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Gates Foundation Awards $1.5 Million to Grameen Foundation
Grameen Foundation, a leading global microfinance organization, today announced it has received a $1.5 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to support its work worldwide. The three-year grant will support Grameen Foundation’s strategic plan to reach five million additional new families, ensure that 50 percent of them permanently escape poverty within five years of becoming a microfinance client, and champion innovations that transform the microfinance industry. The unrest...
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Entrepreneurs to Benefit from Buffett Windfall
Warren Buffett’s blockbuster gift of about $31 billion to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is great news for aspiring business owners in the developing world. The foundation is looking to use Buffett’s largesse to expand microlending campaigns in Africa and India. These programs make small loans to individuals so that they can buy equipment, such as a cell phone or a sewing machine, to start a business. At a press conference announcing Buffett’s donation, Melind...
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Microenterprises – A Solution for Those Lost in Poverty
The establishment of microenterprise opportunities brings hope to many who are willing to develop their current skills and take the time to learn new ones. Excerpt: The disproportionately high levels of poverty found in many developing countries became the catalyst needed to create a formal process to help citizens of these states develop a means to earn an income. Traditional lending institutions have not been readily accessible to many of these people (particularly women). This fact brought fo...
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Opportunities to profit from the honourable poor
The idea that money can be made from the poor has attracted much interest in the past couple of years, fuelled by books such as The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid and Banker to the Poor.? Brazil is one market with plenty of potential. Excerpt: The real secret of Casas Bahia?s success, however, lies in its system of customer finance. Just 10 per cent of sales are paid for in full at time of purchase. Of the remainder, 20 per cent go on credit cards ? a recent innov...
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SMEs would alleviate urban and rural poverty
Mr David Quaye Annang, Tema Municipal Chief Executive observed that Micro and Small-Scale Enterprises had the potential for the future growth of both employment and incomes, as well as the alleviation of urban and rural poverty in the country. Excerpt: Tema, Aug. 25, GNA - Mr David Quaye Annang, Tema Municipal Chief Executive (MCE) on Thursday, observed that Micro and Small-Scale Enterprises (MSEs) had the potential for the future growth of both employment and incomes, as well as the alleviation...
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Turkey’s born-again farmer
Organic food might change your life, but organic farming can change the lives of thousands. Nazmi Ilicali, born in 1953, grew up in the east of Turkey in the province of Erzurum, famous for its scorching summers and hard winters. Erzurum, one of Turkey’s poorest districts, is where Nazmi’s life has been spent enriching the barren lives of those around him. Excerpt: He struggled on and finally, with the help of his family and a burning new interest, he began to recover. Nazmi discovered f...
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India’s Banks Are Big on Microfinance
Lending money to the poor has largely been the province of small operators, but major financial institutions are now starting to focus on it in a serious way. ICICI Bank (IDN) is a big money-center lender that deals with sizable companies in Bombay, Bangalore, and New Delhi. It is also one of India’s biggest consumer lenders. So why does Nachiket Mor spend a lot of tie in India’s economically depressed rural hinterland looking for prospective borrowers? He recently visited a family of fi...
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Negroponte: $100 laptop trials to kick off
Reports that trials of the $100 laptop project will kick off in Thailand alone have been quashed by Nicholas Negroponte. Excerpt: Reports that trials of the $100 laptop project will kick off in Thailand alone have been quashed by Nicholas Negroponte. Negroponte, the chairman of the One Laptop per Child group, said Monday that field trials of its low-cost PC for children in the developing world will start everywhere the laptop is required at roughly the same time. In an e-ma...
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