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Yes, Microfinance Does Work. Here’s How…
By now, anyone with an interest in microfinance or poverty alleviation has read the criticism. There are tragic crises in Andhra Pradesh, the regrettable stepping-down of Muhammad Yunus from Grameen, and provocative headlines in the media claiming to refute microcredit's effectiveness. However, I feel strongly that if readers listen only to the white noise, they'll do themselves and the microfinance industry a disservice and, more to the point, they'll be misled.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Region
- South Asia
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Rural women in Gujarat get energy-efficient products
AHMEDABAD: International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, is helping Ahmedabad-based Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA) provide energy-efficient cook stoves and solar lanters to its members. IFC will provide a partial credit guarantee for a $5 million loan that an Indian private sector bank is providing to SEWA-sponsored Grassroots Trading Network for Women.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Region
- South Asia
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Can Funding Entrepreneurs in the Developing World Create 1 Million Jobs?
Big Idea: The Adventure Project is an alternative funding organization that supports entrepreneurs in developing countries, with the goal to produce one million jobs within the next ten years.
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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‘Explore cocoa potential,’ ICCO urges manufacturers
The International Cocoa Coordination Organisation (ICCO), on Wednesday, urged Nigerian manufacturers to explore the potential of cocoa, so as to produce more cocoa-based goods.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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FXB International Releases Graduate Tracer Study
(New York, NY) – Today FXB International released a Graduate Tracer Study. Among the exciting results include findings that, from their starting point as the poorest households in their communities, FXB-Village participants in Rwanda and Uganda show greatly increased income and savings. Additionally, the study shows that FXB-Village participants have vastly improved access to clean drinking water and are more likely to own their homes, and children are much more likely to be enrolled in school than they were at the beginning of the program. In each of the three study areas, the results show that the FXB-Village program significantly improves the lives of these participants.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Brazil’s historically poor northeast finally gets its boom
RECIFE, Brazil — The Brazilian state of Pernambuco was once known for its vast plains of parched dirt and roving bandits called cangacos, who robbed from the rich and gave to the poor. For later generations, escaping the widespread poverty of the northeast customarily meant moving to livelier southeastern cities like Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, though many migrants still ended up living in favelas, or slums.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
- Region
- Latin America
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A Middle Man Could Bring Smartphones to Millions of Mexicans for the First Time
After two years of intentionally losing money in a very smart way, a Mexican cell phone company is set to change the way the country’s consumers use mobile phones to access the internet. If their plan works, it could transform not only the Mexican phone industry, but consumer finance systems in developing countries around the globe.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Latin America
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Reality Check at the Bottom of the Pyramid
Most companies trying to do business with the 4 billion people who make up the world’s poor follow a formula long touted by bottom-of-the-pyramid experts: Offer products at extremely low prices and margins, and hope to generate decent profits by selling enormous quantities of them. This “low price, low margin, high volume” model has held sway for more than a decade, largely on the basis of Hindustan Unilever’s success in selling Wheel brand detergent to low-income consumers in India.
- Region
- South Asia
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