BRAC’s focus on women and community organisations in the 1970s was lauded as bringing forth “a quiet revolution.” We explore evolution of selected programs that built forums argue while BRAC successfully retained its women’s inclusion, approach to collective empowerment is marked by contradictions. The shifts funding structures emphasised individual empowerment, organisation’s emphasis scaling ...

Inequity and power imbalances, adverse employment conditions and the lack of economic opportunities or control over assets are all manifestations of peoples' disempowerment and contribute to their poverty. This Policy Guidance Note considers the causal relationship between empowerment and pro-poor growth. It identifies eight domains of empowerment within three spheres: the economic (markets, de...

Self-organization and survival are inextricably bound to an agent’s ability to control and anticipate its environment. Here we assess both skills when multiple agents compete for a scarce resource. Drawing on insights from psychology, microsociology and control theory, we examine how different assumptions about the behaviour of an agent’s peers in the anticipation process affect subjective cont...

Agile Information Systems Development (ISD) principles emphasize self-organizing teams and empowered individuals in order to build more effective architecture and design. Agile ISD puts a higher emphasis of social interactions and human aspects of software development, and self-organizing teams act as enablers of these human aspects. In agile ISD teams, members have high autonomy over choosing ...

This study investigated the social capital of Iranian patients living with acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) and the associated factors. In a cross-sectional study the Integrated Social Capital Questionnaire was filled by a sequential sample of 300 patients visiting a referral counselling centre in Tehran. The patients' social capital scores were around 50% in the trust, social cohesio...

In the past decade there has been increased support from governments, NGOs and donor agencies for collective livelihood interventions organised by poor women. This support is largely in response to two assumptions: first, that collective enterprises are an effective buffer for the economic vulnerability of poor women, particularly since market liberalisation has made the livelihoods of individu...

introduction: universities and their faculty members are responsible for educating students for social responsibilities. if the faculty members are to contribute to the attainment of university and societal goals, they should trust their dean, colleagues, and students. this will facilitate the collective efficacy of faculty members. if faculty members believe in their collective abilities, the ...

The purpose of this article is to present and discuss the values and limits of microfinance within the context of poverty reduction, international development and community empowerment. The main thesis is that microfinance requires a more complex strategy than simply the provision of credits. The development of financial capital depends on the increase in human capacity and social capital. Micr...

Based on the multiple meanings, 'empowerment' can be identified with either conservative or critical Health Promotion approaches. From a conservative approach, the concept is viewed as an essentially individual phenomenon, centered on the provision of information and the external transfer of power in the name of the collective good. From this approach, the relationship between 'psychological' a...