Social Fencing for Drug Prevention
Challenge Overview
Preventing drug use requires proactive interventions from multiple stakeholders. Parents, school teachers and administrators, church leaders, youth organizations, and many other partners need to play a role in preventing the use of drugs. This research challenge aims to recognize academic researches advance the design of community- and city-level social fencing interventions by students and faculty.
"Social fencing" is a concept of community engagement that has been done in various forms to address social problems.
"The concept of 'social fencing' has long been used in India, particularly in the context of community forestry. Mishra and Sarin (1988) note that it was first popularized in India as early as the mid-1980s when village committees were formed to protect an ecologically fragile grassland in the North Indian state of Haryana. In their account, 'social fencing' essentially meant the emergence of a sense of collective responsibility to protect the grassland by promoting optimal grazing...Social fencing, in the current context, also includes surveillance against the destructive influence of 'outsiders', the strong corporate identity of the group members, and institutionalized ways to settle both community rights of access and effective measures to exclude outsiders (Henkemans 2001)."
Source: Chaudhuri, T. (2013). From policing to'social fencing': shifting moral economies of biodiversity conservation in a South Indian Tiger Reserve. Journal of Political Ecology, 20(1), 376-394.
While some progress has been made in community-based drug rehabilitation, much needs to be done in preventing more Filipinos from using drugs. Rural populations are often hours or days away from community-based drug rehabilitation programs which have
started emerging in localities with higher population densities. Even in communities with some access to primary care, many community health centers have no drug prevention programs. With the availability of shabu and other addictive substances, drug use causes the family to spend more on rehabilitation, which has the potential to push and keep tens of thousands of families in poverty and debt.To address these issues, frontline health workers need to increase the preventive capacities of communities and the various local stakeholders.
Social fencing interventions may be provided by traditional frontline health workers including doctors, nurses, pharmacists, midwives, community workers, and volunteers. An even more important layer of the social fence are non-traditional health partners such as churches, schools, employers, parent organizations, and other groups that have a direct on indirect influence on the behaviors of potential users of drugs.
They provide services for disease prevention, diagnosis, and treatment where alternatives either do not exist or are inaccessible due to cost, distance, or stigma.
The Universal Health Care Lab aims to find and advance innovative solutions that support and invest in social fencing to prevent drug use. The UHC Lab seeks solutions that transform stakeholders into effective actors, forming a series of social barriers that effectively keep out the supply of drugs and the behavior of drug use.
Requirements for Submissions:
To be eligible for submission, papers must have been completed as part of the requirements for any university course in SY 2018-2019 (any semester).
The competition is open to current university students or teams and those who have graduated during the competition year.
Submissions must focus on the topic of social fencing to prevent drug use, approaching it from the disciplines of history, political science, economics, sociology, geography, anthropology, engineering, etc, and may use any type of quantitative or qualitative methodology.
This is an action-research competition. Students are encouraged to align their projects to solve the needs of specific barangays, sectors, segments, or industries in their own community.
The first screening shall be done using the 3 minute video format, where the student(s) present their results via youtube. (see example below)
__ semifinalists shall be selected based on the 3 minute videos.
The second screening shall be based on the written report.
Submitted papers must be a minimum length of six pages of text, double-spaced, Times New Roman, size 12 font, with one-inch margins.
All submissions must conform to regular academic standards: i.e. papers must reference (cite) any and all sources consulted. Submitted papers may use the Chicago Style, APA, or MLA format for citations.
In addition to citations, the paper must also contain a complete bibliography.
Papers submitted must have a separate cover page including the author’s name, the title of the paper, the details of the class in which the paper was written, and the date.
The cover page and the bibliography are not part of the six-page length requirement.
Students are allowed to submit up to 5 papers to the Student Research Paper Competition.
The paper is to be the original work of the student submitting the paper.
Papers which fail to conform to these criteria will not be considered in the competition.
Eligibility Criteria*
For your program to be considered for the Awards, it must meet the following minimum requirements:
- It must have involved or engaged a partnership processes within the barangay in partnership with a university and a local public school
- It must have been in operation for at least 30 days before the deadline of submission.
- It must have verifiable and significant results.
Selection Criteria
*Adapted from Galing Pook Awards Program www.galingpook.org
Submission Procedure:
Each submission must be endorsed by a university faculty member who supervised the project, using the attached competition submission form. This form must be completely filled out and submitted along with the student research or project paper.
Evaluation Process:
Papers will be judged by a faculty committee consisting of not less than three faculty members from ____. In the committee evaluation process, emphasis is placed on originality of the thesis, analysis, clarity, quality of presentation, and evidence of comprehensive and systematic research.
Three prizes will be awarded each year. In addition to a certificate of recognition, the following cash prizes will be awarded: P___ for the First Prize, P_____ for the Second Prize, and P____ for the Third Prize. A P10,000 prize shall also be given to the faculty adviser of the First Prize winners. All entrants will be notified once the committee has determined the winners of the year’s competition.
Challenge Chairs
References: