Archive for October 15th, 2009
Reducing Poverty and Hunger Through Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Social entrepreneurs are needed in adequate numbers in different spheres of development—that is, global, national, and community levels—to enable the effective design and implementation of poverty and hunger reduction programs. Yet, organized efforts to develop and promote the capacity for social innovation and entrepreneurship have been limited. This is in sharp contrast to the private sector, where entrepreneurship has been and continues to be a major force driving development. Recent experiences have shown that introducing entrepreneurial spirit into the development process can improve the effectiveness of intervention programs.
This article by the International Food Policy Research Institute, discusses how social entrepreneurs at policy, business and programme levels could ensure the effective implementation of the programmes aimed at the poverty and hunger reduction and how the spirit and skills required could be infused through mainstream education programs. It is apparent that without new approaches and skills in regions where poverty and hunger are chronic, strategies and programs will continue to fall short of their intended goals.
Read the full article here.
How HIV/AIDS Affected Communities Innovate
The following is an abstract of the article, Innovation in Agriculture and Natrual Resource Management in Communities Affected by HIV/AIDS: A review of International Experience, by Michael Loevinsohn of Applied Ecology Associates in the Netherlands. It is a part of a Promoting Local Innovation working paper series.
This document aims to review international experience on the role of agriculture and natural resource management (NRM) in preventing and alleviating HIV/AIDS. In particular it draws attention to the importance of local innovation in these efforts and to the experience gained in identifying and boosting local innovation processes. Examples of local innovations of both a social and technical nature are described, as far as possible together with an assessment of the conditions that have favoured or hindered innovation. The purpose is to provide guidance to the country teams in their search for relevant local innovations and in planning for the workshops that they will be organising with partners in both the agriculture/NRM and AIDS/health communities.
We first outline some of the key features of HIV/AIDS epidemics and of their relationship with rural livelihoods dependent on agriculture and NRM. We then discuss in turn how the spread of HIV infection can be hastened when rural livelihoods are undermined and how the illness and deaths that follow infection can contribute to undermining rural livelihoods. This sets the stage for discussion of the roles local innovation play in the struggle with HIV/AIDS and for considering some of the local innovations that have come to light. We also ask why local innovation is not better recognised and appreciated, describe some of the constraints it faces and provide some ideas on ways this initiative can improve the situation.