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Cash Cows: Why making bank accounts function like livestock will help the poor
In an age of mobile banking and digital transactions, many poor people still shun basic banking services and put their extra money in livestock. Why? Cows make sense as a savings tool in ways that bank accounts don’t, says Ignacio Mas. He suggests several ways banks could create products with similar properties to livestock, helping the poor use their accounts more intuitively.
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- Agriculture
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BoP Summit: Creating the Roadmap: An ongoing discussion
The ultimate goal of last week’s BoP Summit 2013 was to set a new course for improving the next generation of enterprises serving the poor. It’s an ambitious goal, and the summit leadership group decided the best way to accomplish it was to divide the tasks into nine working groups filled by the 200 attendees. Now it’s your turn to shape it.
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Happy World Savings Day: Here are 10 microsavings lessons to help you celebrate today’s other holiday
As you probably know, October 31st is Halloween. But you might not know that it’s also World Savings Day - and this year, the event coincides with the end of a 4-year microsavings project at Grameen Foundation. The project has helped create 850,000 new active savings accounts throughout India, the Philippines and Ethiopia. Grameen Foundation’s Kimberly Davies shares the biggest learnings to come out of the project.
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Micro-Franchising: How Business-in-a-Box Can Change Development: Why Jibu, a clean water franchise, sees power in local ownership
Micro-franchising lends the emerged market’s corporate advantage to local, emerging market entrepreneurs - propelling local innovations and adaptation. Jibu is piloting this model for clean water distribution. Why co-founder Galen Welsch thinks they may be onto something.
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- Agriculture, Social Enterprise
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The Digital Payments Future: Transforming the way the world addresses poverty
The expansion of digital payments could be poised to increase financial inclusion and change the way the world addresses poverty, says Ruth Goodwin-Groen, managing director of the Better Than Cash Alliance. In this post, she discusses the multiple benefits that can be gained as cash is replaced with digital payments.
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Watch the Replay of our Google Hangout with Paul Polak: Join us for a discussion of the new book “The Business Solution to Poverty”
Paul Polak will join NextBillion for our next Google Hangout at 2 p.m. Eastern, Wednesday, November 6. Polak and Mal Warwick, authored the new book: “The Business Solution to Poverty: Designing Products and Services for Three Billion New Customers.” But we want/NEED your questions too. Find out how.
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- product design
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What Exactly Does ‘Better Banked’ Mean?: PopTech event explores fundamental questions around financial inclusion
What would happen if behavioral economists, implementing partners and policymakers got together to think about financial security - along with ethnographers, product designers and entrepreneurs? A recent PopTech salon offered the opportunity, raising fundamental questions of consumer behavior and what financial security means in today’s world.
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Moments of Serendipity in Driving Social Change: Making your own luck and other observations from the Net Impact Conference
Just as good business requires good strategy achieving social impact takes strong ideas and effective mechanisms for planning and executing those ideas. But while a good plan can guide operations, the best ideas often arise unexpected moments. A few of these moments of serendipity came up at this year’s Net Impact Conference in San Jose, California.
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