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‘Clubfoot Can Be Solved on a Global Scale’
miraclefeet believes clubfoot can be solved on a global scale and envisions a world where every child can receive treatment. The five-year-old organization partners with local health care providers in public hospitals to support the Ponseti treatment and to ultimately create sustainable clubfoot programs in low-resource countries.
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- Health Care
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Three Ways to Optimize the Smartphone Experience for the Next Billion Users
Across emerging markets, smartphone adoption is predicted to outpace bank accounts by the end of the year, opening up an increasingly clear opportunity for more multifaceted financial services. However, a range of technical constraints still hold some users back. Here are three ways to optimize for a more inclusive future.
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- Technology
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Inclusive Business Partnerships: Distracting Dead End or Sustainable Solution?
If anything has been proven in the past decade of inclusive business, it's that “go it alone” doesn't work. The enterprises that are going to scale have partners. The other inescapable facts are that partnering is hard and some partnerships don't work. The problem is perhaps that partnering is assumed to be something that just happens and anyone can do it.
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- Uncategorized
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Opportunity International’s Evolving Microfinance Strategy: A Podcast Q&A with CEO Vicki Escarra
Opportunity International, a pioneer in the microfinance space, operates 39 microfinance institutions in Africa, Eastern Europe, Central and East Asia and Latin America. But recently, the organization has been undergoing a strategic shift, announcing the sale of several MFIs in sub-Saharan Africa. We spoke with Opportunity's CEO, Vicki Escarra, about these moves – and many other topics – in this Q&A, NextBillion's second podcast.
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- Technology
- Tags
- microfinance, philanthropy
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Upending Conventional Wisdom with Bottom-Up Innovation
To accelerate the democratization of affordable and robust internet access, Microsoft this week announced 12 new partnerships with social enterprises. Paul Garnett, Director of Affordable Access Initiatives at Microsoft, writes that the partnerships will support market-based innovation through seed grants, a network of peers, mentors and resources, and commercial partnerships, in addition to engaging the communities in which they work.
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- Social Enterprise, Technology
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NexThought Monday: Fending Off ‘Pilotitis’ in Global Tech
In 2008, as many as 80 NGOs were testing consumer-facing mobile health (mHealth) programs in Uganda - all at once. But none of the pilots were scalable, interoperable, or meaningfully coordinated. Uganda is far from alone. A World Bank study in 2013 found nearly 500 disparate mHealth programs being implemented around the world – particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia – without evidence of scaling or integration. A preventive treatment of sorts has arrived to help organizations address these "technology for development" problems: The Principles for Digital Development.
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- Impact Assessment, Technology
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Weekly Roundup: It’s a New World in Global Health … If You Act On the Old Study
That 25-year, quarter-billion-dollar, 1,000-scientist effort to catalog death and disability in nearly 200 countries – the Global Burden of Disease study – is still out there and relevant, even though not every country’s bought in. The countries that are buying in, however, have reaped rewards.
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- Health Care
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Feeding the Future of Aquaculture – One Insect at a Time
Kenya’s aquaculture industry is booming, growing at 10 percent a year. But overfishing and a lack of sustainable fish feed is holding back industry growth and profits for farmers. For Kulisha, a social enterprise founded by university students in business and environmental science, the solution is a little black fly.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Environment, Social Enterprise
