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Blueprint for Ignition: How the Catalyst Fund Got Started
The Catalyst Fund's intervention is specific: It provides small, flexible grants of up to US $100,000 alongside mentoring and advisory services from investors and a robust learning agenda, dedicated to supporting innovative but pre-investable inclusive fintech startups. Here's how the Accion Venture Lab team worked with the Gates Foundation, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Quona Capital, Grey Ghost Ventures and the Omidyar Network, among others, to create it.
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- Investing, Technology
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How Entrepreneurship Unlocked Workplace Daycare for the Children of Garment Workers
With Bangladesh reigning as the cheapest place to produce clothing in the world, the government and the multinational businesses that depend on low-cost labour have yet to tackle the root of poor working conditions. One social entrepreneur, however, has steadily made progress partnering with communities and factories to improve the lives of women workers and their children. Ashoka Fellow Suraiya Haque founded Phulki in 1991, and today the organisation operates nearly 90 community-based and 25 factory-based daycare centres in Dhaka.
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- Uncategorized
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Helping Smallholders Grow a Pharmacy on their Farms
Eliminating hidden hunger is not easy, but with resources in the right place, with governments, donors and civil society working together and with the right policies developed, BRAC believes it can introduce poor children in developing countries to a nutritious vegetable – the orange-fleshed sweet potato – they will come to favor.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Health Care
- Tags
- nutrition
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NexThought Monday: Sprinters vs. Limpers – Three Critical Success Factors for Digital Finance Deployments
According to the GSMA, there are 271 mobile money services in operation across 93 countries, and digital financial services are now available in over 60 percent of developing markets. An increasing number of services are reaching scale, as 30 services now have more than one million active accounts. But 241 have failed to do so. So what separates these 30 “sprinters” from those deployments that are merely limping along?
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- Uncategorized
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Weekly Roundup: Social Enterprise Meets Reality TV – Is That a Good Thing?
Today, 12 India-based social entrepreneurs will make TV history as the world’s first reality show about social enterprise and impact investing is broadcast on NDTV. The program is being billed as an attempt to mainstream the sector via a popular medium - a worthy goal, but is reality TV really the right way to achieve it? We discuss this question, and other developments in the social business space, in this roundup.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
- Tags
- impact investing
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A Holistic Approach: Three keys to helping small businesses access the finance they need
Among the many obstacles to the growth faced by small and medium-sized enterprises, the inability to access credit tops the list. How can intermediaries, such as nonprofit organizations supporting SMEs, help them access the credit that they need? There is room for a more holistic approach to supporting SMEs in search of financing. Here are three key lessons drawn from TechnoServe’s projects to support entrepreneurs in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America.
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- Uncategorized
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A Shared Destination: Why we need open source impact metrics
Developers of impact measurement systems should provide an open repository of metrics and allow other users to customize them to their own context and needs. Such systems would also allow users to easily frame goals and build standard-based reports accordingly. Only with shared best practices and collaboration among the organizations will the social sector be able to produce a higher impact.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Technology
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The Digital Cloud that Hangs Over Every African Farm
The African continent is at the forefront of the mobile revolution, with nearly 700 million mobile phone accounts — more than in the U.S. and Europe combined. Africa has also become the world leader in mobile banking. But mobile phones and even mobile money accounts do not amount to digital financial inclusion.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology
