How Civic Entrepreneurship Addresses Social Justice Issues for Women Around the World

Abstract

This presentation will provide a retrospective of nearly ten years of a faculty member’s activities with microfinance/women’s empowerment projects throughout the world, including working with a variety of community partners both here and overseas and in collaboration with undergraduate students funded by IUPUI as Service Learning Assistants. The faculty member was first the leader of a successful microfinance/women’s empowerment project in Mexico. More recently, she has been assisting a microfinance/women’s empowerment organization that concentrates its efforts in Sierra Leone, Kenya, and India. These civic entrepreneurship efforts directly address the social injustice of limited employment opportunities and insufficient financial resources that hamper the advancement of women in many countries. Through partnerships with non-profit organizations, higher education institutions can meaningfully deploy their intellectual resources towards endeavors that promote greater social justice for disadvantaged populations. Being part of these activities is integral to shaping student perceptions of themselves as engaged citizens of the greater community. These projects have given the faculty member’s students opportunities to contribute their skills and talents in foreign language translation, writing, public speaking, web design, information architecture, and communications technology. Photographs and testimonials of women from these countries proudly showcasing the results of the loans that they have received are both inspiring and humbling for the faculty member and her students. After attending this session, participants will be able to support how properly planned and deployed civic entrepreneurship projects address social justice issues throughout the world, articulate the important role of partnerships between higher education and community organizations in promoting social justice, promote quality microfinance projects as an effective and long-lasting approach for economic development that empowers women and builds community, and highlight how even small non-profit organizations can provide students with meaningful real-world experiences to use their skills and talents to address social justice issues.