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Grameen Foundation Selected as a Global Resilience Challenge Winner
Grameen Foundation was selected by The Global Resilience Partnership to implement transformative resilience solutions to problems facing smallholder coconut and cocoa farmers in Southeast Asia. A global leader in innovations to help the world's poor, Grameen Foundation was among eight global teams in the Global Resilience Challenge, a multi-stage design competition that received nearly 500 initial applications to address the most difficult resilience challenges. The foundation will now receive up to $1 million to implement its proposed solution in a way that can be scaled and adopted by others in the future.
- Categories
- Agriculture
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Creating an Exit Strategy for Aid (Part 1): Nonprofit mWater, in striving to eliminate diarrheal disease, runs like a for-profit Silicon Valley startup
The world met the Millennium Development Goal target for water – doubling the number of improved water sources by 2015 – but that accomplishment won't save lives unless those new water sources are safe. Making sure they are is the goal of a nonprofit tech startup, mWater, that's being run like a for-profit tech startup in Silicon Valley.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Health Care, Technology
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Small Farmers and Business Get Reason to Cheer as Reserve Bank of India Grants Licenses to 10 Small Banks
The Reserve Bank granted small bank licences to 10 applicants, most of which are engaged in microfinance, in a move seen as one of the most far-reaching initiatives on financial inclusion since bank nationalisation in the late 1960s.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- South Asia
- Tags
- lending, microfinance
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This Nigerian Architect Wants to Turn Africa’s Water Slums into Floating Cities
Nigerian architect Kunlè Adeyemi is re-imagining African’s water slums as floating islands.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Health Care
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Zambian capital can’t quench thirst of its booming population
Dorothy Zulu survives on 10 kwacha ($1) a day and, like the majority of Ngombe's 120,000 residents, spends up to a third of it on water. "If you don't have money here you can't drink water," Zulu told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Health Care
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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DKM Microfinance Saga in Ghana: Three Die in Nkoranza
Frustrated customers of financial companies with frozen accounts have vowed to make Nkoranza a living hell for government employees if monies lodged with the microfinance companies are not released to them.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- lending, microfinance
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FAO and MasterCard Join Forces on Financial Inclusion
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and MasterCard are joining forces to create an innovative new alliance against hunger.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Health Care
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Technology Meets the ‘Loo’: Women-led business utilizes bio-toilets to overcome infrastructure challenges
Namita Banka, a former jewelry designer, took a course in social entreprepreneurship in 2009 and emerged ready to make a difference in her community. A few years later, she incorporated Banka BioLoo to produce environmentally friendly bio-toilets. Here, Sanjay Banka, Namita's husband, talks about the business and the cultural obstacles it's working to overcome.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Environment, Health Care, Technology
- Tags
- public health