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iHub: Experiencing the Energy at Nairobi’s Innovative ICT Hotspot
iHub currently connects to more than 8,500 members through a weekly newsletter and events that include Start-up Pitch Night, Fireside Chats, and Hack-a-Thons. A tiered membership scheme gives select members daily access to the facility, including the 20MB Internet connection and space for meetings, Internet use, networking, and collaborative projects.
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- Technology, Telecommunications
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Overcoming the Challenges in Mobile: Living Goods hopes to follow in the footsteps of Amway, Avon, and Tupperware
With a core business in health care sales, Living Goods is no stranger to behavior change. Despite the challenges to rolling out a new mobile system to a sales force of 250 women, most over 40 years old, 60 percent of who had never used SMS before, the organization is seeing some early successes.
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- Health Care, Technology
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Moving Beyond Access for Meaningful Financial Inclusion: Targeting investments to improve financial capability
Who are the relevant stakeholders to help bridge this financial capability gap? We are looking to explore these and related questions through 10 or more new research projects that we initiate at Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) over the next two years, with support from the Citi Foundation.
- Categories
- Education
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A Market for Preservation: Tropical-forest friendly products, entrepreneurship and consumer choice
CleanStar Energy, is social enterprise that focuses on bringing sustainable bioenergy solutions into developing markets while preserving delicate tropical forest communities. It’s the type of business being sought by the Tropical Forest Challenge, which aims to identify the best for-profit solution – an idea, start up, or company with a positive impact on tropical forest biodiversity.
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- Agriculture, Energy, Transportation
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16 Stories:A New Book, ‘Llenando Espacios’ (Filling Spaces), Reveals Colombia’s Social Enterprise Prowess
As part of the forum “Social Entrepreneurship: A new look at the development of Colombia” last month at Bogota at the College of Higher Studies in Administration (CESA), Juan David Aristizabal presented his new book (written in Spanish) Filling Spaces: A Book about Social Entrepreneurs.
I had the chance to chat with him about his new book, which tells the storyies of 16 Colombian social entrepreneurs across multiple sectors.- Categories
- Education, Social Enterprise
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In Brazil, a Break Through Investment Model in Affordable Housing: Harnessing a public-private solution to sustainable housing
At Bamboo Finance, we view housing as a critical component to driving economic growth, and our investment of R$7 million (US$3.6 million) in Bille, a Special Purpose Enterprise (SPE) created by Crinale, a Brazilian housing developer, for building and selling 1,200 houses in the interior of Sao Paulo State, represents a scalable solution to a massive social and economic problem.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Tags
- housing, infrastructure
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BoP Career Paths: At the Root of a Baobab Tree, A New Food Company to Benefit the Poor : Bumbleroot was launched by a former TechnoServe Volunteer
Sara Andrews is a former policy advisor and strategy consultant who developed the idea for Bumbleroot while serving as a volunteer consultant for TechnoServe in Zimbabwe. A Montana native and graduate of the University of Notre Dame, she prefers to be outdoors rather than indoors.
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- Uncategorized
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Why South Asia is a Hub for Social Entrepreneurship
An April 2012 study of the social entrepreneurship landscape in India found that the sector has really taken off since 2005. But while social entrepreneurs are excited to consider next steps, they clearly have a lot of learning to do—and must do a lot more to prove positive outcomes, financial and social. But, if they can, India could become a hotspot and global test ground for impact investing.
- Categories
- Education, Social Enterprise