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Kenyans Find the Unintended Consequences of Mobile Money
In Western Kenya, “Sambaza” is both a marketing slogan and means for despair. It means “to spread.” Vodafone-owned Safaricom, the dominant mobile provider in Kenya, uses it as a brand name for a service that allows customers to transfer airtime to each other. According to a new study funded by the Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion (IMFTI), the word has also come to refer to the way money in a mobile account slips away, drip by drip, as friends and family ask for favors.
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- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Crowdfunding’s Evolving: The Next Big ‘Profitable’ Thing
It seems like ages ago that nascent start-ups like Facebook (FB_)and LinkedIn (LNKD_) were reinventing how billions of people around the globe would stay both socially and professionally connected. Fast forward to today and we're witnessing the progressive unfolding of one of the most democratic ways for individuals and start-ups to fund their ideas and enterprises.
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- impact investing
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New Methods and Models for Social Enterprise Accelerators: Building a stronger, more efficient network
For those of us lucky enough to spend our days (and nights) thinking about how to help more social entrepreneurs help more people, the messiness of the impact accelerator landscape leads to a lot of questions. How can we reach more entrepreneurs? How we can guide the right entrepreneurs to the right program at the right time? How can we maximize our impact on the enterprise? Not to mention, how can we cover our costs of helping these enterprises? My work with the GSBI centers on answering these questions by strengthening and expanding our program offerings.
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MaRs launches Social Venture Connection, SVX
Socially-minded investors in Ontario who want to make a difference while making a profit have a new financial tool at their fingertips. The MaRs Discovery District’s Social Venture Connection, or SVX, is launching at the Toronto Stock Exchange Thursday.
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- impact investing
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Poverty-Focused Innovation: Alex Counts, CEO of Grameen Foundation, on how to foster financial innovation by creating agency for the poor
As part of NextBillion Financial Innovation’s launch, we invited a number of top innovators and leaders to contribute their views on financial innovation – what’s driving it, where momentum is heading, and what obstacles remain. Today, Alex Counts, CEO of Grameen Foundation, deconstructs the foundation’s approach to financial innovation – and how it maintains the focus on the poor for which the Grameen name is famous.
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The Growing Global Need for Innovative Financial Solutions: Citi Foundation invites you to join an ongoing dialogue around financial inclusion
We envision NextBillion Financial Innovation as a knowledge platform, where a diverse group of experts and practitioners from a range of organizations can share their research or their work, and partake in discussions around financial products, financial capability research and technology. These connections will help us achieve the shared goals of expanding financial services to the underserved, financing promising new businesses, and ultimately, improving the livelihoods of the poor.
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Sankalp & SOCAP enter global alliance to further Impact Investing market
Intellecap initiative Sankalp Forum announced a strategic partnership with Social Capital Markets, convener of the international SOCAP conference series, in San Francisco during SOCAP ‘13. Sankalp Forum is an enabling platform that helps social enterprises find investors, mentors and scale. And SOCAP works towards increasing the flow of capital towards social good.
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- South Asia
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- impact investing
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Social Business Finalists Unveiled in the Siemens Stiftung ‘Empowering People’ Award
The Siemens Stiftung organized an international competition to find simple but intelligent technological solutions with the capacity to sustainably improve the lives of people in developing countries. The international jury will announce the top three winners at the Award Ceremony in Nairobi. They will receive prize money of 100,000 EUR in total. From now until October 21st, anyone can take part in the online voting and choose their personal favourite for the special community prize.
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