Search results

This paper aims to explore the association between financial literacy and entrepreneurial success among young entrepreneurs within an economically disadvantaged community in Cape Town, South Africa.

The mixed-method approach was adopted for the study. In-depth interviews were used in collecting the qualitative data while structured interviews using questionnaires were administered in collecting the quantitative data. The participants for the study were strictly young entrepreneurs.

The study found that entrepreneurs understood the concept of financial literacy and this was corroborated by their financial literacy average score of 59.03, which is above the national financial literacy average score of 54.00. The study further revealed that a positive association exists between financial literacy and entrepreneurial success. Hence, high levels of financial literacy result in increased business success.

The sample size of the study was relatively small, for which reason, a mixed-method approach was adopted to strengthen the research findings. The research also considered only one disadvantaged community in South Africa (Khayelitsha).

To the best of the knowledge, the influences of financial literacy on the success of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) among young entrepreneurs have not been well-explored in economically disadvantaged areas within the South African context. As a result, this study sheds light by assessing the level of financial literacy among young entrepreneurs in economically disadvantaged communities and by determining the relationship between financial literacy and entrepreneurial success. The study further provides recommendations on policy-making to ensure that through successful entrepreneurship, developmental challenges such as unemployment can be reduced.

The underrepresentation of Black girls in gifted programs has received attention in both education and counseling literature. Nevertheless, scholars have given less emphasis to the intersections of intellectual ability, race, gender, social class, and place, particularly the idiosyncratic experiences of gifted Black girls from rural, economically disadvantaged backgrounds. The authors of this chapter discuss this unique positionality, with a focus on historical segregation and exclusionary practices within the American educational system. The authors discuss the tenets of critical race feminism and identify factors that may foster educational resilience for Black girls from rural, low-income communities. Recommendations are provided to address pertinent issues related to structural educational reform and inclusive gifted education. The chapter concludes with a call for education and counseling professionals to fundamentally change the systems and processes that perpetuate systematic inequity for this underserved population.

This study aims to explore the socio-cultural barriers to enterprise in economically disadvantaged communities across five countries: UK, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and Greece.

This study’s EU-funded project took the form of community-based participatory action research. This study focusses on the data from the interviews and network mapping exercises. A total of 40 individual interviews took place, with interviewees from communities with entrenched disadvantage and limited opportunities for employment and education and low rates of business start-ups.

The research shows that barriers to entrepreneurship can be overcome where a trusted representative (or “mediator”) can act as a bridge, facilitating access to new knowledge and networks. This approach can be used to support micro/SMEs for growth and innovation. In targeting these businesses, policymakers need to recognise the power imbalances between actors and take steps to overcome these, by establishing links with community-based mediators who can act as trusted interlocutors, enabling sustainable relationships to be developed.

This research targets many often hard-to-reach groups and offers insights into the lived experiences of those who often operate at the peripheries. In doing so, it shows how trusted individuals can be used to remove barriers and promote growth, making clear links between theory to practice.

Ireland has suddenly become a hub of activity around children's services ‐ at central and local government levels, involving the primary statutory and voluntary agencies, and engaging some of the more disadvantaged communities. In the first article in the series, Sylda Langford (2007) described the origins and work of the Office of the Minister for Children (OMC), of which she is Director General. In the second article, Michael Little and Ali Abunimah (2007) considered the role of $200 million philanthropic investment in the reforms, specifically a 10‐year programme of work funded by Atlantic Philanthropies to encourage strategy development and service design to improve outcomes for children on the island of Ireland. Part of that investment is being made in what are called ‘community engagement sites’ ‐ economically disadvantaged communities with a child population of between 3,000 and 7,000. In this article, Katherine Zappone examines the reform process at local level as the leader in one of the community engagement sites. She describes the approach they took and products of the work so far and discusses problems and opportunities that have been encountered along the way. The next (and last) article in the series (by a leading figure in the voluntary sector) will put the reforms into the context of the evolution of children's services in Ireland over the last 20 years.The first section of this article draws on the Tallaght Strategy document, written by Katherine in dialogue with a research team, followed by an edited transcript of Katherine's interview.

Brazil’s economic growth in the first decade of this century was accompanied by greater visibility of the disadvantaged economic classes in films, in television, and in the press. Even the celebrated telenovelas and TV series began to feature a side of Brazil which, previously, had only been presented in a negative light. This chapter proposes a central question: Could media visibility be masking the complexity of economic class for social structure or class structure in Brazilian society, which, despite recent improvements, is still marked by stark social divides?

Our objective is to approach this issue from a cultural perspective focused on analyzing media representations of underprivileged groups, following Douglas Kellner’s (1995) ideas that suggest a contextualizing account of media cultural artifacts.

The analysis encompasses the audiovisual production as its corpus – telenovela and TV series – from Rede Globo produced from 2002 to 2012. However, bringing to bear complementary data, we reference other genres and formats as well. We argue that, while attention has been paid to the recent contesting of some of the negative stereotypes surrounding the underprivileged classes circulating within the media, they do not do justice to the complexities of social inequality in contemporary Brazil. We show that mainstream media treatments of social inequality focus entirely on showing the lifestyle of the underprivileged “working poor,” while overlooking many other aspects of social inequality and deprivation.

This chapter embarks on a cross-Asian comparison to glean valuable insights from various regions and religious contexts. By examining family planning practices and challenges in different parts of Asia, valuable lessons are uncovered that can inform policies, programs, and initiatives aimed at achieving family planning-related sustainable development goals (SDGs). The complexities and nuances of family planning across diverse cultural, social, and religious landscapes are delved into, shedding light on both common threads and unique challenges faced by marginalized communities. Through this comparative analysis, the aim is to contribute to a holistic understanding of family planning in Asia and provide actionable recommendations to enhance access, equity, and outcomes in pursuit of family planning-related SDGs.

