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Weekly Roundup – 11-9-13 – For Sale: Your Future: Should young people sell shares of their future earnings to investors?
Upstart is a crowdfunding company geared toward young people in the U.S. who are struggling with the cost of college education. It’s one of several new companies that allow investors to fund students’ careers, in exchange for a percentage of their future earnings. Is this a welcome innovation meeting a growing demand, or is it exploitation of the heavily indebted youth? We explore the topic in this Weekly Roundup.
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- Uncategorized
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- crowdfunding
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Social Enterprise in Haiti: An oxymoron or a reality?
More than two dozen development-minded thinkers and doers convened in Cambridge, Mass., for a competition-based workshop designed to find a market-based solution to cholera in Haiti. The winning idea, which includes recruiting and training “community chlorinators,” is expected to be up and running by this time next year.
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- Education, Environment, Health Care, Social Enterprise
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Impact Sourcing: How combining work and study ends the cycle of poverty for good
When we launched Digital Divide Data as a social enterprise in Cambodia in 2001, we quickly realized that providing work opportunities to disadvantaged high school graduates was not enough. In time, we saw that our work-study participants were able to access new professional opportunities and earn higher incomes. Twelve years later, we hope this impact can be scaled up by our organization and others to include many more people and communities around the world.
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- Education, Technology
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Framing the BoP : Dalberg’s Gupta on avoiding negative definitions for BoP business
Gaurav Gupta, Dalberg’s regional director for Asia, says the broader base of the pyramid business space should avoid defining itself from a negative perspective, i.e. failures. Instead we should emphasize strides in reducing the BoP sector as a whole.
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- Uncategorized
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Fundamental Funding: How basing funding on business fundamentals helps early-stage enterprises
In India, hundreds of entrepreneurs are setting up innovative social businesses. They are able to access equity funding for early stage enterprises, but once they are past the proof of concept and need working capital, they hit a funding snag. Simmi Sareen explains this critical gap in the financial ecosystem, and how funding based on business fundamentals can address it.
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- Uncategorized
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- impact investing
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Technology Booms in Nigeria But E-health Lags: Private sector recommended to harness opportunities
More than 13 years after the implementation of the National Health Insurance Scheme, less than 3 percent of Nigerians have been covered, compared to 65 percent of the population in Ghana over a similar time frame. The reason? The public sector in Nigeria is failing to deliver.
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- Health Care
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16 Case Studies Chronicling BoP Ventures : A report from the BOP Global Network
The BoP Global Network has released the report “Raising the Base of the Pyramid Through Enterprise - Innovative Case Studies of BoP Ventures and Initiatives” has been published. The report documents 16 case studies implemented by the BoP Global Network Learning Labs (also known as Innovation Centers) from around the world.
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- Education
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A Farewell to Cash?: The move toward a cashless world – and what it could mean for the BoP
In a digital world, why do we remain so attached to old-fashioned bits of metal and paper? David Wolman tackles the question in his book, “The End of Money," which illuminates the forces that could be driving us toward a cashless future. He spoke with NextBillion Financial Innovation about what a cashless world might look like - and what it could mean for the poor.
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