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Letter from Mindanao, Part 1: The impact of ASEAN integration on banking in the Philippines
On January 1st, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations' 10 member countries inaugurated the ASEAN Economic Community, a common market whose goal is to forge a prominent regional bloc and bring economic well-being to its 625 million citizens. How will the integration affect banks in the region? In a recent trip to the Philippines, Bruce MacDonald sought the perspectives of government and central bank officials and private bankers.
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- Uncategorized
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NexThought Monday – Seeking Scale: The Unexplored Power of Standardized Tools and Customized Implementation
Ted London has been working in the base of the pyramid domain since 1989. During that time, he's engaged with many hundreds of entrepreneurs and business leaders seeking to develop and launch enterprises in BoP markets. He's seen several success and many failures. It lead him to develop the Partnership Ecosystem Framework, a tool that helps prepare the enterprise for building the cross-organizational collaborations needed for sustainability at scale.
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- Education, Impact Assessment
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UPDATED Weekly Roundup: Haiti’s Peanut Pushback, Moms Vs. Markets and Should Google’s Payday Ban Apply to Microfinance?
This week in the roundup we consider the pushback of Haitian farmers and NGOs against the U.S. government's mass peanut donation, how marketers might be undermining mothers who breastfeed, and whether Google's ban on ads from payday lenders could justifiably be applied to microfinance.
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- Agriculture, Health Care
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The Secret Sauce in Shared Value, Lean Startup, Behavioral Economics and Social Enterprise
As an enthusiast for new solutions to old problems I wonder: Are you as excited as I am by relatively recent developments of social enterprises, shared value, behavioral economics and/or lean startups for social change? Or do you skeptically forecast which of these business approaches might just be fads?
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- Social Enterprise
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Get Ready for SOCAP16: Apply for SOCAP Open and Entrepreneur Scholarship Program
SOCAP, the world’s largest conference on social enterprise and impact investing, is already gearing up for its fall 2016 event. The conference will take place Sept. 13-16 at the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco, CA. In the meantime, SOCAP is accepting applications for two important elements of the event: SOCAP Open and the Entrepreneur Scholarship Program.
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- Social Enterprise
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Healthy Markets: Essential to Improving Health and Saving Lives
PATH, which for nearly 40 years has been working to understand and address market-based issues for medicines, vaccines, diagnostics and medical devices, recently compiled a diverse collection of blogs with the hope of elevating the role well-functioning markets play in supporting access to health products. We've featured one of these blogs here.
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- Health Care
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- public health
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An Ecosystem Approach for Building Affordable, Climate Resilient Housing
Indonesia has seen some of the worst natural calamities in recent times, and its demand for houses exceeds an estimated 1 million, with a supply between 300,000 - 400,000 annually. This highlights a business opportunity for private firms in the country’s affordable housing sector. As a part of the Rockefeller Foundation Technical Assistance Facility, Intellecap worked with Lafarge in Medan and Aceh, Indonesia to create a climate-resilient housing product model that is sustainable and caters to the urban poor.
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- Environment
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Innovations in Financial Capability: Four Lessons For Providers
Building successful financial capability requires moving beyond traditional modes of product delivery and financial education. Accion identified several best practices from organizations that habitually learn from their clients’ needs and behaviors, and tailor their products to meet those needs and build capability. Here are four lessons from their new report on the topic.
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