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Convergence Looks to Convert Risk into Reward for Global Development Financing
For the last few months, Andrew Stern has been serving as interim CEO of Convergence, a brand new platform designed to connect and support private, public and philanthropic investors for "blended finance" deals in emerging and frontier markets. The big idea is to bring these disparate players together to back deals that, on their own, would be deemed too risky or complex to chase.
- Categories
- Investing
- Tags
- impact investing
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Seven Wishes from Seven Thought Leaders for Financial Inclusion in 2016
2015 was an important year for the world of financial inclusion. To better understand and build on the year's successes, BRAC approached the Microfinance CEO Working Group to inquire about their wishes for financial inclusion over the coming year. Here’s what seven industry thought leaders shared with them.
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- Uncategorized
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The Leap from Social Sector to Social Enterprise
Almost every day, I engage with professionals who are hoping to land a new type of job in a completely new discipline, region or sector. However, in our experience, you’re likely to be most successful at landing a job if you aim for roles that leverage your strengths and then seek ways to pivot into new areas of responsibility. Here are some tips for transitioning from the development, government or NGO sectors to a social business.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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NexThought Monday: Would You Give Up Your Cellphone to Save a Child?
Last fall, University of San Francisco professor Bruce Wydick presented his students with a confounding challenge: If everybody in the classroom were to make a $50 direct cash transfer, he said, they could potentially save a poor Ugandan child's life. In fact, he added, a donor had pledged to give $50 through GiveDirectly for every student, on one simple condition: They had to part with their cell phones for two weeks. Wydick describes the fallout in this thought-provoking post.
- Categories
- Technology
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Weekly Roundup: Big Upside of Small Farmers; Using the Bully Pulpit to Fight a Bully; It’s Good to Be Ultra-Rich
What if some of the most marginalized people on the planet – the proverbial “smallholder farmers” with a small plot and an even smaller number of livestock – could command the attention of powerful telecom and technology players? Here’s another question: What if it’s already happening?
- Categories
- Health Care, Technology
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Private Maternity Care Takes Center Stage
Is maternity care delivered by private health providers a luxury reserved for wealthy women? Not according to a new study, which shows that 40 percent of women in low- and middle-income countries receive maternal health care and family planning services from private providers.
- Categories
- Health Care
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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.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology
