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Guest Post: Listening to the Voices of Experience
Acumen Fund created the Global Fellows Program because we wanted to build a core group of leaders from across the globe who not only had the intellect, passion and business skills, but also the experience of serving low-income consumers in some of the most challenging environments in the world. Last month I got a glimpse into that complexity.
- Categories
- Education, Social Enterprise
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Patagonia, Adidas, Walmart Join Sustainable Apparel Coalition
What happens when you put executives from Walmart and Patagonia in a room? This isn’t the start of a bad joke--it’s how the Sustainable Apparel Coalition was born. The seeds of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition were planted in 2009 when Patagonia and Walmart teamed up to help the latter company create a sustainability assessment tool for its supply chain (Patagonia was also working o...
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- Education
- Region
- Latin America
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New Resource: CGAP Launches Branchless Banking Database
The Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) just announced the launch of a brand new resource for those interested in the growth of mobile money around the world.
- Categories
- Education
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Aftershocks of Egypt and Social Enterprise’s Role
Throughout the Muslim world, echoes of the Egyptian chant "Leave, Leave, Leave" fall on far-from-deaf ears. The simple fact that pumping fists in Tunisia preceded pitchforks in Egypt is a harbinger of the aftershocks to come. The burden is on enterprise to ensure that when the dust does finally settle, those very US dollars start to flow freely.
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- Education, Social Enterprise
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’Doing Good’ with the Profits
Jeffrey Church and Mike Stone started a bottled-water business not to get rich, but to do good. The two San Diego businessmen, who met at Harvard Business School , established Nika Water after Church took his family on a working vacation to Africa to build schools and water systems. "My family and I liked w...
- Categories
- Education
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NextThought Monday: A Perspective from Egypt – Iman Bibars of Ashoka Arab World
The events in Egypt have been unfolding quickly and it is hard to tell what the outcomes will be, particularly when judging from afar. We had the opportunity to talk to Iman Bibars, founder and head of Ashoka Arab World. She is enduring in Cairo and offers her perspectives on the historic uprisings - what led to them and what could be next.
- Categories
- Education
- Tags
- NGOs
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NextThought Monday: Why Africa is Open for Business
When I asked a group of Business School students if they’d be interested in doing business in Africa, very few raised their hands. Those who did thought their prospects were limited to NGOs or microfinance. But in the last decade, better governance and debt crisis resolution, among other factors, are radically improving the business climate.
- Categories
- Education
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NextThought (Tuesday): Meeting Customers in the Middle and Other HBR Insights
This month’s Harvard Business Review ambitiously re-calibrates the dialogue on corporate social responsibility and the true meaning of shared value in rebuilding capitalism?s sullied reputation following the financial crisis. The HBR authors also implore established companies to "take a page from startups" by treating each emerging market as new.