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In this commentary essay, we see that the trend of community-based waste management in Indonesia provides a comprehensive adaptive capacity framework to overcome environmental problems that often occur in developing countries. Where in the twenty-first century, waste management has become an important environmental and public health problem. This commentary argues that in Indonesia, the trend in waste management has changed from activities carried out by the government to community-based social activities, which significantly manage waste with economic value and have a positive impact on the environment. The trend of community-based waste management practices through waste banks in Indonesia is more defined as a waste management movement that seeks to achieve empowerment and support a circular economy and environmental resilience through sustainable and resilient socio-environmental action. This short comment explains that the Waste Bank in Indonesia contributes to more interactive environmental resilience and disseminates wise waste behaviour among the wider community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research explores the structure of parents' social actions regarding the zonation policy for new students' admission at SMKN 1 Rejotangan Tulungagung District. The study focuses on the various structures and meanings of the zonation policy, including the New Family Card (KKB), blessings from the school environment (BLS), Keponakan/Niece and Dulur Dewe/Relatives (KDD), Gandheng Gedek or Gandheng Wall (GG/GT), informal entrustment from special persons in government (TWP), special conversations, and special mandate letters from regional government policy makers. According to Max Weber's theory, parents' social actions include taking action with awareness, ensuring they have something right according to the PPDB policy provisions, using methods and techniques, restricting actions to a predetermined time, selecting and assessing actions, hoping for moral principles when making decisions, and learning about social relations between parents and the PPDB committee. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conversation is a time‐pressured environment. Recognizing a social action (the "speech act," such as a question requesting information) early is crucial in conversation to quickly understand the intended message and plan a timely response. Fast turns between interlocutors are especially relevant for responses to questions since a long gap may be meaningful by itself. Human language is multimodal, involving speech as well as visual signals from the body, including the face. But little is known about how conversational facial signals contribute to the communication of social actions. Some of the most prominent facial signals in conversation are eyebrow movements. Previous studies found links between eyebrow movements and questions, suggesting that these facial signals could contribute to the rapid recognition of questions. Therefore, we aimed to investigate whether early eyebrow movements (eyebrow frown or raise vs. no eyebrow movement) facilitate question identification. Participants were instructed to view videos of avatars where the presence of eyebrow movements accompanying questions was manipulated. Their task was to indicate whether the utterance was a question or a statement as accurately and quickly as possible. Data were collected using the online testing platform Gorilla. Results showed higher accuracies and faster response times for questions with eyebrow frowns, suggesting a facilitative role of eyebrow frowns for question identification. This means that facial signals can critically contribute to the communication of social actions in conversation by signaling social action‐specific visual information and providing visual cues to speakers' intentions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Agenda-setting is a central communicative task for professionals and a joint activity of all participants particularly at the onset of helping interactions such as coaching. Agreeing on goal(s) and assigning tasks alongside establishing a trustful bond prepare the ground for the success of the interaction. The professional agent initiates and sets the agenda as part of their professional role and responsibility, i.e., based on their professional epistemic and deontic authority. Concurrently, by orienting to clients' epistemic authority and by yielding power, control, and agency to clients to co-manage the ensuing interaction, agenda-setting is the first opportunity for client-centeredness, which is a central characteristic and success factor for the working alliance in coaching. Procedure and Methods: We take first steps in filling a research gap by providing a first analysis of the interactional unfolding of agenda-setting in coaching and by showcasing that and how agenda-setting as a joint activity of coach and client contributes to their working alliance. More precisely, we investigate agenda-management practices in five first sessions of business coaching to (1) document and analyze how the joint activity 'agenda-setting' is implemented via various (coach-initiated) social actions, (2) detail their contribution to establishing the working alliance, and (3) to interpret the emerging practices of agendamanagement against the concept of 'client-centeredness'. For the analysis, we draw on conceptual and methodological resources from interactional linguistics alongside linguistic pragmatics and conversation analysis. Results: We found 117 instances of 'agenda-setting' in our data which can be assigned to the seven social actions "Delivering Agenda Information", "Requesting Agenda Information", "Requesting Agenda Agreement", "Requesting Agenda Action", "Suggesting Agenda Action", "Offering Agenda Action" and "Proposing Agenda Action". Discussion: The social actions display that agenda-setting serves to establish a common ground regarding goals, tasks and the relational bond of coach and client, and (after this has been achieved) to negotiate future coaching actions. Thus, the joint activity of 'doing' agenda-setting can be shown to be 'doing' working alliance at the same time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IntroductionAgenda-setting is a central communicative task for professionals and a joint activity of all participants particularly at the onset of helping interactions such as coaching. Agreeing on goal(s) and assigning tasks alongside establishing a trustful bond prepare the ground for the success of the interaction. The professional agent initiates and sets the agenda as part of their professional role and responsibility, i.e., based on their professional epistemic and deontic authority. Concurrently, by orienting to clients’ epistemic authority and by yielding power, control, and agency to clients to co-manage the ensuing interaction, agenda-setting is the first opportunity for client-centeredness, which is a central characteristic and success factor for the working alliance in coaching.Procedure and MethodsWe take first steps in filling a research gap by providing a first analysis of the interactional unfolding of agenda-setting in coaching and by showcasing that and how agenda-setting as a joint activity of coach and client contributes to their working alliance. More precisely, we investigate agenda-management practices in five first sessions of business coaching to (1) document and analyze how the joint activity ‘agenda-setting’ is implemented via various (coach-initiated) social actions, (2) detail their contribution to establishing the working alliance, and (3) to interpret the emerging practices of agenda-management against the concept of ‘client-centeredness’. For the analysis, we draw on conceptual and methodological resources from interactional linguistics alongside linguistic pragmatics and conversation analysis.ResultsWe found 117 instances of ‘agenda-setting’ in our data which can be assigned to the seven social actions “Delivering Agenda Information”, “Requesting Agenda Information”, “Requesting Agenda Agreement”, “Requesting Agenda Action”, “Suggesting Agenda Action”, “Offering Agenda Action” and “Proposing Agenda Action”.DiscussionThe social actions display that agenda-setting serves to establish a common ground regarding goals, tasks and the relational bond of coach and client, and (after this has been achieved) to negotiate future coaching actions. Thus, the joint activity of ‘doing’ agenda-setting can be shown to be ‘doing’ working alliance at the same time.

In Italy, the debate regarding the presence of crosses and crucifixes in public places is long-standing and involves their detractors, supporters and defenders. Over time, these conflicting positions have gained media resonance, becoming a sociopolitical controversy that has led to lawsuits at various levels, including the European Court of Human Rights. In the social sphere, the issue has oscillated between the recognition of the universal value of religious symbols and advocacy for secularism, even in open spaces such as mountaintops. During the last few decades, several initiatives have been undertaken in the Italian Alps, driven by ecological concerns and opposition to the presence of crosses on the mountains. These initiatives have resulted in collective actions against the positioning and erection of crosses, and there have even been attempts to diversify the Italian peaks. By providing a historical overview of the Christianisation of Italian mountaintops and focusing on the mobilisation against the presence of crosses, this article contributes to the understanding of the role of such symbols in Italian public opinion, which is intertwined with the vitality of the Catholic Church and the sociopolitical implications of these initiatives. The research questions will investigate the process of legitimisation and delegitimisation of Christian symbols. The cross on the mountaintop serves as an example of culturalised religion, where this cultural object can become a "passive religious symbol," polarising claims for the defence of the natural environment and the sustainability of religion in the mountains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The topic of the article is the linguistic impoliteness (rudeness, face attack) of call-takers towards the caller in Estonian emergency calls. The purpose of the research is to find out the social actions where impoliteness occurs, its triggers and the linguistic form of rudeness. The data consists of audio-recorded calls from the emergency call corpus of the University of Tartu. The analysis revealed that impoliteness could be divided into three groups: (a) reproaches to the caller, (b) rudely formulated questions, requests for information and directives and (c) rudely formulated refusals of help and unilateral closings of the call. Impoliteness is generally triggered by the caller. One group includes drunk or rude callers and callers who do not follow social norms of interaction. The second group consists of cases where the information provided by the caller does not meet the standards of the call-takers or the Emergency Response Center. Only in a few cases, the call-taker initiates an impolite social action without the influence of the caller. Estonian call-takers express rudeness using the similar means as in the other languages studied. Linguistic tools associated with rudeness are found in pronunciation, vocabulary, syntax, and techniques of formulating turns in dialogue. In particular, we highlight pragmatic particles/markers and unilateral closings that, as far as we know, have not been presented in previous literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a multimodal critical discourse study of self-representation in ISIS's e-magazine, Dabiq, employing Social Movement Theory and Van Leeuwen's Socio-semantic Inventory. By analyzing the linguistic and non-linguistic features in the representation of social actors and actions in Dabiq, ISIS's implied ideology at the macro level, which is to convince the prospective recruits and at the same time, to legitimize its brutality, is revealed from both textual and visual perspectives. The results showed an interplay of the contradictory representational choices, namely "lionization" and "victimization" that has enabled ISIS to create a powerful narrative. By portraying its so-called "knights" as undefeatable lions and glorifying their acts of violence, while, excluding its killed, injured or imprisoned agents both textually and visually, ISIS has attempted to provoke admiration among its current or potential followers. Significantly, they simultaneously depict an air of victimhood to further legitimize their act of terror and represent themselves as the godsent saviours of the victims, and confer a sense of security in their hearts. Victimization, however, has rarely been applied to the Mujahidin of the State who are fighting at forefronts, but rather to the State itself as a territory (Caliphate) and to the Muslims who are presumably plagued by the enemies' transgression and injustice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social actions are studied in different scientific disciplines and considered from different perspectives. Applying systems theory in the study of social actions began together with the inception of the idea of systems thinking and has been widely used since. This study concentrates on the pattern of the development of social actions, which seems to be essential for understanding multiagent social actions. This paper draws on a systemic approach to analyze multiagent actions in different spheres of human activity, such as migration, the diffusion of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), the acceptance of new fashion and others; then, it attempts to scrutinize a common pattern of spatiotemporal development common to all of these processes. The study is based on the secondary use of published data. Similarities in the evolution of social actions in various fields were observed, and a common wave-like pattern of their development was detected. All social wave-like social actions include stages of inception, implementation, and termination that are followed by a shift in the actors to other activities. This work draws attention to the fact that any multiagent social action includes acceptance of innovation, and since this process is wave-like, any social action also evolves as a wave-like process. Comparing similar social actions observed at different stages of wave-like evolution can result in mistaken conclusions. Seeing social action as a multiagent process developing in time according to a universal wave-like pattern can facilitate its understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Architects often emphasize on form and spatial layout in domestic architecture. Yet, functionality of form is evaluated by the experience of its users. This research wishes to address a central problem often ignored in domestic architecture—the connection linking gender, experience, and space. The study aims to analyze design agents that aid in mediating gender inclusivity in domestic space. This research delves into the vernacular architecture of Chettinad, which has been widely deliberated and celebrated for its climate responsiveness, materiality, sustainability, etc. Considering the rationale of cultural transition and SDG5 in promoting gender equality, the study seeks to answer the following research question: What are the agents that could help to mediate gender inclusivity in designing domestic space in India? Using snowball sampling, 25 in-depth interviews with women users and participant observation were carried out in 12 villages of the Chettinad region. Findings identified the social actions as design agents and recognized space as referential to experience. Furthermore, the article argues that this opulent tradition must be preserved, and its meaning must be altered such that the indigenous lessons may be translated to other spaces it inspires, in such a way that it empowers the people living in it. Limited to a conceptual study, this research accommodated a small sample of women respondents. The article presents insights for architects who must consider gender inclusivity as a central factor in their design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In face-to-face communication, humans are faced with multiple layers of discontinuous multimodal signals, such as head, face, hand gestures, speech and non-speech sounds, which need to be interpreted as coherent and unified communicative actions. This implies a fundamental computational challenge: optimally binding only signals belonging to the same communicative action while segregating signals that are not connected by the communicative content. How do we achieve such an extraordinary feat, reliably, and efficiently? To address this question, we need to further move the study of human communication beyond speech-centred perspectives and promote a multimodal approach combined with interdisciplinary cooperation. Accordingly, we seek to reconcile two explanatory frameworks recently proposed in psycholinguistics and sensory neuroscience into a neurocognitive model of multimodal face-to-face communication. First, we introduce a psycholinguistic framework that characterises face-to-face communication at three parallel processing levels: multiplex signals, multimodal gestalts and multilevel predictions. Second, we consider the recent proposal of a lateral neural visual pathway specifically dedicated to the dynamic aspects of social perception and reconceive it from a multimodal perspective ("lateral processing pathway"). Third, we reconcile the two frameworks into a neurocognitive model that proposes how multiplex signals, multimodal gestalts, and multilevel predictions may be implemented along the lateral processing pathway. Finally, we advocate a multimodal and multidisciplinary research approach, combining state-of-the-art imaging techniques, computational modelling and artificial intelligence for future empirical testing of our model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The human action observation network (AON) encompasses brain areas consistently engaged when we observe other’s actions. Although the core nodes of the AON are present from childhood, it is not known to what extent they are sensitive to different action features during development. Because social cognitive abilities continue to mature during adolescence, the AON response to socially-oriented actions, but not to object-related actions, may differ in adolescents and adults. To test this hypothesis, we scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) male and female typically-developing teenagers (n = 28; 13 females) and adults (n = 25; 14 females) while they passively watched videos of manual actions varying along two dimensions: sociality (i.e., directed toward another person or not) and transitivity (i.e., involving an object or not). We found that action observation recruited the same fronto-parietal and occipito-temporal regions in adults and adolescents. The modulation of voxel-wise activity according to the social or transitive nature of the action was similar in both groups of participants. Multivariate pattern analysis, however, revealed that decoding accuracies in intraparietal sulcus (IPS)/superior parietal lobe (SPL) for both sociality and transitivity were lower for adolescents compared with adults. In addition, in the lateral occipital temporal cortex (LOTC), generalization of decoding across the orthogonal dimension was lower for sociality only in adolescents. These findings indicate that the representation of the content of others’ actions, and in particular their social dimension, in the adolescent AON is still not as robust as in adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Future Studies Research Journal: Trends & Strategies is the property of Future Studies Research Journal: Trends & Strategies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In face-to-face communication, humans are faced with multiple layers of discontinuous multimodal signals, such as head, face, hand gestures, speech and non-speech sounds, which need to be interpreted as coherent and unified communicative actions. This implies a fundamental computational challenge: optimally binding only signals belonging to the same communicative action while segregating signals that are not connected by the communicative content. How do we achieve such an extraordinary feat, reliably, and efficiently? To address this question, we need to further move the study of human communication beyond speech-centred perspectives and promote a multimodal approach combined with interdisciplinary cooperation. Accordingly, we seek to reconcile two explanatory frameworks recently proposed in psycholinguistics and sensory neuroscience into a neurocognitive model of multimodal face-to-face communication. First, we introduce a psycholinguistic framework that characterises face-to-face communication at three parallel processing levels: multiplex signals, multimodal gestalts and multilevel predictions. Second, we consider the recent proposal of a lateral neural visual pathway specifically dedicated to the dynamic aspects of social perception and reconceive it from a multimodal perspective (“lateral processing pathway”). Third, we reconcile the two frameworks into a neurocognitive model that proposes how multiplex signals, multimodal gestalts, and multilevel predictions may be implemented along the lateral processing pathway. Finally, we advocate a multimodal and multidisciplinary research approach, combining state-of-the-art imaging techniques, computational modelling and artificial intelligence for future empirical testing of our model.

