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Financial Inclusion During – And After – COVID-19: The 2021 Compass Survey Reveals the True Scale of the Challenges Ahead
COVID-19 has upended the global financial inclusion sector, causing immense new challenges for low-income clients, their households and businesses, providers, funders, and the broader ecosystem. The full extent of this impact won't be seen until the pandemic fully subsides, but trends are emerging. Sam Mendelson at e-MFP shares findings from the organization's most recent Financial Inclusion Compass survey, which asked a broad cross-section of stakeholders where they see these increasingly complex issues trending — and what they’d like to see in the future.
- Categories
- Coronavirus, Finance
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Monitoring and Evaluation in E-Learning: Five M&E Practices to Measure and Boost the Impact of Online Education Programs
Educational institutions, businesses, nonprofits and other organizations have turned to e-learning during the COVID-19 crisis, and these approaches are likely to remain prevalent in a post-pandemic world. According to Yaquta Kanchwala Fatehi of the William Davidson Institute and Salma Elbeblawi of Soliya, virtual exchange is an area of particular interest and innovation within the broader online education space. They share five key monitoring and evaluation insights that can strengthen these programs in real time – and that can be applied to a variety of e-learning programs.
- Categories
- Education, Impact Assessment, Technology
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Getting In the Game: How Wealthy Individuals and Families Can Bring Impact-First Investing Off the Sidelines
The vast majority of impact investments target market-rate returns, which leaves impact-focused enterprises with lower prospects for competitive returns struggling to attract capital. But as Mariah Collins of The Bridgespan Group explains, there's a group of influential and deep-pocketed investors who are ideally placed to change this dynamic: wealthy individuals and families. She shares findings from a recent report that aims to shed light on this largely untapped opportunity, and discusses why the shift to impact-first investing has never been more important — or easier — to make.
- Categories
- Investing
- Tags
- impact investing, SDGs
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Research that Embraces the Messiness of Real Life: How an Innovative, Tech-Enabled Survey Method is Revealing the True Feelings of the Bottom Billion
Of any population in the world, the poor are the least likely to feel free to speak their minds, which makes it difficult to use surveys to understand and meet their unique needs. Daryl Collins, and Carolina de Miranda and Laura Morínigo of Fundación Capital, explore how tech-enabled research methods can provide a solution to this dilemma. They share how a unique, WhatsApp-based survey approach has helped Fundación Capital understand the nuanced meaning behind the responses of women who participated in a gender norms-focused messaging campaign in Paraguay.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Technology
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Healthy Animals Make a Healthier World: How Expanding Animal Care Can Advance the SDGs and Support Farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa
Smallholder farming is the main source of livelihood for many families facing extreme poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, and livestock provides up to 45% of their income. Jeannette Ferran Astorga at the Zoetis Foundation explains why access to quality animal healthcare is critical to protecting those farmers' livelihoods. She discusses how the organization is championing healthier, more sustainable animal care practices, and how improving livestock care can make a major impact on the region's progress toward the SDGs.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Environment
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The Wild West of ESG Reporting: A New Report Finds a Disturbing Lack of Standards and Transparency
Businesses around the globe have been embracing environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting to demonstrate responsible corporate citizenship and attract investors. But as David A. Fuscus of Xenophon Strategies, Inc. explains, this data is often inconsistently reported and unaudited, and nearly impossible to compare across companies. He shares the results of a recent survey on corporate reporting, and explores how widely used standards and increased transparency could better gauge a company’s actual progress toward more sustainable and responsible practices.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing
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Africa’s Fintech Gold Rush: Why Banks Must Adapt to Survive
These are exciting times in the fintech startup ecosystem in Africa, as direct investment activity is growing at a dizzying pace. But according to Osahon Akpata at Ecobank Group, this influx of capital is also raising challenges for startups and investors – and particularly for traditional banks, which have to adjust to the emergence of these innovative and well-funded new competitors. He discusses the implications of Africa's ongoing fintech revolution for both startups and banks, and explores why partnerships between them can provide a way forward.
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- Finance, Technology
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Scaling Biodigesters: How Appropriate Financing Can Help This Undervalued Technology Deliver Social and Environmental Impact
Biodigesters break down organic material to produce biogas for cooking and heating, along with fertilizer. But though these applications are extremely useful for farming households, uptake remains limited: In Africa alone, the technology could be adopted by almost 33 million households, but market penetration is less than 1% of that. Tanya Kothari of the Catalysing Agriculture by Scaling Energy Ecosystems program shares a recent study from the Shell Foundation exploring the impact biodigesters can make, while identifying the kinds of financing that could support growth in the market.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Energy