnvoyStudyVisa #envoystudyinAustralia #envoystudyinUSA

-Akshitha 

Disclaimer: The perspectives shared in this blog are not intended to be prescriptive. They should act merely as viewpoints to aid overseas aspirants with helpful guidance. Readers are encouraged to conduct their own research before availing the services of a consultant. 

[moribamarcano]

Food For Thought 🤔

People complain about guns, social media etc, they say we should ‘get rid of them’. Hypocrisy at best, delusion at worst. Take cars for example, in the US there are close to 40,000 automobile related deaths per year. Why are there no major movements to get rid of automobiles? After all, compared to gun related deaths, which are close to 15,000 per year, that amount seems almost astronomical. Why the silence?

Moriba Marcano

[upscmagazine]

[impactng]

National policy on emergency achievable only if....CMD FMC, Asaba

Chief Medical Director (CMD) Federal Medical Center (FMC) Asaba, Dr Victor Osiatuma has expressed the view that the Federal Government's policy on emergency would only be feasible if there are proper financial backings for the scheme. Osiatuma who spoke to Journalists in Asaba on Thursday on the national policy on health, said that if not properly managed, the policy could give rise to series of unpaid medical bills, adding that it was difficult to sustain in the current situation in health sector. Recall that Federal Government had given standing instructions that many patients brought into government hospitals on emergency should be given medical attention within the first 48 hours. But Osiatuma explained that “if they are not able to pay, there is no fund for such money to be written off, and as at today, we do not have such that is why when they are discharged, we tell them to source for it, and if it's emergency as result of road accidents a lot would be offered to ensure treatment” and recommended the increment in funding of the health sector for successful emergency treatment policy. On allegation of illegal charges in the hospital, the CMD dispelled as untrue, saying that only card for N600,00 which he added had been affordable, especially in the present time cost of printing. On the increased rate of maternal and neonatal mortality rates in the country, Osiatuma explained that the huge challenge in the health sector calls for urgent intervention and reiterated that expansion of medical facilities and infrastructure would go a long way in reducing the high rate of maternity, infant mortality in the country. He said: “we have maternity complex but would be choaked when no expansion and at present we have 1,000 patients and we have only ten beds in our delivery room and the phase one of the maternity complex of FMC Asaba is ongoing and they are in three phases, the project would take two to three years to be completed and in neo natal unit, we have just 20 incubators which is the only functional neo natal unit in Asaba.”   Read the full article

[williambuist]

News: The Risky Seas

The government's newly announced immigration policy addresses the policy decision to reduce immigration. It plays to the suggestion of needing to raise skills and raise income for some jobs. Yet, it doesn’t seem to consider the consequences of the change, the thinking seems to be in a silo. Has there been thinking about things like tax receipts, the impact on prices, short term disruptions? Have current staff shortages in the care sector been considered, or ignored? Each is seemingly treated as a separate issue. Is that good governance?   One of the things I always had to do in my role as Head of Business Risk Management at Lloyds TSB was to consider matters of independence and alignment. Some of the risks we faced were aligned, but the alignment was often opaque. Thinking about them as independent was certainly easier when it came to planning mitigations. That though created the risk that we misunderstood the real aggregate risk. The probability of the correlated risk could easily be significantly understated. Like all risk management, if the risk doesn’t happen nothing much else will either other than receiving the invoices for the mitigation.   Looking for risk correlation is sometimes easy, sometimes hard. Every country and every business should put effort into risk management. Almost all would be more profitable, more reliably, in the long run, if they did more.   If you run a business, do spend time thinking about risks and what else will happen if they turn up, (and be honest). It's why I assess the overall risk of a business in the free business audit I offer, it’s a good place to start. Click here. Read the full article

[pragnyaiasacademy-blog]

Pragnya IAS Academy - News Analysis.

Cabinet approves National Policy on Software Products - 2019.

The Union Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has approved the National Policy on Software Products - 2019 to develop India as a Software Product Nation.

[aprioriposterous]

" [After a military briefing on the next blitzkrieg and the expected 20M casualties in two weeks] Chancellor Heusmann: I can see the consternation in your eyes, Josef. Speak your mind. Joe Blake: All those people. CH: Yeah. I know. It would be terrible. But we have a responsibility. JB: Like getting justice for the Führer. CH: No, Josef. I mean the most important responsibility, as the Master Race, to imagine and build a better world. JB: How is going to war with the Japanese going to achieve that? CH: Our alliance with them was always a lie. There is only one Master Race. Therefore, the burden falls on us. JB: What burden? CH: To end mankind's constant state of war so the real work: progress, perfection can finally begin. JB: By killing millions of people? CH: Josef, this war will be terrible, yes, but this will be the last war. And when it is over, we will have a world united and at peace for the first time in human history. Imagine, Josef. Imagine what humanity will then be able to achieve. " sounds eerily familiar 😒 #ForeignPolicy #NationalPolicy #TheManInTheHighCastle season 2 finale episode 10 #BingeWatching #SerialKiller (at The Aerie)

[mantis777]

"Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shores, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society. From the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles of racial supremacy. We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or to feel remorse for this shameful episode. Our literature, our films, our drama, our folklore all exalt it."

--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

#DrKing #RacistAmerika #Racism #NationalPolicy #NativeAmerican #ManifestDestiny #Indigenous

[canada-in-peril-blog]

More than 1,600 Parks Canada employees were told their jobs could disappear as the department eliminates 638 positions.