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What Global Development Needs to Make an iPhone? Start With Storytelling
Esther Duflo. Abhijit Bhanerjee. Dean Karlan. These are household names in global development thanks to their leadership for more evidence-based project design and implementation. Here’s another name: Marc Maxson, a consultant with GlobalGiving who helped create and implement its Storytelling Project, which goes beyond eliminating selection bias.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Social Enterprise
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The Pyramid Within the Pyramid: Segmenting the BoP Affordable Housing Market
A new arrival to a slum and a rickshaw driver living in a slum both are defined as BoP. But the differences between them are as vast as night and day. How can they all be treated the same when it comes to delivering products and services? Since Ashoka launched the Housing for All initiative in 2008, it’s clear the BoP market is far more complex.
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- Uncategorized
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Finding Value in Waste
As the number one exporter of Brazil nuts, Bolivia cultivates approximately 20,000 tons a year. Only 0.8 percent of the Brazil nuts are exported with their shell; the rest are cracked and their nutshells are discarded as waste. But the founders of PelletBol, developed a method to compress the Brazil nutshells into pellets as a source of biofuel.
- Categories
- Health Care
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Housing for All Series: Sizing Up the Affordable Housing Deficit
The second article of the month-long series on Housing for All in partnership with Ashoka, examines the magnitude of the challenge, and its implications for higher education and certification for construction trades at all levels and skill fields: including technology, alternative building materials, and better planning/infrastructure needs.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Tags
- housing
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Social Entrepreneurship Coming Full Circle, at Columbia’s Social Enterprise Conference
This year’s Columbia Social Enterprise Conference, on the topic of "Social Innovation in a Networked WorId," left me almost certain that the social entrepreneurship movement is currently witnessing such a full circle moment on several fronts, most notably, when it comes to our collective understanding of what a "networked world" means.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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Technology Plus Humanity – An Equation for Social Collaboration
At the 2011 Columbia Social Enterprise Conference panel last week, 3 social enterprise managers pondered technology’s role in the social sector today and how it advances philanthropy. A theme throughout the panel was the importance of incorporating the human experience into the technology, a potential key to unlocking a surge in donor activity.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise, Technology
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Launching a New Series: The Global Spread of Affordable Housing
Urban slums are the fastest-growing human habitat. By 2030, their populations will triple to over 3 billion people. Is the ideal of affordable housing for the masses a Utopian pipe dream? Or is it fertile ground to build houses, build markets, build income and build better futures for a billion people? Join us as we explore the potential answers.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Tags
- housing
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NextThought Monday: New Modes of Mobility for the Poor
Disabilities perpetuate a poverty trap and push the poor further from access to education, employment and healthcare. Most policies, programs and entrepreneurial initiatives in India have focused on providing employment. Little attention has been paid to helping the disabled - in particular, the poor - become more mobile themselves.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Transportation
- Tags
- transportation
