This paper focuses on the experience of using management and social science to empower the poor and build economic self-reliance among indigenous families in the informal economy of Africa. We describe a strategy which eventually became registered as a non-profit or NGO, Care for Life, and has...

From 2000-2008 the author conducted field research on two non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in East Africa. One site was in Kenya's central mountainous region of urban Nairobi where it has become the largest and fastest growing NGO in the country. Most of its clients live in or near a...