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Healthy Foods and New Jobs, Part 1: MamaCarts learns valuable lessons while launching food cart delivery service from scratch
MamaCarts began by pitching an idea at a business plan competition and culminated with receiving a 2013 Rockefeller Foundation Centennial Innovation Challenge Award. That’s all there is to starting a food cart delivery service in Benin, West Africa, right? Wrong.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Education, Health Care, Social Enterprise
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The Impact of Inclusion: CGAP report looks at recent evidence of how financial inclusion can help the poor
There’s a strong consensus that access to suitable financial services can help poor households improve their lives, while spurring economic activity. But what is the evidence for these positive impacts? CGAP tackled that topic in a recent Focus Note, and we spoke with Nina Holle, an associate microfinance analyst at CGAP, and a co-author of the report.
- Categories
- Education, Impact Assessment
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Weekly roundup 6-14-14: When conventional wisdom gets upended
When conventional wisdom gets upended, well, we’re all a little better off for it. Here are two examples from this week, both of which dispel myths that have a tendency to solidify into facts.
- Categories
- Education, Technology, Telecommunications
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NexThought Monday – MNCs, the Grassroots and the Future of the BoP
Santa Clara State University’s Jim Koch says two big conferences in the last ten years have come to frame BoP market development efforts. What can we learn from what did – and what notably did not – transpire in the decade between the two gatherings? Among other things, Koch says major corporations have been greatly eclipsed by grassroots innovators.
- Categories
- Education
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Afford Two, Eat One: A new report explores financial inclusion in rural Myanmar
Myanmar is a country with very low formal banking penetration, but changes are afoot that will stimulate domestic financial activity. In March of this year a team of Myanmar-based researchers mapped the changing financial landscape in the country, aiming to provide a foundational reference for organizations wishing to develop products and services for financially constrained consumers.
- Categories
- Education, Impact Assessment
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Nigeria, From Pure Growth to Harnessed Opportunity: A new report on the 3D role of business in the unfolding transformation
It is easy to pretend that there are two separate Nigerias: one a thrusting consumer powerhouse, and one socially divided and pocked by violence and poverty. For business, which relies on the success of the former, acknowledging the latter can be difficult, but they are two sides of the same coin. This week we are in Abuja to launch a new report by Business Action for Africa and the Initiative for Global Development: “The New Africa – Nigeria: From Growth to Opportunity”.
- Categories
- Education, Social Enterprise
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Good Ideas, Multiplied: How NGO, research collaboration is boosting social entrepreneurship
Social entrepreneurs are celebrated for bringing new ideas to the table. But is a great idea enough to have the intended impact? While entrepreneurship celebrates the new, what role should existing research networks and NGOs, who bring deep sector expertise and trusting relationships with target communities, play in supporting social entrepreneurship?
- Categories
- Education, Impact Assessment, Social Enterprise
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Weekly Roundup – 4/19/2014: There’s never been a better time for quantum leaps in global health
The cell phone business skipped several evolutionary steps in the developing world. Who’s to say global health care can’t follow suit?
- Categories
- Education, Health Care, Technology, Telecommunications