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Opportunity International Launches Microschools(TM) – New Frontier in Breaking the Chain of Poverty
OAK BROOK, Ill., July 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Opportunity International, a leading innovator in the microfinance industry, today announced the expansion of its microfinance school loans program to bring greater educational opportunity to poor children, especially girls. Microschools of Opportunity(TM) is a new initiative that provides loans to edupreneurs who open schools in poor neighborhoods where children cannot access public school for a variety of reasons. Groundbreaking r...
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Acumen Invests In Start-Up Company Offering Ambulance Services To Urban India
New York, NY (PRWEB) July 31, 2007 -- Acumen Fund, a leading catalyst for sustainable, scalable solutions addressing poverty in South Asia and Africa, announced today that it has made a $1.5 million equity investment in Ziqitza Healthcare Limited (ZHL), a Mumbai-based company commonly referred to as DIAL 1298 FOR AMBULANCE that is rolling out a nationwide network of Life Support Ambulance Service. DIAL 1298 FOR AMBULANCE is filling the vacuum in Emergency Medical Service (EMS) / Adva...
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Microfinance Faces Debt Test in Brazil
In the shantytowns that surround Brazil’s cities, plenty of peddlers and vendors say they could use a small loan. The trouble for microfinance lenders -- who believe loans as small as $50 can help poor entrepreneurs grow business and climb out of poverty -- is that many would-be borrowers in South America’s largest economy are already loaded with debt. BRASILIA (Reuters) - In the shantytowns that surround Brazil’s cities, plenty of peddlers and vendors say they could use a...
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Big Firms Rush to Tap Vast Market of Poor Consumers
The world’s biggest corporations are scrambling to tap a market they have largely ignored for decades -- the world’s 4 billion poor people. JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - The world’s biggest corporations are scrambling to tap a market they have largely ignored for decades -- the world’s 4 billion poor people. From South Africa to Brazil, companies like Danone and Unilever sell individual packets of yoghurt and soap in rural villages and urban open-air markets. In the telecom...
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Report Casts Doubt on Giving Small Loans to Poor Entrepreneurs
Global microfinance programs may not help reduce overall poverty in the developing world, new research shows. Despite ongoing efforts by the United Nations, microfinance programs offering small loans to local entrepreneurs do little to reduce poverty in the developing world, a new report says. In some cases, the programs may actually be making matters worse by encouraging borrowers to create subsistence enterprises that will never lift them out of poverty, according to Ane...
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See the Poor as Entrepreneurs, Consumers.
Extreme poverty in the world calls for a different kind of market-based solution, a business professor asserts. The numbers are staggering. Out of a total world population of 6.5 billion, 1.5 billion people are destitute, living on less than $1 per day with little or no access to potable water, basic nutrition or health care. Another 2.5 billion can be classified as extremely poor, living on less than $2 per day. Until recently, most of us living in the affluenc...
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Work In The States, Build A Life In Mexico
Once a month 28-year-old Ignacio Moreno (not his real surname) walks to a small storefront on Chicago’s West 26th Street and plunks down $380. It’s not the rent for his two-bedroom apartment, where he lives with his wife and two kids, but an installment payment on his dream home back in Mexico. A bakery employee who works the night shift since the family came to the U.S. illegally in late 2003, Moreno is paying for $10,000 worth of cement, gravel, and bricks for the four-bedroom house he...
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Exclusive: Negroponte on his Intel Triumph
Nick Negroponte explains to Fortune’s David Kirkpatrick how his effort to give poor children laptops took a giant leap by making peace with longtime nemesis Intel. NEW YORK (Fortune) -- It’s been an eventful two weeks for the $100 laptop movement. On July 13 the group called One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) announced it would add Intel to its growing list of corporate supporters, which include Intel’s chip rival AMD as well as Google, News Corp., eBay, Quanta Computer and others. Then on ...
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