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Creative Climbing: How Impact Enterprises are Overcoming Obstacles in East Africa
In 2016, Intellecap undertook a study to better understand how East African impact entrepreneurs manage to design viable business models despite the various market challenges. The insights from the study can inform inclusive development in the region and across the global south. The study classified impact enterprises across three levers based on their interaction with the BoP: access, ability and knowledge.
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- Agriculture, Investing, Social Enterprise, Technology
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Social Business Roundup: Laureate Education Goes Big, Omidyar Gives Directly, Surdna Foundation Embraces Impact Investing
In social business news this week, the world's biggest for-profit college company raised $490 million in its public debut, Omidyar Network gave a $493,000 grant to support GiveDirectly's mission of sending unconditional cash transfers to the poor, and the Surdna Foundation announced plans to dedicate 10 percent of its endowment ($100 million) to a new impact investing fund. Read about these developments and more in our news roundup.
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- Education, Health Care, Investing, Social Enterprise
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Social Business Roundup: Debating UBI in India, Pondering Change at WHO, Questioning SRI
In this week's social business roundup, our editors note the growing debate over replacing welfare programs with a universal basic income (UBI) in India, the limitations of WHO's donor-funded model, and an ironic side-effect of SRI's avoidance of "sin stocks" – among other developments making recent headlines.
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- Energy, Health Care, Investing
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Social Business Roundup: Building Our Immunity to Anti-Vaxxers, Solar Loans With a Side of Health, and SRI Goes Robo
There’s a crisis of trust in the world, some of it well earned – and some, like skepticism about vaccines, completely unwarranted. We cover an alarming uptick in the anti-vax movement's profile, an effort to pair solar loans with health care in Ghana, and the emergence of "robo-SRI" in this news roundup.
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- Energy, Health Care, Investing, Social Enterprise, Technology
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- ESG, impact investing, solar, vaccines
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Summer of Impact Investing: ImpactAlpha Flags 10 Recent Developments Shaping the Sector
In July, NextBillion launched a collaboration with ImpactAlpha to highlight coverage of the top stories, leaders and trends in impact investing. This article, which appeared on July 12, proved to be the most popular post that month, and is entered in this year's Most Influential Post of 2016 contest. We're publishing a new entrant in the contest every day through Jan. 2; be sure to vote for your favorite.
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- Investing, Social Enterprise
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Social Business Roundup: My Ivory Tower or Yours? Will Cash-strapped Pensions Turn Back to ‘Sin Stocks’?
In the weekly roundup, the CEO of the School for Social Entrepreneurs (SSE) in London says universities shouldn’t teach social entrepreneurship because they aren’t accessible to all; namely, poor people who are often best positioned to help solve social problems in their own neighborhoods. But there's a flaw in his logic. And on Monday, CalPERS, the U.S.'s largest public pension fund, will meet to decide whether to end its 16-year-old policy of divesting from tobacco stocks. Is the tide starting to turn against ESG investments among public pension funds?
- Categories
- Education, Investing, Social Enterprise
- Tags
- ESG, impact investing
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How Social Enterprises and Impact Investors Can Move the Needle to Achieve the SDGs
Betting on social entrepreneurship to accelerate the implementation of the SDGs makes sense from an impact and a financial return perspective, but the sector requires both financial and non-financial support. To put it simply, entrepreneurs need to unlock three doors: finance, market and talent.
- Categories
- Investing
- Tags
- data, impact bonds, impact investing, innovation, scale
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Weekly Roundup: PSI for Profit, a Slowing ‘Pulse’ in Africa and Medical Tourism on Steroids
The non-profit Population Services International (PSI) announces the launch of a for-profit business in India, sub-Saharan Africa braces for "the lowest growth in more than 20 years," and Obamacare generates some unintended – and potentially exciting – consequences. We discuss these and other issues in our weekly roundup of social business and global development news.
- Categories
- Health Care, Investing, Social Enterprise
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