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Understanding the ‘Invisible Finance Sector’: FAI Executive Director Jonathan Morduch discusses the U.S Financial Diaries’ research on informal finance – Part 1
It’s easy to assume that informal financial tools like family loans are only used when people lack access to formal finance. But that’s not what the U.S. Financial Diaries project has found. In part one of this Q&A, Financial Access Initiative Executive Director Jonathan Morduch discusses the enduring appeal of informal finance among low-income people - and what it means for financial services providers.
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- Education
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Students, Professors are Crafting a New Social Business Curricula : At McGill, collaboration charted a social business concentration
Driven largely by student input and faculty collaboration, a new concentration in Social Business and Enterprise at McGill university is intended for students interested in harnessing the not-for-profit, civil, and for-profit sectors to tackle social issues. Leading the effort is Robert J. David, Associate Professor of Strategy & Organization. His experience is particularly illustrative of how scholars and students are working together to forge new curricula in the realm of social business.
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- Education
- Tags
- academia
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Nandan Nilekani Plans Tech Project ‘Ek Step’ to Hone Children’s Basic Skills
Infosys co-founder and billionaire Nandan Nilekani, who spearheaded the country's massive unique identification project, is gearing up for an equally ambitious project - to help elementary school children across the country improve their reading and arithmetic skills using low-end tablets and smartphones.
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- Education, Technology
- Region
- South Asia
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DAI, Souktel, and MFO Launch Mobile Financial Education Services with Facebook’s Internet.org
In low-income countries, good information about personal budgeting and saving is hard to find. Many people have limited schooling and little familiarity with financial institutions. Financial education efforts at the local level—often constrained by inadequate staff resources and transportation challenges—tend to be one-time events accessible only to a small slice of the population. Getting the information you need at the moment you need it is nearly impossible.
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- Education, Technology
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Startup Accelerator Scholas.Labs Announced by Pope Francis
Startup accelerator Scholas.Labs was announced last week during an education event hosted by Pope Francis. Although one hardly expects to hear “startup accelerator” and “pontiff” in the same sentence, this enterprise is quite real and is aimed at assisting education projects all over the world.
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- Education
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Investments in African Schools, Health and Other Infrastructure Exposed to Climate Risks
Investments in African schools, healthcare and other infrastructure are at risk from the long-term impacts of global warming because governments and businesses are not considering climate information in their plans, researchers have warned.
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- Education, Health Care
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Building Corridors for Shared Prosperity: Seven lessons from Intellecap, IFC on ‘what works’ in international expansion of inclusive businesses
IFC, in partnership with Intellecap, released a new report “Corridors for Shared Prosperity” at the Sankalp Africa Summit in Nairobi last week. The report is a repository of knowledge about “what works” in successful replication of businesses and presents a framework for systematic transfer. Eleven businesses across agriculture, health care and renewable energy that expanded from India to South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa were identified for analysis.
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- Education
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New Source of Cells for Modeling Malaria
In 2008, the World Health Organization announced a global effort to eradicate malaria, which kills about 800,000 people every year. As part of that goal, scientists are trying to develop new drugs that target the malaria parasite during the stage when it infects the human liver, which is crucial because some strains of malaria can lie dormant in the liver for several years before flaring up.
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- Education, Health Care
- Tags
- research