Social Capital

Reza Deghati uses a bottom-up process, empowering the target groups (women and youth) and, by extension, the whole society. The capacity of bottom-up change mechanisms is generally seen as pivotal in introducing social change (Piven, 2008), in eradicating poverty in rural areas (Blair, 2005), or in promoting health care (Carey, 2000; Edwards et al., 2003). Another illustrative example of the bottom-up process of change is the case of a social entrepreneur who was working with post-Soviet communities whose social fiber was totally shattered by the regime that lasted more than seventy years. He started by organizing teachers’ discussion groups, starting with simple issues. Gradually the groups self-organized and became action- and solution-oriented, leading to the next step – becoming role models and seedbeds of social change in the field of education and, finally, vehicles for the buildup of civic awareness and engagement.