One way to guide your reader is to use various techniques to connect ideas. These techniques help you achieve coherence in your writing, demonstrating how your ideas are related and how they reinforce your main points.
In the paragraphs on the previous screen, you can see that certain words and phrases are used to illustrate a particular pattern of organization. Such a technique is crucial to providing a kind of guided tour through the paragraph. By including specific connector words, the writer is telling the reader what information to expect in the paragraph. Sometimes the reader can expect to see contrast, continuity, or additional information. Other times, the reader can identify an ordering of information such as a chronology, a list, or a set of related examples.
Before you learn more about these techniques, find out how many you can already identify. Read the sample text—a section extracted from a longer report. Pay special attention to the overview, the headings, and the first sentence after each heading. When you are finished, click the button at the end of the sample to reveal the techniques.
Food-for-Work and Cash-for Work Programs in Africa: Lessons Learned
Features of Good Program Design
For a cash-for-work or food-for-work program to be successful, careful program design is one of the key elements. As lessons learned from existing programs have shown, good design pays attention to five equally important components: selecting the geographical location; identifying areas with high rates of poverty and unemployment; involving the community in choosing beneficiaries; targeting particular groups; and setting wages at a suitable level.
Geographic Areas
Carefully selecting the geographical areas for program location will help the program reach the most vulnerable areas of the country. Since cash-for-work and food-for-work programs aim to reduce vulnerability to poverty and hunger, the selection of location should begin by assessing the specific country context to evaluate the characteristics of the population. This assessment can help answer the question who is poor and vulnerable and which parts of the country are most affected. When selecting the location, longer-term development opportunities should be considered in the country context.
High Rates of Poverty or Unemployment
Selecting areas with high rates of poverty or unemployment will help maximize the benefits from these programs. Existing programs have demonstrated that benefits are highest when public works are placed in the poorest areas and when they are operational during difficult times, such as off-seasons and economic crises. The poorest areas often lack basic infrastructure that would provide physical access to markets or employment opportunities, among other things; thus, selecting areas without adequate infrastructure can yield benefits in two ways. First, public works can provide the much-needed infrastructure construction or rehabilitation in these poor areas. Infrastructure improvement will benefit not only those who participate in the program but also the community at-large. Second, the infrastructure being built can also generate employment opportunities in terms of maintenance work and contribute to creating longer-term development opportunities.
Community Involvement
In selecting the program beneficiaries, criteria should be decided jointly with the community in the selected area. Involvement should start at the design phase. For a program to be sustainable, the affected or concerned community should be involved in the project from the design phase onwards. The goals and needs of that particular community should be addressed through the program. The community should be the decision-maker in terms of who can participate in the program. This enhanced ownership can lead to three beneficial results: 1) ensuring fair distribution of benefits, 2) minimizing intra-community conflict over who should participate, and 3) rending programs more sustainable.
Targeting Particular Groups
Sometimes targeting particular beneficiary groups, such as women for instance, may have additional benefits. Targeting women can improve food security at the household level because women play such a key role in this sector, especially in Africa. In a variety of African countries, research has shown that improvements in household food security and nutrition levels are closely linked to women's access to income and other resources. In addition to improving food security, cash-for-work and food-for-work programs can also provide women with new skills that they may use in the future for income-generating activities.
Setting Wage Levels
Experience suggests that programs tend to succeed better if wages are set low. Low wage levels can help to encourage only the poor to self-select to participate in the programs. Research from successful programs clearly shows that when wages in cash-for-work programs are set slightly below market level, it is likely that only the poor will want to participate in the programs. This is because only the poor members of the community find these low wages to be an incentive for participation. If the wages are too high in relation to market rates, the programs will attract those already employed and the non-poor, which will distort the purpose of the program.