By using information technology, local governments can develop alternative forms of citizen engagement. Civic crowdfunding campaigns supported by online platforms enable citizens to participate financially in social projects and can be matched with government funding. As such, an alternative for subsidies seems to be developing. In this paper, we assess empirically the success of civic crowdfunding campaigns in the Netherlands by using data collected during 2018 from 269 civic crowdfunding projects and local demographic data from the neighborhoods of these projects. The factors—the use of match-funding, the target amount of money, and the theme of the project, as well as the age structure, the province, and the degree of urbanization of the neighborhood of the civic crowdfunding project—turn out to be empirically related to the success of a civic crowdfunding campaign.
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Crowdfunding door burgers voor lokale maatschappelijke projecten neemt laatste jaren aanzienlijk toe. Hogeschool van Amsterdam deed er onderzoek naar en bundelde de uitkomsten in het eerste civic crowdfunding monitor.
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The role of smart cities in order to improve older people’s quality of life, sustainability and opportunities, accessibility, mobility, and connectivity is increasing and acknowledged in public policy and private sector strategies in countries all over the world. Smart cities are one of the technological-driven initiatives that may help create an age-friendly city. Few research studies have analysed emerging countries in terms of their national strategies on smart or age-friendly cities. In this study, Romania which is predicted to become one of the most ageing countries in the European Union is used as a case study. Through document analysis, current initiatives at the local, regional, and national level addressing the issue of smart and age-friendly cities in Romania are investigated. In addition, a case study is presented to indicate possible ways of the smart cities initiatives to target and involve older adults. The role of different stakeholders is analysed in terms of whether initiatives are fragmentary or sustainable over time, and the importance of some key factors, such as private–public partnerships and transnational bodies. The results are discussed revealing the particularities of the smart cities initiatives in Romania in the time frame 2012–2020, which to date, have limited connection to the age-friendly cities agenda. Based on the findings, a set of recommendations are formulated to move the agenda forward. CC-BY Original article: https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17145202 (This article belongs to the Special Issue Feature Papers "Age-Friendly Cities & Communities: State of the Art and Future Perspectives") https://www.dehaagsehogeschool.nl/onderzoek/lectoraten/details/urban-ageing#over-het-lectoraat
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The theoretical framework of this dissertation is based on Amartya Sen’s capability approach (Chapter 2). In the early 1980s, development economist Amartya Sen developed the capability framework as a broad normative framework for the evaluation and assessment of individual well-being and social arrangements mainly in countries in the Global South (Sen, 1999, 2009). I chose the capability approach was chosen because of its strong focus on the notion of freedom as the capability to live the life each individual is aiming for. The freedom to choose a particular lifestyle is an intrinsic part of Sen’s notions of agency and well-being (Sen, 1999). After elaborating on notions of agency and well-being in detail, I turn to the role of financial self-help groups and how their members are influenced by social structures. This chapter concludes by operationalizing the theoretical framework into three capabilities (C1–C3) that serve as sensitizing concepts throughout the dissertation. These capabilities focus on the potential impact CAF groups have on members’ abilities to develop social networks (C1), to control their financial household management (C2), and to adopt an enterprising attitude (C3). Chapter 3 discusses my research methodology. I describe how the three capabilities (C1–C3) were applied as sensitizing concepts in the set-up of this particular action research (Blumer, 1954). I also explain in more detail how, by using sensitizing concepts, I combined an inductive research approach with a deductive angle. Then, I elaborate on the fundamental elements of this action research project: the implementation of the CAF groups as well as the collection and analysis of the empirical data. Finally, I reflect on how I designed and carried out this action research, with a special focus on the interaction between researcher and CAF members as research participants. A more detailed background description of the Dutch financial landscape is provided in Chapter 4. The chapter focuses on two particular financial self-help groups: ROSCAs among Ethiopians and Ghanaians living in the Netherlands. Compared to the formal banking system dominating the current financial landscape, these financial self-help groups claim effectivity instead of efficiency in the operation and management of their respective groups. By exploring developments in the current financial landscape, this chapter argues that distinguishing different kinds of resilience creates possibilities for analysing the different roles of financial arrangements and institutions for the financial landscape. Thus, this explorative study on ROSCAs questions the dominance of the financial side of the coin that has resulted from the efficiency-driven institutions of the financial sector. Chapter 5 presents each CAF group in more detail. The reader gets to know the different members of each CAF group and their motivations to join. Financial performance is assessed according to members’ savings and loan behaviour during the period of their participation. The quantitative data is analysed on how much the members of a respective CAF group saved and how much they borrowed from the group’s fund during the entire period of the research. These insights help the reader to better understand the differences and similarities between the five CAF groups. Chapter 6 discusses the empirical findings from the first three CAF groups. This chapter explores whether and how participation in a CAF group improves