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Moving from Access to Inclusion: New CFI report takes stock of progress – and pitfalls – on the road to full financial inclusion
Can we bring financial services to the world’s 2 billion unbanked individuals by 2020? Accion’s Center for Financial Inclusion tackles that question in "By the Numbers: Benchmarking Progress Toward Financial Inclusion." The report explores both progress and challenges as the emphasis shifts from providing access to enabling active usage of financial services.
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- Education
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Four Things I Learned About Surviving The Long Game of Social Enterprise
Parag Gupta, founder of Waste Ventures Charities, a non-profit, and for-profit Waste Capital Partners, recently asked a long-time social entrepreneur and investor what advice he would give now that impact investing had entered the mainstream. The mentor indicated that for a social entrepreneur to achieve the desired impact and reach a point of sustainability, it takes time – around 14 years.
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- Education, Environment
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Humanitarian Disasters are Getting Worse – Can Cash Transfers Get Better?: Navigating the challenges of e-transfers
It’s not your imagination: natural disasters are getting worse. Humanitarian agencies often respond with cash transfers, and many are now exploring digital options to get these funds to recipients more quickly and securely. We spoke with Sara Murray of the E-Transfer Learning Action Network and Rosa Akbari of the International Rescue Committee about the challenges and opportunities of this new approach.
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- Uncategorized
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NexThought Monday – ‘The Neglected Stepchild of Global Health’: About 5 billion people have no access to basic surgical care
Considering the fact that approximately 5 billion people have no access to basic surgical care, now is the time to make surgery a global health priority, say Dr. James Bernstein and Huma Malik of Eniware. They describe ways this care can be delivered, even in low-resource settings that lack the fundamental infrastructure that surgery usually requires.
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- Education, Health Care
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Twitter Top 10: 6-7-2015
Have you read "the biggest story in the history of capitalism"? Do you have any ideas about how to change corporate behavior forever? Can you name "the new venture capital"? We ?have to admit, we had to answer "no" to all these questions. That is, until we visited the Twittersphere this week in search of our Top 10 list.
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- Health Care, Social Enterprise
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Weekly Roundup – Nothing Random About It: ‘Graduation’ programs for the ultra-poor get validation through randomized control trials
Little research has been done into the long-term effectiveness of "graduation" programs to eliminate extreme poverty. But a big three-year study of 21,000 ultra-poor people in six countries appears to validate not only the approach, but also the return on investment.
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- Education
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A Loan and a Light: One Acre Fund, in partnership with GreenLight Planet, aiming for 100K solar lamps in Kenya this year
In 2011, One Acre Fund began offering cost-saving solar lamps made by Greenlight Planet as an optional add-on to our loan package. In 2014, One Acre Fund delivered 72,900 lamps to farmers in Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania. By the end of 2015, we expect to have delivered over 100,000 more.
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- Agriculture, Energy
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- smallholder farmers, solar
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A ‘Small Revolution’ in Ecuador?: The world’s first national e-money platform has reshaped the ecosystem – but will a government-led model work?
In December, the government of Ecuador launched the world’s first state-run e-payment system. The platform addresses the interoperability problem that has plagued the mobile ecosystem in other countries, and it’s affordable to the poor - though questions remain about whether a top-down approach will prove effective. The experiment could have repercussions for other countries in the region.
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- Uncategorized
