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NexThought Monday – Money Stories: What if financial products could accommodate the tales we tell ourselves?
We constantly create stories about ourselves and our experiences to help us make sense of the world. These stories even help us manage our finances. But by and large, financial institutions haven’t leveraged the power of users’ stories, and this contributes to some of the challenges they’ve faced in serving low-income customers.
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- Uncategorized
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Weekly Roundup 2/1/14: Us and Them: Poverty goes mainstream in the U.S. – can financial innovation help?
The majority of Americans will spend at least a year in or near poverty between the ages of 25 and 60. And four out of five will encounter one or more poverty-related conditions in their lifetime. It’s clear that poverty isn’t just a major problem in the developing world. That’s why NextBillion is expanding our coverage to forward-thinking business solutions to domestic poverty.
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- Impact Assessment
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Pomegranates VS Poppies: Building food markets to fight the drug trade
War-ravaged Afghanistan is the source of much of the world’s opium, while life-sustaining crops are fare less profitable for farmers. But London-based Plant for Peace is working to create a Afghan pomegranate export market, from startup seeds to paying customers. It’s one glimmer of hope for market incentives to cut into the drug trade.
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- Agriculture
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In Search of the Perfect Health Care System: In India, innovators are successfully serving even the poorest communities
ACCESS Health International has identified initiatives with relevant solutions to improve India’s ailing system. The goal is to find a model for primary health care that works even in the poorest communities.
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- Health Care
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More than a Buzzword: How crowdfunding can expand opportunities for low-income entrepreneurs
Long seen as a vehicle for funding artistic ventures, crowdfunding is evolving into a potentially powerful resource for low-income people and the organizations that serve them. With loosening regulations in the U.S., startups may soon be able to fund their businesses through large pools of small investors, which could be a boon for low-income individuals striving to achieve financial stability through entrepreneurship.
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- Impact Assessment
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‘Leaning In’ And ‘Pulling Up’: Women’s Economic Equality In The Middle East
According to Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, too few women are making it to the top, mainly because of socialized gender roles.This rings especially true in the Arab World’s Gulf States, where women often represent a more educated talent pool than the rest of the population, but struggle especially hard against convention, or workplace expectations.
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- Education
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(With Video) Maximizing the Micro Approach to BoP: A new book explores bottom-up solutions
Madhu Viswanathan believes “bottom up” methods are too often neglected when thinking about BoP business development. Viswanathan, a business professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, hopes to shift that imbalance in a new e-book, Subsistence Marketplaces.
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Kids and Money: Watch the replay of our Google Hangout with Jeroo Billimoria, founder of Child and Youth Finance International (and eight other social enterprises)
Pioneering social entrepreneur Jeroo Billimoria is the founder of several award-winning international NGOs, and is perhaps best known for her work promoting financial capability among young people. She joined NextBillion Financial Innovation via Google Hangouts for a fascinating Q&A.
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- Education
