Problems related to drug abuse, Particularly with regard to the special situation of Iran, have caused considerable concerns among decision-makers of Iranian criminal policy. This article intends to describe measures taken for elminating these problems and concerns. These measures, on one hand, seek to reach more compliance with international conventions through drafting acts to criminalize money laundering and elimination of problems resulted from changing the drug abuse patterns. On the other hand, they promise to diminish problems related to drug abuse by determining a special system for criminal responsibility of addicts and diversifying responses of the society to crime and delinquency and drug-relate crimes especially through drafting community-based punishments act. This article also describes the criminal policy based on zero tolerance in two decades ago and the rise of new criminal policy

The first year of community based addiction prevention program in neighborhood areas was full of experiences. In this article, the -author tried to explain one of the best-known participatory practices in porto Alergre in south of Brazil, and his own experiences in four neighborhood areas known as Safaieh, HassanAbad, Naiem Abad, MaryamAbad and a large rural area named NasrAbad in Yazd province, center of Iran. In these experiences, the author found five different participatory models. The role of community health worker as a government agent, non-governmental organizations, community leaders & community facilitators were analyzed and five different lessons learnt from these five different experiences. Lessons that lead the author to a unique models, that could be used as a participatory model in neighborhood areas, workplaces, schools & families. In this model, named Living Homes, the health promotion road starts with facilitators as the core component of this model, construct the participation of the community members round their traditional culture and leads to community based organizations toward community movement against drug abuse.

This paper discusses Social Development Approach (SDA) to poverty reduction programs and social welfare. Some objective and subjective (cultural) processes, at the late decades of 21th century, have challenged the prevalent patterns of poverty reduction and social welfare, which has led to the proposal of social development or community-based development approach. This new approach is different from traditional welfare approach, in terms of its indexes, aims, concentrations, methods, measures and agents. The first section of this paper deals with historical and conceptual background of SDA and the second section proposes the concept of "community-based poverty reduction and social welfare". This concept extends SDA to local levels specially at urban areas. The third section of this article traces the SDA approach in the fourth development plan and The last section of the paper sums up proposed arguments and insights, and emphasizes the necessity of implementing SDA in to welfare and poverty reduction activities and plans in the country

As we know, our understanding about poverty and it's dimensions and causes have been changed from past to now. So that it's definitions has transmitted from "income povertry" to capability poverty" and to "deprivation from basic capabilities and potentialities. Meanwhile, poverty campaigns policies & mechanisms have been evolved from "trickle down" approaches of classic theories of economic growth " to broad and centralized interventions of government. And also because of failures of these policies to overcome poverty new ways of poverty alleviations have been conceptualized in "good governance" and "empowerment" of the poor. In this way, participation of poor and direct intervention of poor communities in poverty reduction programmes have become key pillars of policies and approaches of this area. This paper reviews three initiatives: "Basic Development Needs", "Poverty Alleviation through Social Mobilization and Micro credit" and "Social Funds" in the international literature and experiences. Then these initiatives follow in the country experiences and compare with each other analytically. At the end, paper searches the future of these initiatives in such a way that how they response their applicability and sustainability Challenges. This paper has used secondary and comparative analyses and also swot analyses implicitly.

Objectives: This research is conducted for evaluating community-based drug abuse prevention program in East

Azarbaayjaan. The aims of the research were to answer these questions:

1. How much participation was there in program?

2. What are these organizations’ self-determined goals? How much of these goals did they reach?

3. Regarding self-determined goals, improving community’s attitudes, drug abuse incidence, and quality of life, is the program, after 6 month administration, effective?

Method: The research method was before — after study with non-randomized control group. Self-determined goals were detected qualitatively via observation and focus group discussions.

Findings: Independent t-tests show community-based prevention has created improvements in attitudes and qualities of lives of the people in program communities significantly more than control communities, but it didn’t reduce the incidence rate of drug use.

Correlations between participation in program and changes in attitudes, incidence rate, and quality of life, were 0.89, 0.44, and 0.49, respectively.

Results: Logically and based on the model hypothesized for research, community action was expected to change first attitudes, then use incidence, and finally quality of life.. According to the new hypothetical model, the relation among variables is nonlinear and community action without any effect on incidence can improve the community quality of life; an effect which can be postulated as mediated by improved attitudes or directly from the intervention.

Introduction: The Community-based participatory evaluation is an applied scientific research that invites and encourages the people to full participation in evaluating their own community health programs with common objectives, in different stages, planning, implementing or concluding the programs. Collaboration of the Stakeholders develops their feeling of belonging to their community. It also gives them a new positive definition of evaluation programs, instead of a source of anxiety for blaming or rejecting. The involved people do the evaluation of their own programs instead of submitting this task to external evaluators. In other words, the main objective of participatory evaluation is empowering the community in planning,  implementing and concluding their own lives and career programs.

Method: This research was conducted to utilize the “evaluation framework for community health programs”, as a participatory evaluation model for the community health action agencies’ programs, with regards to the “people to people” approach. The evaluation framework was planned and implemented in a community health Action Agency called “Mehr Tehran Pars” located in the East of Tehran, metropolitan region 4, with almost 63703 populations.

Findings: Among the six success indicators, pointed out by evaluation participants (financial resources, human resources, service providing, communication, operations management and sustainability), the findings showed the maximum scale for capacity of the community health action agency was in operation management (%4.5) and the minimum scale was in supplying financial resources (%2.5). The scale for people satisfaction in cooperating with the agency was %50 and the scale for people satisfaction in the agency’s service providing was %48.       

Discussion: The participatory evaluation proved that the agency needs some improvement and empowerment. The method of evaluation also could produces some valuable knowledge in full participatory working. In addition, the strength and weaknesses of the programs were explained to take into account in the future. The lessons were learned in this method by the participants were gathering success stories, using the gathered informations and supporting the agency’s changes and improvement.