individuals’ well-being with regard to expanding their social networks, improving their financial household management, and strengthening their entrepreneurial positions. It also shows how participating in CAF groups at the grassroots level contributes to the well- Balancing the social and financial sides of the coin26being of vulnerable people in the Netherlands. Finally, the chapter reconsiders Sen’s notion of freedom for the particular context of overconsumption, inequality, and overindebtedness. In applying Sen’s capability approach, I realized that the approach has a “blind spot” regarding individuals’ possible impacts on the structures within and around them. By adding notions of Giddens’s structuration theory to the core concepts of the capability approach, I rendered the capability approach more sensitive to how CAF-group members may interact with their surrounding structures (Chapter 7). The relation between individuals and surrounding societal structures is extensively discussed in what is often referred to as the agency-structure debate (Ritzer, 2003). This debate is based on differing views about whether and to what extent individuals have a free will and can act according to their preferences, values, and personal feelings, or to what extent they are the “product” of their surrounding social structures. By expanding the capability approach with the notions of internal structures, on the one hand, and more proximate and more distant societal structures, on the other (Stones, 2008), I detail not only how individual agents are influenced by their surrounding structures, but how they might also have – however small and modest – an impact on those structures themselves. As a result, this chapter not only provides answers to how CAF-group participation affects individual members’ access to social networks, their financial household management, and their entrepreneurial positioning, but it also enabled me to investigate how and why individuals join a CAF group to take part in a so-called countermovement. Thus, I also consider how CAF members could possibly play a role in their surrounding social structures, like the existing financial landscape and the emerging participation society in the Netherlands.One way in which a CAF group can play a role in the surrounding structures is to become a community of practice. Wenger (1998) describes a community of practice as a group of people who share a certain domain of interest that distinguishes them from others. In a community of practice, it is crucial to learn from each other by engaging in joint activities and discussions. To discuss whether and how some of the CAF groups studied here turned into a community of practice, I apply the criteria of a common goal, trust, democratic leadership, and accumulation of knowledge in Chapter 8. The application of these criteria to the functioning of the CAF groups also provides more insight into how members interacted which each other in the different CAF groups. I will show how two of the five CAF groups indeed turned into communities of practice. Chapter 9 concludes this dissertation by linking the empirical findings on the individual level (Chapters 6 and 7) with those on the group level (Chapter 8). I follow this with a general discussion of the main contribution to theory development made by the Balancing the social and financial sides of the coin27expansion of Sen’s capability approach with Giddens’s structuration theory. Then, I discuss the role of CAF groups in enabling individual participants to balance the social and financial sides of the coin. Finally, I conclude this dissertation by showing how CAF groups have the potential to empower their members to meet the expectations of the participation society and the challenges of the contemporary financial landscape. I also provide recommendations for how engaged scholars doing action research can be reflective about the way they interact with their research participants and for how practitioners can set up CAF groups in the field. In the Epilogue, I tell the story of Cash2Grow. Based on the experiences and findings of my research, I co-founded the Cash2Grow foundation to promote savings groups in the Netherlands as a tool for financial and social empowerment. By developing improved savings-group methodologies and financial education tools, the foundation aims to train staff and volunteers from different types of (welfare) organizations to establish savings groups among their target populations. At the moment, we are also collaborating with similar organizations in Spain, Italy, Germany, and Poland to learn more from each other in a project subsidized by the EU.
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Steden en wijken staan ook de komende jaren voor belangrijke opgaven op onder andere het gebied van armoede, duurzaamheid, veiligheid, welzijn en zorg. Deze complexe en taaie vraagstukken kunnen veelal niet door één of twee partijen van bovenaf worden opgelost. Ze vragen om een nieuwe aanpak met een grotere rol van de direct betrokkenen. Op steeds meer plekken in Nederland zien we dan ook dat groepen van diverse personen en organisaties met elkaar werken aan creatieve oplossingen voor vraagstukken op individueel, buurt- of wijkniveau. Zij bundelen hun krachten in nieuwe samenwerkingsverbanden om zo lokaal het verschil te maken. Deze samenwerkingsverbanden zorgen ten opzichte van het verleden voor verschuivende rollen, taken en (machts)verhoudingen. Er ontstaat een nieuw speelveld met deels nieuwe spelers en spelregels. Hoe je dit samenspel tussen burgers, ondernemers, maatschappelijke instellingen en gemeenten precies vorm moet geven, wordt nu uitgeprobeerd en ontdekt. Hoe verhouden bijvoorbeeld de burger en de professional zich tot elkaar? Welke complexe afhankelijkheden zijn er tussen de andere partijen? Heeft iedereen een gelijkwaardige stem? Tegen welke knelpunten lopen deze samenwerkingen op? Wat zijn belangrijke leerpunten en hoe kunnen we het leren over en binnen deze plekken optimaliseren? In dit boek gaan we aan de hand van tien casestudies en vijf interviews op zoek naar de antwoorden op deze vragen. Naast de grote verscheidenheid laten de voorbeelden ook zien dat de partijen op deze plekken in volle overtuiging gezamenlijk aan iets ‘nieuws’ bouwen ondanks hun verschillende achtergronden, belangen, denk- en werkwijzen. Daarmee zijn het voor ons plekken van hoop en verandering.
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