Browsing by Author "Synness, R. M."

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    Social Innovations in an Emergency Setting: Opportunities and Challenges for Youth Volunteers in Curbing the Spread of COVID-19 in Huye District, Rwanda
    (Revista de Gestao Social e Ambiental, 2024) Bimenyimana, P. C.; Rutembesa, E.; Synness, R. M.; Josiane, U. K. N.; Gerard, B., & Bukuluki, P.
    Following COVID-19 at the close of 2019, countries have been in an emergency to contain the improvised danger to their citizens; Rwanda was no exception. The Government of Rwanda (GoR) turned to investing in different mechanisms to deal with the pandemic, including community-based interventions by youth volunteers, which is considered a social innovation to deal with the improvised societal challenge. This study investigated the motives, opportunities, challenges, and lessons that youth volunteers encountered while curbing the spread of the pandemic at the community level. Theoretical Concept: Social innovation concepts contribute to social change and provide actors with the means to meet societal challenges. The social innovation concepts were adopted as the theoretical concepts underpinning the study. Method: The study followed a descriptive qualitative design. Using key informants and in-depth interview techniques (KIIs), data were collected from 13 interviews with youth volunteers and opinion leaders among citizens of the Huye District of Rwanda who were selected using network and purposive sampling techniques. Interviews were uploaded in MAXQDA 2022 to visualize and map the data. Results: The results indicate that youth volunteers have encountered various challenges where a poor mindset had a big occurrence, followed by aggressive attitudes from beneficiaries of their interventions. However, despite the challenges, there were opportunities whereby youth volunteers showed a high level of patriotism for their country and learned new skills like public speaking. Implications: The study suggests that in similar future interventions, the government should mitigate the identified challenges and enhance the highlighted opportunities for the intervention to be more impactful.
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    Social Work Community Practice from a Government Discourse Perspective: Motives for Youth Volunteers in Controlling COVID-19 in Rwanda
    (Journal of Social Work in Developing Societies, 2024) Bimenyimana, P. C.; Bukuluki, P.; Rutembesa, E.; Synness, R. M.; Byungura, J. C.
    During the COVID-19 pandemic, countries were in emergencies to contain the envisioned danger. Rwanda was no exception. Among strategies adopted by the country to control the pandemic were community interventions by youth volunteers. Using social movement and self-determination theories, the paper investigated the policy perspective of the motives for the voluntary engagement of these youths in controlling the pandemic so that these motives could be documented for future emergencies. A qualitative approach was adopted to explore what motivated these youths by analysing government discourses, where data were collected from six government policy documents. The content analysis was done after grouping the data into two categories and subcategories using MAXQDA 22, a qualitative data analysis software, for data mapping and visualization. The results indicate that youth volunteers have been mainly motivated by institutional-level motives, whereby government leadership mobilisation and coordination had a high occurrence, and under the individual-level motives category, civic-mindedness behaviour occurred high. The paper argues that conducive policies are a key motivation for social work community practices. Social workers should advocate for conducive policies to increase the productivity of voluntary activities. Another study involving talking to youth volunteers may complement the current findings.