The goal of the study was to explore how environmental and community sustainability can be promoted for informal settlement communities in Namibia and South Africa. The study employed an exploratory sequential mixed methods research design, which as such combined qualitative and quantitative research approaches in two successive study phases.

The influence of new media, which includes social network sites, cannot be ignored in communication studies. The significance of sites is contentious, with some claims that they are beneficial while others claim they are inconsequential (Leidner, Koch & Gonzalez, 2010; North, 2010; Nucleus, 2009). Social network sites are used for sharing ideas, interacting with other users and giving a feeling of sense of belonging that transcends geographical boundaries.

This ethnographic study is concerned with examining how communities in Chauma of Dedza district in Malawi construct “girls’ readiness for marriage” as the immediate lens through which child marriage can be understood. The social label of girls’ readiness for marriage refers to the complex constructions of notions of girlhood and girls’ sexuality, conscious and subconscious, that define the maturity of girls to enter marital arrangements.

After a war of nearly two decades in the Acholi sub-region of northern Uganda many families and communities were physically, socially, economically and psychologically devastated. A myriad of other concomitant effects of the war such as distorted gender relations in households and undue exposure of vulnerable children to the menace of hazardous child labour manifest in the communities today.