Indigenous Social Enterprises: A Humanistic Approach to Sustainable Development and Poverty Alleviation

Abstract

Indigenous people represent a disadvantage sector with the highest poverty rates in Latin America, especially in rural sectors. There is a growing discontent in this region about globalization not having produced the expected results regarding poverty and social issues alleviation. Developmental activities for poverty alleviation in social issues have brought discouraging results in the last fifty years (Burnside & Dollar, 2000). Despite good intentions, the most widely adopted approaches have often been paternalistic, seeking unintentionally cultural assimilation, while ignoring the strength of local organizations (Davis, 1993). One common problem in developmental activities is that most projects have been conceived and managed by development agencies rather than members of the community, which has often led to a lack of any significant sense of ownership on the part of the target beneficiaries. Once a given developmental project exhausts its budget, local people seem, in many cases, to lose interest in pursuing the project autonomously (Peredo & Chrisman, 2006). In addition, governments worldwide are facing increasing debt, structural adjustments and reduced spending, which have diminished the impact of the state in the alleviation of social issues (Chossudovsky, 2003).