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SC Johnson Expands BoP Product Initiative in Ghana
This week SC Johnson announced it was expanding the business concept, called WOW, to Yilo Krobo District of southeastern Ghana, and will begin offering newly-bundled mosquito control products as well as home-cleaning products. This comes two years after the initial pilot in Bobikuma, Ghana.
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- Uncategorized
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Beyond the Metros: Exploring Western and Southern India’s Jaipur, Pune and Thiruvananthapuram
Villgro’s Unconvention|L team and Okapi Research, which are visiting nine tier III cities in India to map regional social enterprise ecosystems and outline highlights and insights. In today’s post they focus on Western and Southern Indian towns Jaipur, Pune and Trivandrum.
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- Uncategorized
- Tags
- incubators, scale
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‘Positive, though not transformative’: Recent research clarifies the impact of microcredit, and points to ways it can improve
Recent research suggests that microcredit may not be targeting the world’s poorest as effectively as was once thought, says IPA. But these studies also tell a story of positive, though not transformative, results. They point to the importance of diversification of the traditional microcredit model, providing additional services in finance and beyond.
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- Impact Assessment
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Direct-to-Farmer Finance: Business models for serving the hardest-to-reach smallholders
An estimated 90 percent of smallholder farmers lack strong relationships with buyers, limiting their access to finance, inputs, training and other support. And it’s difficult for financial providers to reach them. That’s why direct-to-farmer finance is so important, says Dalberg’s Laura Goldman. She discusses a new briefing on the approach from the Initiative for Smallholder Finance.
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- Agriculture, Education
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If (When) At First You Don’t Succeed …: Multinationals are refining marketing strategies to reach the BoP
Proctor & Gamble’s PUR water filter famously tanked, failing to yield a competitive return. Eventually the business model disintegrated into a purely philanthropic effort. Other multinationals are learning the lessons from PUR and adapting.
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- Uncategorized
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Band-Aids Won’t Fix Ebola: Long-term solutions in resource-poor settings will require innovative technologies and strategies
Ebola can be contained and its mortality rate reduced in functional health systems that provide a basic standard of care, even in emergency conditions. Poor countries currently lack these systems, but they can be developed through innovative technologies and strategies.
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- Health Care
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How to Make Financial Education Less Boring: Taking it beyond sales pitches and theoretical financial management concepts
Financial education, financial literacy and even financial capability sound both condescending AND boring, says MicroSave. Worse, they fail to clarify what’s on offer to very poor people whose only real incapability is their limited financial resources. This post describes alternate ways financial service providers can offer these customers relevant, meaningful information that isn’t just a sales pitch or theoretical concept.
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- Education
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The Acumen Classroom: Six online courses address nuts and bolts of social entrepreneurship
Our vision is that five, 10 or 20 years down the road, not just Acumen, but everyone will be working on a completely different curve, one that’s smarter in solving problems of poverty. Because of this, our courses emphasize tangible financial and operational skills, such as human-centered design and social impact analysis, as well as leadership training and what we call "moral imagination."
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- Social Enterprise, Uncategorized