Inequality in the creative industries often serves as the starting point for public debates over culture in the UK. Academic literature has long recognised the precarious nature of the fashion industry. This chapter offers a critical review of the relationships of power existing in the support offered to ethnic minorities in disadvantaged communities in the fashion and creative sectors in the UK. In addressing these issues, a Foucauldian perspective is adopted. The chapter focuses on Black, Asian, and minority ethnic (BAME) fashion entrepreneurs’ challenges in promoting young designers from disadvantaged communities.

Our findings show that the BAME entrepreneurs are active agents who are essential in identifying and shaping new creative and talented young designers. The chapter contributes to the debate through a critical review of the relationships of power existing in the support offered to ethnic minorities in disadvantaged communities in the fashion and creative sectors in the UK.

Uses the outcomes of case study research in socio‐economically disadvantaged education contexts to examine the work of educators who have had a noticeable effect on the quality of life in their communities. Concludes that the work of highly successful classroom practitioners can in part be understood through reference to prominent theories of educational leadership. Questions historical and current approaches to educational administration which associate leadership with positional authority. Proposes an alternative definition of “teacher leadership”.

There is an increasing interest in using information and communication technologies to support health services. But the adoption and development of even basic ICT communications services in many health services is limited, leaving enormous gaps in the broad understanding of its role in health care delivery. The purpose of this paper is to address a specific (intercultural) area of healthcare communications consumer disadvantage; and it examines the potential for ICT exploitation through the lens of a conceptual framework. The opportunity to pursue a new solutions pathway has been amplified in recent times through the development of computer-based ontologies and the resultant knowledge from ontologist activity and consequential research publishing.

A specific intercultural area of patient disadvantage arises from variations in meaning and understanding of patient and clinician words, phrases and non-verbal expression. Collection and localization of data concepts, their attributes and individual instances were gathered from an Aboriginal trainee nurse focus group and from a qualitative gap analysis (QGA) of 130 criteria-selected sources of literature. These concepts, their relationships and semantic interpretations populate the computer ontology. The ontology mapping involves two domains, namely, Aboriginal English (AE) and Type II diabetes care guidelines. This is preparatory to development of the Patient Practitioner Assistive Communications (PPAC) system for Aboriginal rural and remote patient primary care.

The combined QGA and focus group output reported has served to illustrate the call for three important drivers of change. First, there is no evidence to contradict the hypothesis that patient-practitioner interview encounters for many Australian Aboriginal patients and wellbeing outcomes are unsatisfactory at best. Second, there is a potent need for cultural competence knowledge and practice uptake on the part of health care providers; and third, the key contributory component to determine success or failures within healthcare for ethnic minorities is communication. Communication, however, can only be of value in health care if in practice it supports shared cognition; and mutual cognition is rarely achievable when biopsychosocial and other cultural worldview differences go unchallenged.

There has been no direct engagement with remote Aboriginal communities in this work to date. The authors have initially been able to rely upon a cohort of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people with relevant cultural expertise and extended family relationships. Among these advisers are health care practitioners, academics, trainers, Aboriginal education researchers and workshop attendees. It must therefore be acknowledged that as is the case with the QGA, the majority of the concept data is from third parties. The authors have also discovered that urban influences and cultural sensitivities tend to reduce the extent of, and opportunity to, witness AE usage, thereby limiting the ability to capture more examples of code-switching. Although the PPAC system concept is qualitatively well developed, pending future work planned for rural and remote community engagement the authors presently regard the work as mostly allied to a hypothesis on ontology-driven communications. The concept data population of the AE home talk/health talk ontology has not yet reached a quantitative critical mass to justify application design model engineering and real-world testing.

Computer ontologies avail us of the opportunity to use assistive communications technology applications as a dynamic support system to elevate the pragmatic experience of health care consultations for both patients and practitioners. The human-machine interactive development and use of such applications is required just to keep pace with increasing demand for healthcare and the growing health knowledge transfer environment. In an age when the worldwide web, communications devices and social media avail us of opportunities to confront the barriers described the authors have begun the first construction of a merged schema for two domains that already have a seemingly intractable negative connection. Through the ontology discipline of building syntactically and semantically robust and accessible concepts; explicit conceptual relationships; and annotative context-oriented guidance; the authors are working towards addressing health literacy and wellbeing outcome deficiencies of benefit to the broader communities of disadvantage patients.

This research draws on qualitative interviews with primarily lower socioeconomic status (SES) public library internet users to illuminate their perceptions of economic benefits afforded by the internet. This powerful evidence challenges utopian new technological theories. The results from this study allow for the comparison of perspectives from Millennials, Generation Xers, Boomers, and the Silent generation. These results suggest a disconnect between the cultural mythology around the internet as an all-powerful tool and the lived experiences of lower SES respondents. Lower SES participants primarily use the internet to train and educate themselves in areas where they would like to work in the process of applying for jobs using the internet. Participants recognized marginal benefits such as socialization and less burdensome job application processes. However, they struggled to identify significant job-related benefits when comparing applying for jobs online as opposed to applying for jobs in person. With the exception of millennials, all generational groups believed in the economic promise of the internet to make their lives easier given enough time. Millennials, however, challenged the techno-utopianism expressed by other generations. Only millennials recognized the realities of digital inequalities that make techno-utopian outcomes unattainable given broader economic realities for low-SES individuals.