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Bill Gates to UN: Find new ways to help poor farmers; announces $200 million in grants
ROME — Current approaches to global agriculture are outdated, inefficient and don’t give small farmers in poor countries the help they really need, Bill Gates told U.N. food agencies Thursday as he announced nearly $200 million in grants. The Microsoft founder brought his campaign to fight poverty and hunger in Africa and Asia to a forum of the U.N. International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), one of three Rome-based U.N. food agencies.Much of some $2 billion spent over the past five years to fight poverty and hunger in Africa and Asia by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has gone toward improving agricultural productivity.
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- Agriculture
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Anudip Foundation to Raise Up to Rs 3.21Cr from Omidyar Network
This is Omidyar’s third funding deal in India in as many months after backing Teach For India and Aspiring Minds.
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- Education
- Region
- South Asia
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The State and Future of Impact Investing
In a recent interview with Antony Bugg-Levine, CEO of Nonprofit Finance Fund, we discussed his new book about the impact investing sector, emerging trends and ideas in this space, challenges and opportunities moving forward, what the world would look like if the potential of impact investing were to be realized, and advice to traditional investors interested in becoming an impact investor.
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- Uncategorized
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Impact Investing: Chinese Investors’ National Solution
A recent micro-blog[1] message from Kai-fu Lee, the serious-minded Chairman of Innovation Works[2], seemed to deliver some intentionally juicy gossip for a change. According to this micro-blog, Lee and his well-known Chinese angel investor friend Xu Xiaoping were chatting, when suddenly Xu Xiaoping became emotional and said, "Whenever I think about the future of my motherland, I lose even the slightest interest in the opposite sex." In China’s micro-blog sphere, which is usually dominated by heavy topics, this remark taken out of context sounds almost like an insider’s joke. It helped initiate a sense of humor from many fellow micro-bloggers - to no surprise, following the micro-blog, there was a virtual explosion of similar comments.
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Muhammad Yunus, IIM-A Set to Float Rs 50 Crore Fund to Seed Social Business
MUMBAI: Professor Muhammad Yunus, the father of microfinance and chairman of the Yunus Centre in Bangladesh, has finally found a taker for his brand of social businesses in India. He is joining hands with the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) to float a Rs 50-crore fund to seed social ventures.
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- Uncategorized
- Region
- South Asia
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Alliance Pushes Social Entrepreneurship Bill
An alliance of farmers, workers, community enterprises, business associations and fair trade groups is pushing for the approval of a measure designed to institutionalize social entrepreneurship (SE) nationwide.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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Innovative conservation: wild silk, endangered species, and poverty in Madagascar
For anyone who works in conservation in Madagascar, confronting the complex difficulties of widespread poverty is a part of the job. But with the wealth of Madagascar's wildlife rapidly diminishing— such as lemurs, miniature chameleons, and hedgehog-looking tenrecs found no-where else in the world—the island-nation has become a testing ground for innovative conservation programs that focus on tackling entrenched poverty to save dwindling species and degraded places.
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Q&A: Adi Godrej, Chairman of Godrej Group
Adi Godrej, billionaire chairman of the family-controlled Indian conglomerate Godrej Group, sat down with India Real Time to talk about why India should tolerate a little inflation, about how India’s economy should really be growing at 10%, and about his optimistic outlook for Godrej’s expansion across 20 emerging markets in Africa, Latin America and Asia.