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Using Evidence to Optimize Savings and Loan Payment Channel Choices
The OPTIX team at BFA, along with partner Banco WWB in Colombia, set out to learn more about various client interactions with financial service providers; for instance, why do clients choose a certain transaction location? The work is designed to help Banco WWB strengthen their business while creating a more compelling portfolio of services for their customers’ needs.
- Categories
- Finance
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EdTech Startups are Flashy, But Teacher Relationships Remain Critical
In this Q&A, Amy Ahearn and Santiago Melo of Acumen explain how the use of education technology, or "edtech," is evolving in emerging markets. For one thing, it's become obvious that in addition to building technology, organizations that hope to reach scale must also build relationships with teachers, and approach districts and governments as customers.
- Categories
- Education
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Social Business Roundup: Laureate Education Goes Big, Omidyar Gives Directly, Surdna Foundation Embraces Impact Investing
In social business news this week, the world's biggest for-profit college company raised $490 million in its public debut, Omidyar Network gave a $493,000 grant to support GiveDirectly's mission of sending unconditional cash transfers to the poor, and the Surdna Foundation announced plans to dedicate 10 percent of its endowment ($100 million) to a new impact investing fund. Read about these developments and more in our news roundup.
- Categories
- Education, Health Care, Investing, Social Enterprise
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Find Good Partners and Don’t Quit: Lessons from a Water-Ag Innovator
Bart A.J. de Jonge and Si Technologies came up with a way to protect farmers around the world and their crops against increasingly common droughts that devastate local communities. He wanted to get the product in the hands of hands of millions of subsistence farmers quickly, but it took years, for a variety of reasons. Here, he offers advice to other social entrepreneurs, including this: "Change is a long haul, but don’t give up."
- Categories
- Agriculture
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Cash Defenders are Wrong: Digital Finance Truly is ‘Pro-Poor’
Digital economies are gaining momentum, says Njuguna Ndung’u, former governor of the Central Bank of Kenya, and poor households benefit the most. He's concerned that "the uninformed defenses of cash-heavy economies risk unnecessary distraction from the real issue of how to ensure digital economies maximize the benefits to people in poor communities around the world."
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- Uncategorized
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The Bridge International Controversy: Ignore ‘Fabricated Information’ – Bridge is Disrupting the Failing Status Quo
Bridge International Academies Co-Founder Shannon May, responding to criticism, says Bridge is out to change the status quo: "Our innovative model is proving that education can be delivered at a very low cost in the poorest parts of the world and, more than that, the level of education provided can be better than other alternatives."
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- Education, Social Enterprise
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The Bridge International Controversy: Bridge Schools ‘Undermine the Rule of Law, Transparency and Fundamental Rights’
The Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights is concerned about the direction Bridge International Academies is headed, says Sylvain Aubry, and those "concerns are based on real, substantiated, independent evidence that not only the Bridge business model may be shaky, but that Bridge schools could undermine ... the rule of law, transparency and fundamental rights."
- Categories
- Education, Social Enterprise
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Learning from (and About) India’s Emerging Digital Money Grid
The Indian government's experience in converting all its citizens onto a digital platform can help inform all digital finance professionals interested in financial inclusion models, according to Ignacio Mas and his team at the Digital Frontiers Institute. So they've collaborated with MicroSave to create a four-week online course, Digital Money Grid India, which they'll offer starting March 27.
- Categories
- Education
