ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the Small Enterprise and Family Development Project that combines self-employment development with family-centered services to promote economic self-sufficiency in poor families. The integrated strategy of self-employment development and family development illustrates how an empowerment philosophy and paradigm can be used to shape an intervention to facilitate the empowerment of economically disadvantaged families. The local program operators provided self-employment training, counselling, technical assistance, direct loans or aid in gaining access to credit. Self-employment development has proven to be a viable approach to creating economic opportunity for many low-income and unemployed people in the United States. Community Development Corporations are neighbourhood or regionally based economic development organizations formed in the 1960s as part of the antipoverty program. In Iowa, Self-Employment Investment Demonstration was operated by the Institute for Social and Economic Development, a non-profit corporation founded in 1987 with a mission to facilitate the empowerment of disadvantaged persons through the integration of social and economic development strategies.
