Identifying Best Practice for Empowerment Through Entrepreneurial Freedom

It is often believed that those living in informal settlements or in households with low socio-economic status are reliant upon the state or charitable means for basic quality services. This representation of development typically hides the story of community solutions. This project focuses on three informal settlements in Delhi, India. It aims to show how communities overcome the absence of basic quality service provision by providing services themselves through community and private means as well as by developing approaches to enterprise and employment that circumvent the need for formal provision.

What is important for development is freedom of choice and freedom to control one’s own life. This project will promote best practice from the communities that stimulate sustainable lives overcoming barriers to employment and entrepreneurial activity. Newcastle University in partnership with Kings College London, St. Mary’s University, the Centre for Urban and Regional Excellence (CURE), and Indus Information Initiatives will provide knowledge for change, knowledge to inform, and knowledge to empower individuals to control their own lives.

You can find more information about this project here.

Contribution to enhancing freedom

This project will promote and enhance individual freedom in a number of ways, first it will discover how individuals, enterprises, and communities are able to provide basic services for themselves, promoting policy change that will put such private solutions at the heart of public policy. Second, by spreading best practice, it will ensure that communities can better adapt to the circumstances in which they find themselves and live lives that are characterized by gainful employment and enterprise, thus promoting empowerment, resilience, and reduced dependence. Third, by spreading best practice, it will promote approaches to providing essential basic services through the community and private enterprise. Ensuring accessibility, acceptability, and adaptability of these services for all community members including young people, women, and migrants.