Speaker
Dr Juliana Svistova
Associate Professor
Kutztown University of Pennsylvania
Entrepreneurship of the Poor: Experiences from the Global South and the Global North
Abstract Narrative
Aims:
• Orient the audience to financial capacity/asset building as an iterative, dialogic experience among practitioner-researchers and co-researcher client systems
• Examples of social and economic asset use and asset building across 4 contexts—focusing mainly on the South context of India, Haiti, and Malawi
• Social work practitioner and researcher cases to highlight social work professionals in the financial and economic development realm
Abstract:
In understanding and addressing social and economic inequality one must explore comparable patterns of endemic causes, the exploitative systemic forces, and structural barriers apparent across various global contexts. In the last decade, there has been a growing consensus across state, civil society, and private actors on the use of entrepreneurship as an inclusive and disruptive approach to solving poverty. As authors, we emphasize that entrepreneurship interventions must protect and promote wellbeing of marginalized populations rather than aiding the propagation of exploitative global systems.
In this presentation, the authors will critically reflect on their experiences as practitioners and researchers on entrepreneurship of the poor in India, Haiti, Malawi, and USA. They will draw on their collective experiences of studying, designing, implementing, and providing on-going support to entrepreneurship-based poverty alleviation interventions. Viewing entrepreneurship as a process- oriented framework the authors will discuss the significance of meeting people or communities where they are. This includes the factors that shape people’s quality of life, their assets and livelihoods, financial literacy, access to financial services – savings, credit, insurance micro-business skills – and production and marketing processes. Particular attention will be given to empowerment-based participatory approaches like community building, participatory action research as tools for practice, culturally rooted practice, indigenous knowledge systems, decolonization of development/social work, and the need for reflexivity and critical thinking. The presentation looks to open up a critical dialogue among peers, to exemplify the role of social workers in economic inclusion work by viewing people and communities as crucial resources to the promotion of social justice and global equity/equality.
Biography
Dr. Svistova is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social Work at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania. Her scholarship is concerned with community development and participatory approaches to social change in local and transnational contexts. She also studies organizational dimensions of policy implementation in practice. Dr. Svistova has a focused interest in disasters, interpretation of natural disasters, and resultant policy, practice, and grassroots responses to these events. She is a community-engaged, interdisciplinary scholar in the fields of social work, policy, public health and education.
Ms Kelly Gross
Ph.d. Candidate, Research Assistant, Instructor
University At Albany, SUNY, Usa
Entrepreneurship of the poor: experiences from the g lobal North and South.
Biography
Twenty+ years as a social worker providing community led work, change efforts and some clinical work. Currently a Ph.D. candidate interested in community engaged and participatory research, inclusive economic development, and child/family wellbeing.
Ms Meera Bhat
Doctoral Student
University At Albany, State University Of New York