Informations et ressources scientifiques
sur le développement des zones arides et semi-arides

Titre : Supporting the Creation of Digital Crowdfunding Material in Marginalized Communities (Namibia)

Digitaalisten joukkorahoitus materiaalinen luomisen tukeminen marginaalisissa yhteisöissä

Auteur : Arvila, Niina

Université de soutenance : Aalto University

Grade : Master’s Programme in Information Networks 2020

Résumé
Entrepreneurship is seen as way to alleviate poverty in marginalized communities of emerging economies. Entrepreneurship requires resources that the poor rarely have access to. Emerging online technologies, such as crowdfunding, can provide the poor a way to access financial capital. Crowdfunding activities require understanding about crowdfunding and skills to create and manage crowdfunding campaigns. People in marginalized communities rarely have the required skills or ability to train themselves.

The objective of this thesis is to explore possibilities to mediate crowdfunding knowledge in marginalized communities. More precisely, the aim is to study whether a training week could provide selected community members the necessary skills to act as crowdfunding advocates in their communities. The topic is divided into two research questions : ’How should the content of the training week be ?’ and ’How capable are the participants to act as crowdfunding advocates in their community based on their performance during the week ?’ To answer the questions, training week, interviews and probes were used as qualitative methods. The field work was conducted in Windhoek, Namibia.

Based on the literature review, the training week content should include crowdfunding, content creation, and campaign management. Results show that the week with 10 participants is not sufficient to deliver required understanding for the participants in the explored context. For the future, we propose fewer participants, more flexible schedule and participant involvement in the training week planning process

Mots clés : crowdfunding, entrepreneurship, rural regions, marginalized communities

Présentation

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