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How Do You Know You’re Really Reaching the Poor?: Tips for microfinance providers considering digital services
Though many microfinance institutions operate in impoverished areas, they often have little or no objective poverty data on the clients they’ve reached. Pride Microfinance wanted to avoid this problem when it rolled out its digital financial services programs this year, so it worked with Grameen Foundation to measure its social impact. The lessons it learned can be valuable to other MFIs considering going digital.
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- Uncategorized
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Exploring the Base of the Pyramid in Latin America: A new IDB report and conference will discuss this vibrant, evolving market
Latin America’s BoP now encompasses 406 million people and represents a market of $760 billion. The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) will explore this market in a new report, to be released at the BASE III Forum, June 29-July 1 in Mexico City. In this Q&A, Luiz Ros, Manager of Opportunities for the Majority at the IDB, provides a sneak peak at the report and the forum.
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- Education
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Access and Equity in Reproductive Health: Ensuring equity through a total market approach
A "total market approach" is a strategy to empower all sectors, public and private, to more efficiently reach specific market segments, increasing the demand for family planning products. How to build a TMA and why the NGO PATH is pursuing the model with governments in low-income countries.
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- Environment, Health Care
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NexThough Monday – Facebook.org’s Budding ‘Walled Garden’: What it could mean for Internet consumers, developers in emerging markets
If Facebook.org becomes a significant part of the mobile Internet landscape in emerging markets, the model that it establishes may become the de facto standard. Yet Facebook remains firmly in control of regulating participation – and thus innovation – writes Bryan Pon, Research Director for Caribou Digital.
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- Technology
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- infrastructure
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Twitter Top Ten
This week brought a number of developments in global health, social enterprise and financial inclusion - some promising, some disturbing, and one bittersweet. As usual, we’ve highlighted a sample of the reaction to these events on Twitter, along with some long-form pieces that vividly describe some of the big challenges and small triumphs in the sectors we cover.
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- Education, Health Care
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Weekly Roundup: Of Powerwalls and power dynamics, could a grid-less future hurt the energy poor?
A billionaire rolls out a technology that only the global 1 percent can afford, so why on Earth would this be relevant to the poor? It turns out Elon Musk’s new battery storage system, the Powerwall, could have big impact in energy poor regions – good and bad.
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- Energy
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- Base of the Pyramid, solar
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A Revolution in the Making: CGAP’s Greg Chen discusses how smartphones could transform financial inclusion and microfinance
Smartphone sales are exploding in emerging economies, with Latin America and the Middle East/Africa recording growth rates of 59 percent and 83 percent, respectively, last year. CGAP’s Greg Chen discusses how this new access could transform low-income people’s interactions with their financial services providers in this video Q&A, the latest in our series on the Future of Microfinance.
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- Technology
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SOCAP15 Open is … OPEN: Pitch your own session at the conference – and vote for your favorites
Set for Oct. 6-9 at San Francisco’s Fort Mason Center, the SOCAP15 conference is a full four and a half months away. But preparations for the event are already well underway, including the recently (re)launched SOCAP Open, in which would-be presenters are invited to propose topics for their own sessions at the upcoming conference, and the public can vote for their favorites.
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- Uncategorized
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- impact investing
