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Nextbillion’s Most Viewed, Shared Posts in February: Failure, Glorious Failure
The old adage that it’s not news if everything goes according to plan – that applies to blog sites like ours, too. And so, as per usual, stories about failure led the list of our most-viewed and most-shared posts of February. But there was no reveling in schadenfreude here. Rather, we opened the month with a series on what we could learn from failures, brought to us by a burgeoning global organization that has failure right in its name.
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- Uncategorized
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Affecting the Girl Effect: Inspired by TOMS and Warby Parker, SHEVA aims at empowerment
SHEVA has applied the buy-one-give-one business model to feminine hygiene products with the goal of educating and empowering women and girls.
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- Education, Environment, Health Care
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Reaching ‘an Emerging Market Within an Emerging Market’: JPMorgan Chase and Omidyar back new impact fund aimed at Brazil’s middle class
Entrepreneurs who can deliver high-quality basic services on the cheap are rushing to meet the pent-up demands of Brazil’s 112 million lower- and middle-class consumers. Those entrepreneurs can tap a new source of capital: impact investors - including one backed by JPMorgan Chase and the Omidyar Network - focused on the huge population of Brazilians who make under $10,000 a year.
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- Impact Assessment, Social Enterprise
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3 Reasons India May Be The Next Digital Finance Hotspot: Mondato explores the potential of a rapidly shifting market
Finding the right incentives for merchants to accept digital and mobile payments is a task that many have attempted and few have achieved. But according to Mondato, after flying under the mobile finance radar for a long time, India could be the country that does it. Chris Connolly highlights three ingredients that could make India the next digital finance hotspot.
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- Technology
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Micronutrients with Macro Impact: The first fortified flour launches in Ethiopia, a boon for the country’s health and its economy
This week, Ethiopia is celebrating a significant milestone: One of the country’s largest flour mills, ASTCO, is launching the nation’s first mass-market fortified flour. ASTCO is one of more than 150 companies that have participated in training sessions with Partners in Food Solutions. The organization’s CEO explains why he’s excited about the possibilities.
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- Agriculture, Health Care
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- nutrition
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Texting Toward a Better Business: What happened when women in three countries were offered bite-sized bits of business know-how via mobile phones
The Business Women mobile service, developed by the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, the ExxonMobil Foundation and Nokia, offered women bite-sized bits of business know-how via their mobile phones. Every week, thousands of women in Nigeria, Indonesia, and Tanzania received five or six business tips as part of a year-long curriculum.
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- Education, Technology
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Microfinance Goes Digital: Opportunities and challenges in enabling pro-poor financial institutions to connect to the digital ecosystem
Mobile financial services are finally moving beyond payments, with 26 mobile savings and 37 mobile credit services now live. But in spite of this progress, smaller microfinance institutions and other pro-poor organizations have been forced to watch from the sidelines for lack of resources. Grameen Foundation addresses this and other challenges in the first post in a series on what it takes for an MFI to go digital.
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- Uncategorized
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‘This isn’t what we had once hoped it would be … so what should we do?’: Dean Karlan discusses the influential new studies on microcredit’s social impact
Discussion of the six recent microcredit RCTs has followed two general tracks. Within the sector, it has focused on how the studies can be used to improve products and social impact. But outside the sector, it has focused on how microcredit hasn’t lived up to the hype. Both of those currents came to the fore in our Q&A with Dean Karlan, President and Founder of Innovations for Poverty Action.
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- Education, Impact Assessment
