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"This report is about walking into the poorest
village on market day and seeing entrepreneurs at work. It is about realizing
that the poor entrepreneur is as important a part of the private sector as
the multinational corporation"
U.N. Special Report, Unleashing Entrepreneurship: Making Business
Work For The Poor Paul Martin & Ernesto Zedillo co-chairs, June 2004
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" I come to you with a simple
message: poverty in all its forms is the greatest single threat to peace,
democracy, human rights and the environment. It is a time-bomb ticking
against the heart of liberty" Mike Moore, WTO Director, addressing the 2003 Conference on Financing for
Development, Monterrey, Mexico,
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Summary and Objectives: Extending
human rights opens opportunities to those traditionally excluded from the economic
and political mainstream and helps build the human capital in a country.
Entrepreneurship is the key to bringing the nuts and bolts of physical
capital together with workers’ human capital to create jobs and achieve
sustainable broad-based economic development.
The Schools of Arts and Sciences, Law and
Business at Fordham University
and Universidad Iberoamericana have hosted this conference to bring together
all those who are interested in these and related issues under one roof.
Opening doors for the poor and disadvantaged has long been part of the Jesuit
tradition at both Universities.
The entrepreneurs are employers or
managers, not workers. The advocates for entrepreneurship in the business
world, such as the Wall Street Journal or Chambers of Commerce, belong to the
right wing of the political spectrum.
By contrast, the human rights advocates belong to the left wing, as
they are concerned with all oppressed groups, including some workers and the
poor. This ideological division between the two groups is false, and has
prevented potentially useful cooperation between the two advocacy groups.
For example, infrastructure and access (to
education, credit, security, due process, public information, etc.) are
essential to both groups. Hence both should jointly oppose all entrenched
monopolists or corrupt entities who block better infrastructure or easier
access. Prof. Vinod’s theme paper for the conference entitled “Common Ground in Promotion of
Entrepreneurship and Human Rights,” provides details about the rationale for
the conference, including statistical arguments for cooperation based on
data. (URL: http://www.fordham.edu/economics/vinod/docs/hd-pap-ehr.pdf)
In short, this conference aims were to: (i)
promote further research and dialogue to move the human
rights-entrepreneurship nexus out of the realm of platitudes and into the
mainstream of development policy, (ii) help the advocates for human rights
and private business to view each other as allies, (iii) discuss ‘social entrepreneurship,’ role of
multinationals and US-Mexico immigration issues, (iv) send a report to the
World Summit of heads of state at the United Nations headquarters in New
York, September 14-16, 2005.
The registration began at 10:30 AM, Monday, August 1. The main program begins after lunch
on Monday. The pre-registered delegates might want to have an early lunch
before coming to the Pope auditorium. There is a good cafeteria on the
premises.
A wine and snacks reception is Monday evening Aug. 1 was
open to all delegates at the 12-th floor Lounge.
Suburban Commuters: Morning sessions on Tuesday and Wednesday did not start
till 10 AM, so that persons staying
in New York, New Jersey
and Connecticut can comfortably
arrive to the conference venue without traffic-related worries.
Distinguished and Diverse Array of Speakers:
Titles
of presenters include: Executive
Director, CEO, Director, President, Professor, Dr., Project Coordinator, Head
of the Department, Chair, etc.
Please see the link to the Conference Program for details.
What is Social Entrepreneurship?
Co-sponsored by the Jesuit institutions: Fordham
University in New
York, USA
(founded 1841) and Iberoamericana, Mexico
(founded 1943)
Co-Chairs: H. D.
Vinod, Director of the IEEP and Jorge E. Rodriguez Torres, Chair of the
Economics Department at Iberoamericana, Puebla.
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