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NextThought Monday: Wisdom From on High
Our PopTech Social Innovation Fellows Boot Camp takes place on top a mountain, and the symbolism is not lost on any of us. It’s an intense five days of shared ascent for fellows and faculty alike. The goal of this conversation is to give the new entrepreneurs the benefit of what these fellows already learned about managing and launching a startup.
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- Technology
- Tags
- innovation
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From the Roundtable: Reflections on Improving Microfinance
Citi Foundation recently hosted an interesting day-long roundtable that focused on the Center for Financial Inclusion’s (CFI) report on "Opportunities and Obstacles to Financial Inclusion." It’s an important report because it raises significant issues for the sector. The discussion focused on how to protect and educate legitimate borrowers.
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- Uncategorized
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Housing Series: Strategies to Add Quality and Value to Incremental Home Improvement
Various stakeholders are working together with BoP communities to innovate new, inclusive and market-driven strategies to raise quality, lower costs and add technical assistance - assistance that leaves citizens not only with a sturdier roof overhead, but with increased confidence, skills and a good credit track record to build on for the future.
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- Uncategorized
- Tags
- housing
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Watch: With Smartphones, Software, Building Better Agricultural Value Chains
Funded by the Gates Foundation, African Cashew Initiative is a $48 million project that aims to raise the incomes of 150,000 smallholder farmers. From Ghana, business software giant SAP is researching how ICT software coupled with smartphones is improving efficiency and trust in the cashew value chain, from farmers to buyers/traders. (With video)
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- Agriculture, Technology, Telecommunications
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Affordable Housing for All Series: In the Race for Affordable Housing, Who Has the Head Start?
In the race for affordable housing for all, is there a clear leader? Is government the biggest player in BoP affordable housing? Are NGOs? Private construction firms? The answer might surprise you. Far ahead of the pack in resources mobilized, progress made and sheer numbers of BoP housing solutions implemented, are the BoP households themselves.
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- Uncategorized
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At the Tipping Point: How Can Global Financiers Create a Sustainable World Economy?
Last week’s UNEP FI conference, ?The Tipping Point: Sustained Stability in the Next Economy? considered the emerging role of sustainable finance in reforming the financial sector for the long term. As we reach a different tipping point, the 7 billionth person on Earth, it’s just the sort open and strategic conversation we need.
- Categories
- Environment
- Tags
- impact investing
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Two Ways to Kill Potential: Liberia and Cameroon
Earlier this month, two western African countries held presidential elections. On the surface, they have little in common ? one country recently emerged from a brutal civil war and has an abysmal economy; the other has been peaceful for decades and enjoys abundant revenue streams. And yet both countries are classic stories of wasted potential.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
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In Ahmedabad, Dharavi’s Redevelopment Model of a ’Slum-free’ City
In keeping with the forward-looking innovation that runs through the city’s blood, a new project launched in July aims to make Ahmedabad a "slum-free city." But a top-down approach leaping from slums to high-rises misses the need for incremental steps to integrate the urban poor - how they live, work and socialize - into the formal housing market.
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- Impact Assessment
