A message from Mauricio Miller, Co-Founder and CEO of MutualityX
For over two decades I have experimented with how to incentivize economic mobility for the working poor. I started with the unconventional approach of recognizing ingenuity among micro and small entrepreneurs. There are as many talented and driven entrepreneurs in poor communities as in wealthy ones. I know because I grew up poor and saw how resourceful people will be just to survive, and yet they are mostly looked down upon or ignored and left to their own devices, instead of celebrated and supported.
MutualityX is a business ecosystem based on mutuality and peer-driven change for micro, small and medium entrepreneurs.
By contrast, my gumptious college students at Princeton University and U.C. Berkeley were given loads of encouragement and help. They were treated as leaders-in-training. When we treat poor African micro and small entrepreneurs with similar regard - as capable leaders full of potential - we unleash their ability to drive their own advancement and even to lift others. We have the data to prove it.
Initiative Power
Mauricio was awarded a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship in 2012.
He was appointed by President Obama to the White House Council for Community Solutions, is an Ashoka Fellow, and has taught at Princeton University and UC Berkeley. Mauricio’s personal history as a first-generation immigrant who grew up in poverty deeply informs his life’s work.
Through the Center for Peer Driven Change, we are collecting data and stories to showcase Mutuality outcomes and teach people what is possible when we encourage and support micro and small entrepreneurs. We challenge the traditional paradigm of poverty alleviation programs because they are based on the faulty notion that poor people are a drain and need charity. We demonstrate an alternative. I invite you to learn more about it in my book, The Alternative: Most Of What You Think About Poverty Is Wrong.
