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Where Free, Profitable, Impact and Scale Intersect: Insights From the Story of Aravind
Aravind Eye Care is a self-sustaining and profitable organization that treats most of its patients for free or at a deeply subsidized rate. A new book, "Infinite Vision," provides insights into the man who put Aravind into motion, and chronicles the strategic decisions, growing pains, innovations and efficiencies behind this BoP success story.
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- Health Care, Social Enterprise
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From Chile, Building Social Entrepreneurship in a ’Space of Spaces’
The second Social Entrepreneurship Month 2011 (MES2011): "Social Innovation + Education" launched in Chile last month, and continues through this week. MES Co-Founder Gianncarlo Dur?n told NextBillion in Spanish that social entrepreneurship concepts "are coming to Chile but with "great intensity."
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- Social Enterprise
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NextThought Monday: The FOUND Middle, Women Entrepreneurs in Nigeria
In honor of Global Entrepreneurship Week, we share with you the next video in our continuing series, which features Nneka Okekearu, Centre Manager for the Enterprise Development Center (EDC) at the Pan African University in Nigeria. EDC focuses on the business development and provision of support services to small and growing businesses in Nigeria.
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- Social Enterprise
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Weekly Roundup – 11-13-11: Technology’s Equalizing Impact
The need for inclusive health programs has been an active part of the development conversation for years. Daniella Ballou-Aares, the founder of the Global Health Practice group at the strategic consulting firm Dalberg points out, the means to do so on a large-scale has been elusive. However, technology has become the great equalizer.
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- Health Care, Social Enterprise, Technology
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Housing Series: Establishing Quality Standards for Affordable Housing
Who enforces building standards? If customers are sold a home with sub-standard construction or materials - or their neighbor builds a dangerously unstable structure - what recourse do BoP citizens have? The certification prices we are developing is not a one-time "stamp of approval." Rather, it starts with pre-building and lasts over time.
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- Investing
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CSR Fail: Why It’s Time for a BoP Tech Revolution
It’s up to all of us to change the tide and think about the intersection of technology inclusion and education more critically. It’s time for corporations to stop giving away their scrap computers to the developing world and calling it CSR. It’s time for NGOs to be more judicious about the hand-outs they accept and the indirect costs endured.
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- Technology, Telecommunications
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Housing Series: Sustainable Communities Generating Sustainable Habitats
We began Echale a Tu Casa over 25 years ago as a nonprofit to help low-income Mexican families improve home safety, health and hygiene conditions. Realizing that philanthropy would not permit us to have much of an impact on these living conditions, we created a social enterprise built on an integrated system of savings, credit and subsidies.
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- Environment, Health Care, WASH
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NextThought Monday: When Mass Marketing Meets Global Health, the Case of Lifebuoy Soap
While the UN continues to fall well short of its Millennium Development Goals and aid agencies pour ever-more money into hygiene aid programs, Lifebuoy is taking a very different approach. The Unilever brand recently launched an effort to globalize its hand washing campaign, marketing its way towards the one billion benchmark.
- Categories
- Health Care