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A Toolkit to Identify Sustainable, Market-Based Energy Solutions in Off-Grid Areas
The MIT D-Lab, working with Mercy Corps, developed the Energy Assessment Toolkit to help organizations with strong connections in off-grid communities assess local energy needs, and select and implement market-based solutions that meet those needs. The toolkit includes surveys and interview guides that an organization can use to gather information from a range of stakeholders.
- Categories
- Education, Energy, Telecommunications
- Tags
- supply chains
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Rural Knowledge Meets Tech Innovation: What Ultra-Poor Entrepreneurs Can Teach the World
What happens when Barefoot College, a global NGO which trains entrepreneurs in poverty-stricken rural areas, melds its expertise and values with tech innovators like Apple? It sparks the emergence of a new kind of entrepreneur who has much to teach the world, says Scot Bolsinger – along with new opportunities for rural communities to share and connect in ways never before possible.
- Categories
- Education, Technology
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Why Low-Income Families Don’t Send Their Children to College. Hint: It’s Not Always About Money.
Household income is not the only limiting factor as to why children of low to upper-low income families do not attend or save for university. Significant behavioral reasons are also involved, and ESCALA, which helps families save for higher education, worked with BFA’s customer insights team to identify and develop a plan to help overcome a few of them.
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Three Social Business Lessons from Detroit’s ‘Grassroots Entrepreneurs’
The self-determination that characterizes many Detroit entrepreneurs is a powerful paradigm for emerging markets, say authors Amy Gillett and Nathan Rauh-Bieri, and would-be providers of social entrepreneurship interventions should note a lesson learned: Make sure what you are offering is requested by the community, customized for the community and implemented with the community.
- Categories
- Education, Social Enterprise
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How Can Inclusive Business Advance the SDGs?
Two recent publications released in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals' first anniversary share the view that inclusive business is a part of the solution to deliver on the SDGs. That's a sign of progress, according to Jenny Melo, but we still need to go deeper in the conversation and ask for impacts, measurements and specific connections.
- Categories
- Education, Energy, Environment, Health Care, Social Enterprise
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Power, Individualism and Indulgence: How to Leverage Cultural Factors in Entrepreneurship Training
Cultural factors can influence just about every aspect of an entrepreneur’s journey. Using a cultural dimensions tool, the authors compared how cultural background influences entrepreneurs in the USA and the Philippines. After finding large differences across three dimensions of culture, they explored how these differences might affect entrepreneurs in the Philippines and how entrepreneurship training can be tailored accordingly.
- Categories
- Education
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De-Mythifying Financial Education
Many organizations have discovered that it's difficult to bring comprehensive and sustainable financial capability to the BoP. Recognizing that financial education is complex and influenced by the clients' environment, MicroSave has developed a framework for those planning interventions, including four key lessons that should be at the forefront of any design.
- Categories
- Education
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The Secondary School Abyss: Can Public Private Partnerships Help?
Demand for secondary schools outstrips supply in parts of Africa. PEAS, which builds and runs not-for-profit secondary schools in Uganda and Zambia, has decided to focus on working alongside an informal coalition of partners, including governments, to create a PPP school movement across sub-Saharan Africa.
- Categories
- Education
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