Abstract
Objective: Social enterprises are market-based activities that provide social benefits through the direct engagement of people in productive activities. Participation in social enterprise development brings psychosocial wellbeing benefits, by strengthening family networks, enhancing trust, increasing self-reliance and social esteem and promoting cultural safety. Our objective is to explore how social enterprise activities can meet community needs and foster self-sustainability while generating profits for redistribution as social investment into other ventures that aid social functioning and emotional well-being.
Conclusions: Social entrepreneurship enhances both interdependence and independence. Concomitant mental health and social wellbeing dividends accrue overtime to communities engaged in self-determined enterprise activities. Social entrepreneurship builds social capital that supports social wellbeing. Strengths-based approaches to social entrepreneurship can assuage disempowering effects of the “welfare economy” through shifting the focus onto productive activities generated on people's own terms.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to particularly acknowledge our research partners and colleagues: Pukatja Community Council; Anilaylya and Tjutjinpiri Homelands; UnitingCare Wesley Adelaide; Bobby Banerjee, University of Western Sydney; Bernard Guerin, University of South Australia and Yvonne Clarke, Adelaide University.
DISCLOSURE
This paper draws on empirical insights emerging from two current Australian Research Council (ARC) funded projects in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands of South Australia: a collaborative action research ARC Linkage project (Tedmanson/Banerjee) on “Social and cultural factors in enterprise development in remote Indigenous contexts” and an ARC Discovery project (Guerin/Guerin/Tedmanson/Clark) on “Indigenous mental health in remote communities: applying a contextual model of community research and intervention”.