Relocating Development Communication: Social Entrepreneurship, International Networking, and South-South Cooperation in the Viva Rio NGO

Abstract

This piece addresses how the oft-invoked but rarely interrogated discourse on social entrepreneurship presents new opportunities and issues for community activists. While its champions argue that this practice has the potential to radically reconfigure the geopolitics of international development by privileging local innovations over outside intervention,  specific case examinations of this practice are as of yet rare. Drawing on the projects developed by Viva Rio, the first non-governmental organization working in the favelas (or unincorporated urban slums) of Rio de Janeiro, this piece investigates integral elements and larger implications of this practice including  how local actors working in marginalized communities design and implement interventions, how they market projects to international support networks, and larger possibilities for developing south-south collaborative relationships.