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Roundup 1-10-15: Raising a glass to the Omniprocessor
The Omniprocessor turns human waste into a commodity. It also generates enough energy to power itself, doesn’t produce a foul odor and meets U.S. emission standards. No wonder Bill Gates raised a glass to it.
- Categories
- Health Care, Technology
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Who Asks the Question May be as Important as the Question Itself: When the surveyed become the surveyors, monitoring and evaluation becomes localized
With Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) moving into the mainstream of the development industry, it’s time for NGOs to start documenting their programs in deeper ways. One way to do that, according to Semilla Nueva, is to localize the process.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Impact Assessment
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Marketing the ‘Real Cool Honey’ Sachets: Launch lessons from Asali Poa in Kenya
Find a product-market fit and then execute flawlessly. Both are tough and have high risks that you need to overcome with the launch process. Here are a few big lessons from Honey Care Africa’s little sachet of honey, which we call Asali Poa (translated as "real cool honey"). We launched the product commercially in 2014 in Nairobi and currently reach 3,000 points of purchase.
- Categories
- Technology
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Announcing the Most-Influential Post of 2014
Our most-influential post of the year, as voted by our readers, was by a first-time NextBillion contributor in 2014. One might be tempted to declare beginner’s luck, but not in this case.
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- Uncategorized
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Incubating Expertise: Fostering partnerships within the community – part 4 in a series of BoP fundamentals
There are many potential pitfalls for businesses in emerging markets but, to some extent, these issues can be mitigated by partnering and collaborating with local organizations and experts.
- Categories
- Education
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Assessing ROI in Educational Development: In India, assessment tools are still lacking, but change is coming
In India, there is a growing realization that quality of school education has to significantly improve in India, particularly for underprivileged students. Prachi Windlass at the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation says a wider dialogue on applying a robust assessment framework to education in India is needed.
- Categories
- Education, Impact Assessment
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NexThought Monday – Second Chances in Global Development: How savings and lending groups can achieve what microcredit hasn’t
Jeffrey Ashe’s early research on behalf of USAID helped make microfinance a global development phenomenon. He now believes that savings and lending groups could have an impact that’s just as profound, but with a key difference: while microfinance struggles to reach the very poor, he says, savings and lending groups are expressly designed to meet their needs.
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- Uncategorized
- Tags
- savings
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Cash Versus Cows (Part 1): Looking at the benefits of asset versus cash transfer programs
Is it better to give a cow or cash? Are cash and asset transfers hand-outs or a hand up for the extreme poor? BRAC examined the two approaches, and in the first installment of a two-part post, it compares the impact of cash transfers versus physical productive assets like livestock, seed and agricultural inputs, or a bundle of goods for petty sales.
- Categories
- Agriculture