Purpose – This research note discusses three essential and practical questions related to social entrepreneurship and social activities in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs): What motivates SMEs to undertake social activities? What are the obstacles faced by SMEs when undertaking social activities? What are the types of social activities that SMEs undertake? The article presents preliminary answers and provides research suggestions related to these questions. Design/methodology/approach – The authors search and review articles that study social entrepreneurship and social activities of SMEs and synthesize their findings based on the three main topics of interest. Findings – The authors synthesized findings based on their three motivating topics: motivation, obstacles and types. They extracted three primary motivations of SMEs for social activities: (1) demands and expectations from external stakeholders, (2) nonpecuniary incentives that stem from organizational values and culture and (3) anticipation of improving relevant organizational outcomes. The authors extracted two obstacles for social initiatives: (1) limited resources and knowledge and (2) lack of perceived benefits or incentives. Finally, the authors extracted two types of social activities: (1) activities that address social and ethical issues and (2) activities that address environmental concerns. Originality/value – Pressing concerns in society have pushed numerous entrepreneurs and small business managers to create and manage businesses that aim to alleviate social and environmental problems. Accordingly, researchers have devoted some attention to how SMEs get increasingly involved with social activities and initiatives (i.e. addressing social and environmental challenges through their firms). The authors highlight existing findings and propose future research opportunities based on our three essential and motivating questions.

In Italy, the debate regarding the presence of crosses and crucifixes in public places is long-standing and involves their detractors, supporters and defenders. Over time, these conflicting positions have gained media resonance, becoming a sociopolitical controversy that has led to lawsuits at various levels, including the European Court of Human Rights. In the social sphere, the issue has oscillated between the recognition of the universal value of religious symbols and advocacy for secularism, even in open spaces such as mountaintops. During the last few decades, several initiatives have been undertaken in the Italian Alps, driven by ecological concerns and opposition to the presence of crosses on the mountains. These initiatives have resulted in collective actions against the positioning and erection of crosses, and there have even been attempts to diversify the Italian peaks. By providing a historical overview of the Christianisation of Italian mountaintops and focusing on the mobilisation against the presence of crosses, this article contributes to the understanding of the role of such symbols in Italian public opinion, which is intertwined with the vitality of the Catholic Church and the sociopolitical implications of these initiatives. The research questions will investigate the process of legitimisation and delegitimisation of Christian symbols. The cross on the mountaintop serves as an example of culturalised religion, where this cultural object can become a “passive religious symbol,” polarising claims for the defence of the natural environment and the sustainability of religion in the mountains.

This paper is a multimodal critical discourse study of other-representation in ISIS's magazine, Dabiq, It focuses on both the micro-level analysis of actor and action representation, and the macro-structure of negative other-depiction in Dabiq from both textual and visual perspectives. Through in-depth examination of linguistic and non-linguistic elements, the study aimed to unfold ISIS's ideology at the global level, which is to construct its desired reality and eventually to recruit supporters. The analysis was carried out on fifteen issues of Dabiq following a conceptual and analytical framework within Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis employing Van Leeuwen's Socio-semantic inventory. The results show a considerable number of systematic utilizations of discursive strategies by ISIS to belittle its enemies and downgrade their practices. Throughout Dabiq, the out-group participants are represented either as passive reactants who are afflicted by ISIS's attacks or as powerless agents whose actions are trivial and carry no significant weight. Ineffectuality of 'others' has further been substantiated by the visual analysis. Deactivation of out-groups is closely tied to ISIS's propaganda of self-alteration to achieve the double aim of casting fear among their adversaries and brainwashing the audience by twisting the reality, and persuading them that the enemies' chance of winning this war is dim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to look at the religious behavior of fish sorting women laborers in the coastal area of Lamongan. This research uses a descriptive qualitative method, with observation and in-depth interviews with fish sorting women laborers, boat owners and the Head of fishermen association. Data were analyzed using the Miles-Huberman model with stages of data collection, data reduction, data presentation, and conclusions. This article produces that: first, the under­standing of religious women is inseparable from their belief in things that are transcendent able to move worldly life, by applying in daily behavior in the workplace by maintaining an honesty attitude, still carrying out prayer and in their social environment while maintaining friendly relations by adjusting the traditions that run in the community. Second, various social actions that can be taken can be seen from instrumental rationality, value rationality, affective ratio­nality, and traditional rationality.

