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An Eventful Year in Impact Investing – An Interview with ImpactAssets’ Fran Seegull
2015 saw the impact investing sector take some crucial steps toward the mainstream - and 2016 seems likely to build upon that momentum. We spoke with ImpactAssets' Chief Investment Officer and Managing Director Fran Seegull about this evolution and how it could play out in the year ahead.
- Categories
- Investing
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Connecting With the Customer – When the Lines of Connection Do Not Exist
We created WeFarm, a social enterprise whose target market is small-scale farmers located in remote areas without Internet access. WeFarm provides a platform for farmers to share information on agriculture with one another, which makes our business model globally scalable. Wikipedia and Google are great examples of organizations and businesses that have executed community platforms very successfully, but the model isn’t widely used in the developing world.
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- Agriculture, Technology
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App Making Noise in Africa
Hearing loss is a global epidemic; 1.23 billion people had some form of impairment in 2013. Recognizing that up to 50 percent of hearing losses could be prevented through primary and secondary preventative measures, hearScreen is designed to detect hearing loss in the developing world through use of a low-cost smartphone.
- Categories
- Health Care
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Weekly Roundup: Starting SDGs, Africa’s IT Meritocracy, Safaricom’s Setback
The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) officially took effect on Jan. 1, with the stated goals of freeing “the human race from the tyranny of poverty and want and to heal and secure our planet” over the next 15 years. Whew. Talk about a tall order.
- Categories
- Health Care, Technology
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10 Global Health Trends from 2015 and What They Mean for the New Year
It's not too early in 2016 to see a few emerging themes: a transition toward local ownership of health priorities, financing and implementation; a growing need to understand and target specific segments of populations; and a shift in focus to several emerging areas of opportunity which are new to the global health agenda.
- Categories
- Health Care
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The Personal Connection: The Value of In-Person Training for Women Business Owners
As part of his continuing series, Nathan Rauh-Bieri checks back in with participants in the year-long Vital Voices GROW Fellowship. He learned that, in a world growing more "virtual" by the day, there's still plenty of value in entrepreneurs meeting face to face.
- Categories
- Education, Social Enterprise
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Sloppy Numbers About Poor Households
Affordability – the ratio between price and household income – matters and gets insufficient attention. While there has been a huge effort to sell quality goods and services at a low price point, there's been relatively little effort to understand incomes and spending patterns in poor households.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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2015’s Most Influential Post Winners Are …
It comes as no surprise that financial technology (fintech) trends that brought "the unbanked" somewhat closer to true financial inclusion, dominated our Our Most Influential Post of the Year Contest. But what was surprising, at least in terms of the results of our contest this year, were the geographies in question.
- Categories
- Investing
