Levels of Empowerment

Marketers and Microenterprise-Lending NGOs in Apopa and Nejapa, El Salvador

Dados Bibliográficos

ID4499983
AutoresSerena Cosgrove (0000-0002-3809-8483, Serena Cosgrove received her doctorate in sociology at Northeastern University, autor correspondente)
Ano2002
Volume29
Fascículo5
Páginas48-65
Data de publicação2002-09-01
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoLatin American Perspectives (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0094-582X • E-ISSN: 1552-678X
EditoraSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0094582x0202900504
OpenAlexW2086876311, W4255569244
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas3
Referências citadas14

High population density, an extensive informal economy, and diminishing foreign aid have made El Salvador an attractive site for microenterpriselending programs. My research in urban El Salvador observing microcredit nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)' and the microentrepreneurs they serve between 1994 and 1997 led me to conclude that I had to broaden my understanding of empowerment to include other actors in the development process. I have discovered that measuring the impact of NGO-implemented programs has to be analyzed across a number of fields of power (Binford, 1998; Roseberry, 1994). Loan clients2 are not the only groups to benefit from these programs. Indeed, my research shows that the NGOs themselves and local municipalities can gain greater autonomy and increased access to resources, contacts, and power from this kind of programming. Small loans are important for Salvadoran urban marketers struggling to make ends meet in the face of structural adjustment policies, cuts in statesponsored subsidies, decreasing development aid, and continued social unrest, especially in urban areas. For many marketers, microcredit means the chance to break out of the vicious circle of debt that borrowing from loan sharks entails.3 In the case of El Salvador's urban poor, it is not a question of which microenterprise-lending model best serves marketers; different models will be appropriate depending on the circumstances and the needs of marketers. Rather, the multiple and often competing agendas of local development stakeholders must be analyzed, and empowerment has to be unpacked to reveal the different levels on which it has been facilitated

Autonomy · Business · Debt · Development economics · Economic growth · Economics · Empowerment · Financial system · Labour economics · Loan · Market economy · Microfinance · Political science · Population · Power (physics) · Sociology · Subsidy · Community Development and Social Impact · Finance · Innovation and Socioeconomic Development · International Development and Aid · Microfinance and Financial Inclusion · Taxation and Compliance Studies

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