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Featured Event – SEEP 2014 Conference : Scaling Impact in Inclusive Market Systems
The SEEP Network’s 2014 Annual Conference will serve as a platform to promote learning and exchange around proven and emerging approaches, strategies and models for reaching substantial numbers of poor and vulnerable populations on a sustainable basis. The conference will explore scalable solutions that involve inclusive business models, private sector partnerships, technology applications, and new investment and financing models.
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- scale
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No More Guessing: The many pros (and a few cons) of IFC’s new Global Consumption Database
Whatever country you operate in, and almost whatever product or service you sell, you can use the new Global Consumption Database to work out market data relevant to your business. There are many pros to this powerful tool, and a few cons.
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- Education
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Everyday Financial Alchemy: How the poor make money appear on cue
Poor people´s financial concerns revolve mainly around making money appear as recurrent expenses come due, and when one-off needs and emergencies arise, says Ignacio Mas. They do this primarily through tactics he calls liquidity farming and income shaping. Mas and John Gitau illustrate the relationship between these two concepts in this intriguing post.
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- Education
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Something New in BoP Housing: A new OMJ study explores four key business models tailored to low-income consumers
In a study just published by the Opportunities for the Majority (OMJ) at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), researcher Christy Stickney highlights several promising approaches to penetrating the BoP housing markets in Latin America and the Caribbean, based on 11 cases from Colombia, México, Nicaragua, Paraguay, and Peru.
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The Science of Dirt (Part 2): High hopes for the scalability of $12 water micro-filters made of natural elements
Serial social entrepreneur Chandrasekaran Jayaraman is making and selling all-natural water micro-filters in India, and believes that his market might eventually include the world. This is the second of a two-part Q&A.
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- Agriculture, Health Care
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- manufacturing, product design, scale
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The Impact of Inclusion: CGAP report looks at recent evidence of how financial inclusion can help the poor
There’s a strong consensus that access to suitable financial services can help poor households improve their lives, while spurring economic activity. But what is the evidence for these positive impacts? CGAP tackled that topic in a recent Focus Note, and we spoke with Nina Holle, an associate microfinance analyst at CGAP, and a co-author of the report.
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- Education, Impact Assessment
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The Science of Dirt (Part 1): Entrepreneur building and selling affordable, electricity-free water filters made with clay, sand and sawdust in India
While traveling in India, Chandrasekaran Jayaraman saw firsthand that most villages did not have good drinking water or good toilets. After determining that the problem was fixable, he set to work refining the government’s patented technology to make water micro-filters using clay. This is the first of a two-part Q&A.
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- Agriculture, Health Care
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- manufacturing, product design, scale
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NexThought Monday – Financial Innovation Moves Away from the Dark Side
After innovations like subprime securities helped crash the global economy in 2008, former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker famously asserted that the only financial innovation that has improved society is the ATM machine. It’s an opinion that many still share - but the recent EMERGE conference showed otherwise. We explore six ways the U.S. financial industry is innovating to actually help low-income consumers.
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