The Social Entrepreneurship and the Development of Human Capital Building Social Capital: The Case of the University of Fortaleza

Abstract

The study investigates how social entrepreneurship through social responsibility actions can contribute to the development of the professional qualification and building social capital, as well as analyze the impacts of reducing social exclusion and creating job opportunities for those benefited from the professional training courses. The research and analyzed field of this study is the Professional Training Center—(CFP) of the University of Fortaleza, a non-profit institution, located in the northeast of Brazil and maintained by the Edson Queiroz Foundation that promotes free professional qualification courses to the low-income communities. The hypothesis that guided this research is the possibility that the social qualification projects derived from social entrepreneurship actions, can be an instrument of social inclusion, through the qualification and creation of new opportunities for insertion in the labor market. The methodology applied in this research has an exploratory nature, which aims to bring new knowledge about social entrepreneurship and social responsibility of the universities. The descriptive character aims to understand and list the contributions of social entrepreneurship in the formation of social capital and to analyze the impacts of the social transformation in the communities inserted in a company context. In this sense, the University of Fortaleza offers professional training that contributes effectively to the progress of the local economic growth. International and national references are used as theoretical resources to develop and delimit the theories of Social Entrepreneurship, Social Responsibility, Human Capital and development in order to understand the possibility of the universities to be social entrepreneurs and transforming agent to economic development. It identified that social entrepreneurship has great potential to be reproduced with the poor communities and social exclusion, with the possibility to promote professional qualification and insertion in the labor market and to promote income generation for the community. The results obtained show that the objectives proposed for a professional qualification, namely, qualification and insertion in the labor market of the low-income population were accomplished, competitive equality derived from the professional training, with the insertion of the actors that received training and increased income. It is noticed that the free professional qualification offered by the University of Fortaleza, promotes the inclusion and emancipation of the people in the situation of social risk.