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The ABCs of Affordable Housing: A New Report From Acumen Fund
Building quality affordable housing is not easy. It takes knowledge, creativity, and perseverance. One needs all the tools they can get. That is why we wrote The ABCs of Affordable Housing in Kenya. We hope this report will serve as a resource to practitioners and investors who are looking to enter the affordable housing sector in Kenya or elsewhere. Its pages contain a handful of challenges practitioners are bound to encounter and strategies to address them. Some of these strategies are specific to Kenya, but the vast majority can be drawn across geographic boundaries.
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- Education
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Cut Off From Infrastructure, Not From Support: SKS NGO Builds Self-Reliance in Isolated Communities
The purpose of SKS’s ultra poor programme is to create sustainable livelihoods so that those living in extreme poverty can graduate into one of two paths: Axisting microfinance programme in the area (for the few that wish to expand their business or diversify into other activities), or to continue saving in groups and use their savings to strengthen and diversify their asset base (a viable transition for most).
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- Education
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Creating the Right Board for Your Social Enterprise
While for-profit corporations often focus on accountability towards their shareholders, social enterprises are often torn between interests of their target group and interest of their funders. Research by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship revealed some interesting findings on this issue.
- Categories
- Education, Social Enterprise
- Tags
- governance
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Entering NB’s Case Competition? Join the WDI Webinar June 21 for Tips and Tools to Build the Perfect Case Study
The hour-long webinar on June 21, which will start with a brief overview of case method teaching and learning, followed by guidelines for the first steps of writing a case study. Specifically, participants will learn how to develop solid, measureable teaching objectives, choose a case topic, determine an organization or company to feature, gather credible background information, and create a case outline.
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- Education, Social Enterprise
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Introducing the 2013 NextBillion Case Writing Competition Judges
Winning cases for the NextBillion Case Writing Competition will be published and likely adopted by numerous university professors instructing the next generation of business leaders. So we’re happy to have a team of judges with seriously strong CVs and a depth of experience in the worlds of academia, consulting, development, and business.
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- Education, Social Enterprise
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NexThought Monday: In Failure, a Marketing Lesson for Social Entrepreneurs: What we can learn from the closing of The Hoop Fund
The Hoop Fund was built on a truly innovative premise: Allow consumers to purchase premium goods from small businesses in the developing world, while simultaneously supporting those businesses with microloans. Unfortunately, the model suffered from critical gaps in marketing strategy, which made it almost impossible to achieve scale.
- Categories
- Education
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NexThought Monday: Complexity is the New Black
NYT columnist David Brooks recently called on social enterprise types to take a dose of realism. I argue it’s time to accept full responsibility for changing politics as part of social impact. If in attempting to improve some economic or social aspect of people’s lives we aren’t also improving their political standing and the rule of law, any economic or social impact remains temporary.
- Categories
- Education, Social Enterprise
- Tags
- impact investing
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Guest Post: A Healthy Dose of Idealism – How David Brooks Got it Wrong
New York Times columnist David Brooks recently criticized social entrepreneurs for being too idealistic and out of touch with the realities of politics in developing countries. In response, Echoing Green’s Nidhi Chaudhary says Brooks fundamentally misses the point.
- Categories
- Education, Social Enterprise