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RegTech for Regulators: Reimagining Financial Supervision and Policymaking
The authors – representing BFA, USAID, the Gates Foundation and Omidyar Network – say tomorrow's financial customers and service providers will be able to leverage technology to engage in a real-time, two-way conversation to quickly obtain information and resolve problems, benefitting consumers, regulators and financial institutions alike.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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‘I Know Where I’m Going’: Lessons from the ‘Vital Voices’ Accelerator for Female Entrepreneurs
In the final article in a six-part series on entrepreneurship's role in women’s economic empowerment, Nathan Rauh-Bieri highlights the experiences of five entrepreneurs in the year-long Vital Voices GROW Fellowship. The women reflect on what they learned from the training, and evaluate its usefulness to their businesses and their leadership development. Their experiences provide six lessons about how to optimize the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education.
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- Uncategorized
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Saving Lake Atitlán: Women-Focused Business Provides Clean Water – and Good Jobs
After seeing that Guatemala's Lake Atitlán, where she was baptized, was contaminated, leaving thousands without jobs and clean water, Francesca Kennedy founded the social enterprise Ix Style. The company employs local female artisans to make Huarache sandals and bags, and donates 15 percent of proceeds to purchase water filters for families in Guatemala.
- Categories
- Environment, Social Enterprise
- Tags
- public health
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A Simple, Painless Way Governments Can Help the Poor and the Environment
In Haiti there’s a 15 percent tariff and tax on clean cookstoves. Based on elasticity of demand, Dalberg projects that if improved cookstoves’ taxes and tariffs were eliminated, their annual sales would increase by 13 percent, from 185,000 to 209,000. This in turn would mitigate costs associated with health and environment consequences of traditional cooking techniques.
- Categories
- Environment, Health Care
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A Tale of Two Islands: Solar Helps Indian Resort Shine
The author, Simmi Sareen, visited an island chain in the Indian Ocean. One island, Kadmat, has a solar plant that provides all the comforts travelers have come to expect. Another, Thinnakara, runs on undependable diesel power. Solar is the key that has enabled Kadmat's tourism-based economy to hum, Sareen says, and Thinnakara's could, too, if it would transition from diesel.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment
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Social Business Roundup: Biblical Impact Investing, Salt from Solar in Kenya and Invoices of Inclusion
In this week's social business roundup: “Biblically responsible investing” is offering another path to the predominately secular space of SRI, one of Kenya's largest solar projects could be a model for rural power and how one company's approach to the tedious process of invoicing customers could lead to more financial inclusion in the Philippines.
- Categories
- Energy, Health Care, Investing
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Unlocking the Power of Digital Financial Services for Humanitarian Response
More people worldwide are in crisis than ever before and the humanitarian sector is transforming how it responds to them; it's moving away from a commodities-based approach toward cash-based assistance. Digitizing these cash payments can help build bridges between the humanitarian and development sectors, but progress has been slow. What can speed it up? A new report by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation might help.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
- Tags
- data, digital finance, fintech
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Finding New Pathways to a More Inclusive and Humane Economy
Social entrepreneurs, in their pursuit of the common good, have taught us that solutions won't come from a single sector or organization. And that's been reinforced by recent collaborations that reflect a complete new way of envisioning social change and clear the path for a more inclusive and humane economy, where social innovation is also a source of economic performance and gradually infiltrates the DNA of every company.
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- Uncategorized
