Assessing Rural Community Empowerment: What it takes to Think Innovatively A Doctoral Research Proposal

Abstract

Rural communities’ capacity to absorb policy intervention towards sustained development could be improved if individuals thought innovatively as a result of increased empowerment and strengthened community organization involving individual and collective effort. The aim of the proposed study is to analyze the relationship between community members’ empowerment and their innovative thinking, influenced by the social capital of their community organization and using health promotion as the intervening factor. Health, an essential element for development, implies individual’s action through healthy lifestyles and behaviors as well as collective action. The study will take place in rural communities in the Amazon jungle of Peru and will test differences between communities with different intensities of health promotion activities.

Keywords: Rural communities, Social capital, Empowerment, Innovation, Health promotion, Poverty