Introduction

You are a part of a global effort to increase access to education and empower students through “open pedagogy.”  Open pedagogy is a “free access” educational practice that places you – the student – at the center of your own learning process in a more engaging, collaborative learning environment.  The ultimate purpose of this effort is to achieve greater social justice in our community in which the work can be freely shared with the broader community.  This is a renewable assignment that is designed to enable you to become an agent of change in your community through the framework of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  For this work, you will integrate the disciplines of Political Science to achieve SDG #08: Decent Work and Economic Growth  3

Learning Objectives

Identify resources that support access to credit in rural and poor communities in Arizona.

Purpose/Rationale

Access to credit is an overlooked but vital component to economic growth. The more barriers there are to credit, the harder it is for the poor to lift themselves out of poverty through starting small enterprises. This also creates a drag on the economic growth of the larger economy. These barriers are summarized by the World Bank: https://blogs.worldbank.org/voices/five-challenges-prevent-financial-access-people-developing-countries.

The United Nations is concerned that these barriers are only growing with the COVID crisis: https://sdgs.un.org/sites/default/files/2020-07/The-Sustainable-Development-Goals-Report-2020_Page_15.png.

It is quite difficult to find reliable information on access to credit in rural parts of the developing world. To get an appreciation of how intractable these barriers are, we will evaluate access to credit in rural areas of a developed country, namely rural Arizona.  

Instructions

Assignment: As a group, you are to create a resource hub of local resources that support access to capital in rural and poor communities in Arizona and that encourage the formalization and growth of micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises. This resource hub will be shared publicly as an OER resource. 

The hub can be a simple list of nonprofit groups or NGOs that specialize in promoting access to credit or it can be a fully functioning website with visuals and links to these organizations. The list should be annotated, with a description of the organization, the strategies it uses to promote access to credit and/or the growth of new businesses, its area of operations, and at least one case study or example of the resource in operation. Your list will have a minimum of 3 sources, with an A paper containing at least 5 sources. 

Format Requirements

Rubric (50 pts)

This is truly embarrassing – 0 pts