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TechnoServe Launches Program to Boost Development of Central American and African Businesses
Some 560 SMEs will be able to develop their businesses through a new entrepreneurship development program, “Impulsa Tu Empresa (Boost Your Business), that TechnoServe plans to implement in Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala and Burkina Faso in Africa. The program, supported by the Argidius Foundation, is designed to give mentoring and business training for entrepreneurs.
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- Agriculture, Education
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ANDE Goes Global: The network has added four new global team members
To begin to address the need for more local collaboration, we started to pilot Regional Chapters in early 2010 by asking members where they should be – and encouraging them to work with us to design and launch chapters in regions where there were high concentrations of ANDE members who wanted to work together in a more intentional way. This led to the launch of chapters in Brazil, Central America/Mexico, East Africa and South Africa in 2010, followed by India in 2011. We have recently increased our team to include four new global team members.
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- Investing
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Shape Up and Scale Up: The Value of Mentors for Guiding Impact Entrepreneurs (Part 2)
We interviewed several business accelerators – Unreasonable Institute, TechnoServe, New Ventures Mexico and New Ventures India to learn more about the structure of their programs and key lessons learned in providing mentor services. For part two, we spoke directly with mentors and entrepreneurs who have been involved in these programs to learn why they do it and what makes mentor programs successful.
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Game On: What We’ve Learned from Catalysts for Change
For three days in April, more than 1,600 people took part in such a conversation through an innovative, engaged foresight public game called Catalysts for Change. For 48 hours, the global community collaborated on ideas to tackle one of the most pressing questions of our time: What new paths out of poverty can we discover together?
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Insights from G2012 Mexico Financial Inclusion Twitter Conference
Great insights and knowledge surfaced about how to provide valuable, affordable, secure, and comprehensive financial services to underserved and excluded communities during a six-hour long multilingual #SocEntChat on Twitter last month. It was part of the G2012 Mexico Financial Inclusion global competition that is seeking the world’s most innovative solutions for financial inclusion, organized by Ashoka Changemakers and G2012 Mexico. Don’t worry if you missed it, here’s a recap.
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Going Beyond Remittances: Why SMEs Should be a Key Market Segment for Mobile Money Operators
Many expect that SMEs could benefit substantially from mobile money as a tool to manage payments and working capital, given that it offers an electronic cash substitute for sending payments and storing working capital along with rudimentary record keeping. However, while mobile money use by SMEs is widespread, it is not yet deep.
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NexThought Monday: Designing New Financial Products for ‘Bolsa Familia’ Beneficiaries: CGAP’s research explores how conditional cash transfer recipients manage money
We at CGAP have been involved in efforts in Brazil to improve our understanding of Bolsa Família recipients. Our goal is to counteract the prevailing wisdom held by banks in Brazil that welfare recipients are a singular block of very poor people to whom it is difficult to provide financial services.
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Weekly Roundup: (With VIDEO) Burro’s ‘Billion Dollar’ Plans
Last week Whit Alexander, Cranium’s co-creator turned founder of BoP-focused business Burro. The business is reseller of multiple products; each designed to lift a barrier to productivity and catering to multiple customers, with multiple needs and multiple skills/backgrounds. In just a few years, Burro has grown to more than 300 Burro product resellers.
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