Advancing Sustainable Development
The following pages of text will be used to create awareness, gain traction and welcome collaboration through Helping Communities Work, a professional development enterprise focused on open education resources and designed to ignite and harness the power of the pen.
Reciprocal Entrepreneurship is a place-based strategy designed to create a collaborative environment for entrepreneurs of all kinds and across all generations to focus on a common cause. RE has several applications, and the best practices model is currently focused on helping to achieve each of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG's), which were adopted in 2015 by all member states of the United Nations. The 169 impact themes, which correspond to the 17 goals, provide a comprehensive guide for diverse yet interrelated entrepreneurial collaboration. There is a high probability that entrepreneurs across all disciplines are already working to help achieve each of the SDG’s, https://sdgs.un.org/goals
RE also fosters community reinvestment, impact investing, foreign direct investment and creative placemaking with a focus on opportunity zones and other economically distressed areas. The process facilitates communication among entrepreneurs in academia, journalism, government, industry, philanthropy and in the nonprofit and arts and culture communities, especially those who may not ordinarily communicate yet share many of the same goal and objectives.
RE is informed by the principles of Asset-based Community Development, which empowers entrepreneurs to contribute as a collection of diverse community assets and resources, and by Service Science. Many studies of service systems and service industries reveal a fundamental connection to Reciprocal Entrepreneurship, that the key distinguishing feature of service is the co-creation of value for mutual benefit between service providers and service recipients. RE works to co-create a more holistic continuum of education, human capital, workforce, small business, community and economic development, a continuum that supports sustainable development and represents a strong business case for diversity, inclusion and equity.