Copyright of Revista Inovação, Projetos e Tecnologia is the property of Revista Inovacao, Projetos e Tecnologia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This work aimed to understand how personal and institutional protagonisms can contribute to the resocialization of inmates of the paraense penitentiary system. The study used the zetetic method, using a qualitative approach and the interview data collection technique aimed at the agent directly involved in resocialization actions, whose speech was subjected to the content analysis technique. As conclusions, it was found that it is a high understanding of the duties of citizenship that seems to impel the purposes of the interviewee and other protagonists cited, in addition to their respective public function, requiring greater state attention to the profile of public agents assigned to certain functions, for the proper attainment of legal purposes. The use of own resources and the search for partnerships, in turn, denoted the need for (re) construction of networks that, in fact, promote (re) integration between the fragmented sectors of society and the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a conversation, recognising the speaker’s social action (e.g., a request) early may help the potential following speakers understand the intended message quickly, and plan a timely response. Human language is multimodal, and several studies have demonstrated the contribution of the body to communication. However, comparatively few studies have investigated (non-emotional) conversational facial signals and very little is known about how they contribute to the communication of social actions. Therefore, we investigated how facial signals map onto the expressions of two fundamental social actions in conversations: asking questions and providing responses. We studied the distribution and timing of 12 facial signals across 6778 questions and 4553 responses, annotated holistically in a corpus of 34 dyadic face-to-face Dutch conversations. Moreover, we analysed facial signal clustering to find out whether there are specific combinations of facial signals within questions or responses. Results showed a high proportion of facial signals, with a qualitatively different distribution in questions versus responses. Additionally, clusters of facial signals were identified. Most facial signals occurred early in the utterance, and had earlier onsets in questions. Thus, facial signals may critically contribute to the communication of social actions in conversation by providing social action-specific visual information.

Effect-based accounts of human action control have recently highlighted the possibility of representing one's own actions in terms of anticipated changes in the behavior of social interaction partners. In contrast to action effects that pertain to the agent's body or the agent's physical environment, social action effects have been proposed to come with peculiarities inherent to their social nature. Here, we revisit the currently most prominent demonstration of such a peculiarity: the role of eye contact for action-effect learning in social contexts (Sato & Itakura, 2013, Cognition, 127, 383–390). In contrast to the previous demonstration of action-effect learning, a conceptual and a direct replication both yielded evidence for the absence of action-effect learning in the proposed design, irrespective of eye contact. Bayesian statistics supported this claim by demonstrating evidence in favor of the null hypothesis of no effect. These results suggest a limited generalizability of the original findings—for example, due to limitations that are inherent in the proposed study design or due to cultural differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, the methods of quantum theory (QT), especially quantum information and probability, started to be widely applied outside of physics: in cognitive, social and political sciences, psychology, economics, finances, decision making, molecular biology and genetics. Such models can be called quantum-like, in contrast to real quantum physical cognitive and biological models. Quantum-like means that only the information and probability structures of QT are explored. This approach matches the information interpretation of QT well (e.g., Zeilinger and Brukner, Fuchs and Mermin, D’Ariano), as well as the informational viewpoint on physics in general (e.g., Wheeler’s “it from bit” paradigm). In this paper, we propose a quantum-like model of an information laser by precessing the assumptions on the structure of state spaces of information processors, “information atoms” (i-atoms) and information fields. The basic assumption is the discrete structure of state spaces related to quantization of an information analog of energy. To analyze a possible structure of the state space of i-atoms leading to the possibility to create information lasers, we have to develop a purely information version of quantum thermodynamics. We did this by placing the main attention on the derivation of the conditions for the equilibrium of information exchange between i-atoms and a quantized information field.

The social impact of actions is reflected in the transformation of beneficiaries, including changes in their modes of life and decision-making. Benefiting communities' perception of the actions promoted by a nonprofit organization (NPO) were studied using a quantitative, descriptive and transversal approach. A total of 322 individuals interacting with NPOs headquartered in the Brazilian states of Rio Grande do Sul, Mato Grosso and Rondônia were questioned. The suitability of NPO activities in meeting local demands; the benefits accrued and the impact of the work done were positively evaluated. Similarly, the dissemination of the actions and the public-private partnerships developed should be improved. The actions of the NPO generate positive impacts, contributing to social development and the guarantee of rights. This study seeks to provide a guide to NPOs on how to assess the adequacy of the activities offered in response to their beneficiaries' demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]