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Challenging a Meme: When ’Africans’ Are ’No One’
You may have seen the image online: A bus station photo-shot featuring two posters in simple style, with the captions "one dies, million cry" under the Apple brand mark, and "millions die, no one cries" under a map of Africa. The poster implies that the world would be a better place if only people (Westerners) mourned African deaths more. Really?
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
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Unconvention 2011 Hones in on Landing Top Socent Talent
Villgro’s Unconvention is billed as the ONLY conference in India focused on social entrepreneurs, while addressing the overlap between innovation AND social entrepreneurship. With just a few days before the third Unconvention kicks off in Chennai, I spoke with Sucharita Kamath, head of Villgro’s Innovation Ecosystem, on what to expect.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
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New CHMI Report Highlights 5 Market-Based Health Models to Watch
CHMI looks for programs in multiple countries with the same models or similar goals, services, organizational structures, and operational processes. We’re hunting for the next Aravind-or really the next 50 Aravinds, because the field is moving that fast. Here is a list of 5 health models proliferating around the world during the past decade.
- Categories
- Health Care
- Tags
- public health
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NexThought Monday: Africa’s Entrepreneurial Hot-Spot
Nigeria is blessed with major oil reserves, and a petrochemical industry drives the economy. Still, more than 50 percent of Nigerians live below the international poverty line of $2 a day. In rural areas, it’s closer to 70 or 80 percent. Despite this environment (and indeed, in part because of it), Lagos is an entrepreneurial hotspot.
- Categories
- Agriculture
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Housing Series: The Case for Bundling Housing Finance With Housing Support Services
Studies suggest that between 20 to 30 percent of microfinance institution (MFI) clients use portions of their small business start-up or production loans for housing improvements. While MFIs see this as "leakage" for non-productive activities, "productive housing" should be viewed as both a livelihood strategy as well as asset creation.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Tags
- housing, microfinance
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Guest Post: Is it Immoral to Earn Attractive Profits from Poor Customers?
Should we crafting a be a business system that enhances the livelihoods of poor people without making a profit for outside investors? Or should it make a profit for investors as well as the poor people who are served by it? To me the answer is obvious.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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What the 1 Percent (of Capital Markets) Could Do for Impact Investing
How can we unlock new sources of capital from retail investment to ensure impact investment opportunities aren?t just for the wealthy? A new book discusses ?widening the doorway? to create a greater pool of private capital for impact. Meanwhile investment group TriLinc is launching a $1.25 billion fund for ?mainstreet? investors.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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Housing Series: The Case for Housing Support Services
Access to finance and secure tenure has been shown to be the most effective catalysts for self-help incremental housing improvements. But while they are essential, even together, they are not sufficient to improve the living conditions for many of the world’s low-income populations.
- Categories
- Finance
