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Apply Now to Become a 2011 Acumen Fund Fellow
Acumen Fund is excited to announce that the application process for the 2010-2011 Class of Acumen Fund Fellows is now open! (Full disclosure: I work at Acumen Fund and the organization is one of the NextBillion’s Founding Sponsors.)Applications will be accepted online until 11:59pm EST on Thursday, November 5, 2009.
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BoP Conference Report: Be Patient, Stay Longer, Come Back
This past weekend, 100+ attendees convened in Ann Arbor, Michigan for "Creating a Shared Roadmap: Collaboratively Advancing the Base of the Pyramid Community." Despite the tortured title - one only an academic could love! - the 3-day event was incredibly vibrant and merits a quick report-out here on NextBillion.
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Farmers Rejoice: Exploitative Middlemen in the Spotlight
The Financial Times (US) published a full-page article October 2 entitled "To feed a need" that brought to mind research that WRI generated back in 2003 on the Indian conglomerate, ITC, and its rural engagement strategy called e-Choupal. The article and the case study document the benefits of direct market access by poor rural farmers in India.
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Too Many or Too Few Choices? The Dilemma of Expanding Financial Access to Underserved Markets
In a recent BusinessWeek article, Economics Editor Peter Coy weighs the merits and risks of financial innovation. "The big problem:," he writes, "it’s hard to tell the beneficial ideas from the ones that are self-serving or dangerous." Such was the focus of the second annual Global Empowerment Meeting.
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Why Should We Evaluate Social Enterprises?
Recent readings and discussions made me think about the question "Why should we evaluate social enterprise?" Some macro level answers may be - ’To be able to generalize. To make comparisons across companies and across sectors. To demonstrate the social and environmental impact of these enterprises in an objective way.’ What’s in it for the company?
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NextBillion Welcomes Staff Writer Saurabh Lall
The NextBillion.net team is happy to announce the latest addition to the group of Staff Writers: Saurabh Lall. Saurabh works for WRI based out of Washington DC. He is the Program Coordinator/Research Assistant for the Accelerating Clean Energy Markets, Clean Energy for the Base of the Pyramid, New Ventures India and New Ventures Indonesia projects.
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Sustainability: Placing a Higher Value on Our Future
In Professor Gautam Kaul?s course ?Finance and the Sustainable Enterprise? at the Ross School of Business, we recently had a lengthy and very profound discussion on sustainability and interest rates. Yes, that?s right: interest rates. You didn?t read this wrong. (And please don?t stop reading now)
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Meet the Cohort of TED India Fellows
ThinkChangeIndia pointed my attention to the announcement of TED’s India Fellows. We wrote about the Fellowship earlier this year and are thrilled to see a list full of friends and organizations that have been part of NextBillion in one way or another.
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