ABSTRACT
In 2000 the United Nations established a set of eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to improve the future by harnessing globalization as a positive force in the world. An interdisciplinary approach to global issues requires the application of basic methodological and theoretical assumptions of several disciplines to the understanding of an issue. While leveraging global inequities to fund assistance to the international poor is a classic component of philanthropic approaches, another rising approach is to transform the trade system to make it more equitable, and improve the lives of small producers within the market system. Social entrepreneurship refers to the use of entrepreneurial principles to create, organize, and manage ventures designed to produce social change. Appropriate technologies refers to using local materials to create low-cost technologies useful in specific social and environmental contexts. Microfinancing involves providing small-scale financial services including loans, savings accounts, funds transfers, and insurance to low-income clients or groups, who traditionally lack access to banking services.
