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Econ 101: Three different ways to lift girls out of poverty
New projects that teach young women how to start a business, hold a bank account, and apply for financial aid can help to give them better futures and avoid the hallmarks of poverty -- poor health care, forced marriage, and early childbirth.
And Kathy Calvin, CEO of the United Nations Foundation, says that helping girls out of poverty will have a ripple effect that extends to fighting poverty for more than just themselves.- Categories
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Solving a $2.5 Trillion Problem: Can innovations in credit scoring give credit where it’s due?
Micro, small and medium-sized enterprises have a combined credit need of up to $2.5 trillion globally. This need is due to an intractable standoff between lenders desperate to capture this market, and borrowers unable to convey their creditworthiness in the antiquated ways demanded of them. Could credit scoring innovations utilizing non-traditional data ease the standoff?
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- credit scoring, lending
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An Inclusive Business Executive Education : A new program to bring out innovation and change
Inclusive business efforts are often fragmented and spear-headed by small teams, if not individuals. Only a few companies manage to develop a vision of “social impact in a for-profit way” anchored throughout the organization. HEC Business School, Ashoka, and Hystra have joined forces to launch an Executive Education program on Inclusive Business to help managers deal with those challenges.
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- Education
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NextThought Monday: Want to end poverty? Bring financial education and empowerment to the youth, says Jeroo Billimoria
Until recently, the financial industry tended to dismiss the thought of young people as necessary customers. Many still feel that youth should be protected, that they don’t need to learn about finance until later in life. On the contrary: to eradicate poverty, we have to ensure that every child is financially capable and included, says Jeroo Billimoria of Child and Youth Finance International.
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Can You Hear Me Yet?: mHealth breakthroughs not increasing as fast as the possibilities
How could mobile phones be even more important in the future, if most of the world already has one? Because one day soon they’ll be put to their highest use: saving millions of lives.
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- Health Care, Technology, Telecommunications
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Finding the Right Temperature for Public/Private Partnerships: An Interview With the Head of Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves
Radha Muthiah, executive director of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, has about 100 million reasons for looking toward innovative ways to partner and collaborate with social enterprises, development agencies and NGOs. I caught up with her at the BoP Summit last month to talk about new modes of thinking around public-private partnerships.
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- Energy
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Cash Cows: Why making bank accounts function like livestock will help the poor
In an age of mobile banking and digital transactions, many poor people still shun basic banking services and put their extra money in livestock. Why? Cows make sense as a savings tool in ways that bank accounts don’t, says Ignacio Mas. He suggests several ways banks could create products with similar properties to livestock, helping the poor use their accounts more intuitively.
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- Agriculture
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BoP Summit: Creating the Roadmap: An ongoing discussion
The ultimate goal of last week’s BoP Summit 2013 was to set a new course for improving the next generation of enterprises serving the poor. It’s an ambitious goal, and the summit leadership group decided the best way to accomplish it was to divide the tasks into nine working groups filled by the 200 attendees. Now it’s your turn to shape it.
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