Microcredit meets social exclusion: learning with difficulty from international experience
✍ Scribed by Ruth Pearson
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1998
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 141 KB
- Volume
- 10
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0954-1748
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
This paper discusses a pilot project in the UK which is providing training, credit, and support to women from low-income communities in Norfolk (in the east of England). As well as situating this initiative in the contexts of wider debates within development studies, international political economy and social and labour-market policy, the author is able to provide an insider's perspective, as Chair of the voluntary organization which has co-ordinated the development and funding for this project, and overseen the policy and practical negotiations with a range of local, national, and international partners, as well as with bene®ciaries and the participants (Pearson and Watson, 1997). The discussion raises important questions both for assumptions about the convergence of the analysis of and policy on social exclusion and poverty in the North and the South, and for the relevance of the expertise of international development organizations seeking to transfer their experience in developing countries to current initiatives in the UK and other industrialized countries aimed at reducing welfare dependence and social and labour-market exclusion.