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NexThought Monday: Would You Give Up Your Cellphone to Save a Child?
Last fall, University of San Francisco professor Bruce Wydick presented his students with a confounding challenge: If everybody in the classroom were to make a $50 direct cash transfer, he said, they could potentially save a poor Ugandan child's life. In fact, he added, a donor had pledged to give $50 through GiveDirectly for every student, on one simple condition: They had to part with their cell phones for two weeks. Wydick describes the fallout in this thought-provoking post.
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- Technology
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An Eventful Year in Impact Investing – An Interview with ImpactAssets’ Fran Seegull
2015 saw the impact investing sector take some crucial steps toward the mainstream - and 2016 seems likely to build upon that momentum. We spoke with ImpactAssets' Chief Investment Officer and Managing Director Fran Seegull about this evolution and how it could play out in the year ahead.
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- Investing
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The Imperative of Change – An Interview with Bill Drayton
"All of us are living at an extraordinary time, when the world is making the final move away from being organized around repetition, to being organized around change." That's the view of social enterprise pioneer Bill Drayton, founder and CEO of Ashoka. He describes this vision and its vast implications in this video interview, recorded at the SOCAP15 conference.
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- Social Enterprise
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Microfinance in a Dangerous World
Held in the aftermath of the brutal Paris terrorist attacks, last week's European Microfinance Week conference had a special resonance. But the event also provided a hopeful response to recent grim headlines: it brought a strong focus to the ways the microfinance industry and broader financial inclusion movement can lessen the tensions that drive global conflicts – and how they can help communities recover when natural or man-made disasters strike.
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- Uncategorized
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The Human Foundation for Digital Financial Services
Agents are the bricks and mortar of a digital financial services business. With payment banks in India designing their strategies for building their agent networks, they must also ensure they get the operations right, putting high quality agents in the market, supporting them effectively, and playing their part in seeding the demand they need to earn a decent revenue.
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- Uncategorized
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Three Key Lessons for Responsible Digital Finance
Xavier Giné (World Bank), Greg Fischer (London School of Economics) and Dean Karlan (Yale University) discuss the challenges and opportunities in designing digital financial services for the poor.
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- Uncategorized
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Not Just Child’s Play: Why the financial services industry can – and should – support children’s well-being
A new research paper released by the Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI) explores the relationship between a family’s financial health and its children’s well-being, illuminating the need and opportunity for financial services to play a greater role in supporting child and family success. Doing so can help providers deepen relationships with customers today and with their children in the future.
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- Uncategorized
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The Impact of Tech: Sandhya Hegde of Khosla Impact Fund discusses how high-tech solutions can transform lives at the BoP
Khosla Impact Fund is an early stage equity fund that focuses on tech startups that help improve the standard of living at the BoP around the world, with a particular focus on India and East and West Africa. In this interview, recorded at the recent SOCAP15 conference, general partner Sandhya Hegde discusses the sectors and social issues that lend themselves to tech solutions, how Khosla works to help grow the ecosystem for their investees, and other issues related to the impact of tech on the developing world.
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- Investing, Technology
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- impact investing