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A Market for Preservation: Tropical-forest friendly products, entrepreneurship and consumer choice
CleanStar Energy, is social enterprise that focuses on bringing sustainable bioenergy solutions into developing markets while preserving delicate tropical forest communities. It’s the type of business being sought by the Tropical Forest Challenge, which aims to identify the best for-profit solution – an idea, start up, or company with a positive impact on tropical forest biodiversity.
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- Agriculture, Energy, Transportation
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With Business Training, Lenders Stitch Kashmir’s Private Sector Back Together
Young business people in Kashmir often find processes slow, corrupt and inefficient, leaving them disillusioned and leading them to give up. But local government is taking steps to streamline the registration process, and providing support to young entrepreneurs through its Entrepreneur Development Institute. J&K Bank has partnered with the local government and Mercy Corps to develop a "Youth Start-Up Loan Scheme" at a competitive interest rate and worth up to 35 percent of the project’s costs.
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- Uncategorized
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16 Stories:A New Book, ‘Llenando Espacios’ (Filling Spaces), Reveals Colombia’s Social Enterprise Prowess
As part of the forum “Social Entrepreneurship: A new look at the development of Colombia” last month at Bogota at the College of Higher Studies in Administration (CESA), Juan David Aristizabal presented his new book (written in Spanish) Filling Spaces: A Book about Social Entrepreneurs.
I had the chance to chat with him about his new book, which tells the storyies of 16 Colombian social entrepreneurs across multiple sectors.- Categories
- Education, Social Enterprise
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New Data Reveals Massive (Potential) Mobile Money Market for the Poor : Across Africa millions are sending huge volumes of domestic remittances – mostly in cash
A few months back I wrote this quick piece highlighting some preliminary findings from data that was just coming in from a major study the Gallup organization did for us.
Now, the full data set is in and the results are quite interesting.
In collaboration with Gallup, we surveyed 11 countries in Africa (including Kenya) on the payment habits of the adult population. To my knowledge, this is the largest study of its kind – tracking money transfer and payment behavior in the developing world.- Categories
- Education, Technology
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Why Nairobi is the Stage for the 4th-Annual oikos UNDP Academy
Kenya’s capital city of Nairobi is a good fit for the annual oikos UNDP academy. Since its 2009 inauguration in Switzerland, the academy has leapfrogged from Costa Rica, to India, and now turns toward Kenya where it will be hosted from Aug. 12-17 by the Strathmore Business School in Nairobi
The 15 scholars participating in the 2012 Academy come from universities on four continents.- Categories
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Making Connections: Mercy Corps’ Market Mission : A Q&A With CEO Neal Keny-Guyer
Earlier this month, we formally welcomed Mercy Corps as a NextBillion Content Partner. I had a chance to speak with Mercy Corps CEO Neal Keny-Guyer, who has lead the organization since 1994 and taken it in new directions. "We try to make use of already existing market relationships – those between buyers, sellers, producers and consumers – to bridge social and political divides via business and trade."
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- Uncategorized
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NexThought Monday: Franchising at the BoP – Identifying Best Practices: The book ‘Fairplay Franchising’ presents principles that apply across franchise models
Best practices for BoP franchise models are constantly evolving. New and existing franchises alike regularly look to one another for advice. Now they have another touchstone resource: Waltraud Martius and her book Fairplay Franchising. The book presents a set of principles that apply across franchise models.
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- Education
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Weekly Roundup: AIDS 2012 Conference, Exploring the Financing Debate
The recent AIDS 2012 conference included a line-up of speakers to rival most health causes including former President Clinton, current U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, World Bank Present Jim Kim, Philanthropist Bill Gates as well as other globally recognizable humanitarians and celebrities. But what I found to be especially interesting and relevant for NextBillion readers was an honest and frank debate on financing in a resource constrained environment for HIV/AIDS.
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- Health Care
