NextBillion - A WDI Publication

The Girl Effect

By Maria Eitel - Special to CNN Investing in a girl stops poverty before it starts. That’s the simple premise of the powerful force we call " The Girl Effect ." This week, The Girl Effect is on the global stage at the Clinton Global Initiative and the World Bank Annual Meeting . Take it from World Bank President Robert Zoelli...

Source

CNN (link opens in a new window)

A Lesson in Social Entrepreneurship: Fundacion Paraguaya

Recently, I interviewed Martin Burt, founder and CEO of Fundación Paraguaya , an NGO devoted to the promotion of entrepreneurship among the world’s poor. A pioneer in microfinances and youth financial literacy in Paraguay, Burt developed one of the world’s first financially self-sufficient agricultural schools for the rural poor - creating a radical new model for education. In ad...

Source

Forbes (link opens in a new window)

Region

Latin America

Lok Capital Invests $3 million in Rural BPO

Lok Capital venture fund on Thursday said it has invested $3 million (Rs.1.44 crore) in RuralShores Business Services Ltd, a rural business process outsourcing (BPO) firm. "RuralShores will use the second round of funding to expand its operations in the rural BPO space for business development," Lok Capital partner Ganesh Rengaswamy said in a statement here. With 10 back off...

Source

Economic Times (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia

Gates Foundation Taps Novartis Executive

A senior executive at the pharmaceutical company Novartis AG will join the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as president of the philanthropy’s global health group, a position that can influence the health of millions of people worldwide. On Tuesday, the foundation said that Dr. Trevor Mundel, 51, will join the foundation in December as head of the group, which funds methods to combat inf...

Source

Wall Street Journal (link opens in a new window)

London to Deliver Prahalad Conference Keynote

WDI Senior Research Fellow Ted London will deliver the keynote address on Sept. 16 at a conference honoring C.K. Prahalad, one of the world’s top management thinkers and a distinguished University of Michigan professor. London, director of WDI’s Base of the Pyramid (BoP) Research initiative, will give the keynote at the conference, C.K. Prahalad’s Legacy: Business for Poverty Alleviation. It will be hosted by the University of San Diego’s Center for Peace and Commerce, a...

Source

William Davidson Institute (link opens in a new window)

From No Doctor to E-Doctors in Rural India

There aren’t too many doctors in the village of Hari Ke Kalan, in the Punjab region of northern India. But for $1, residents who bicycle to a new health clinic in town can get an appointment with a physician who appears on a large-screen television, beamed in over broadband Internet. The clinic, built by a startup called Healthpoint Services, is one of a network of eight "e-health points" that the for-profit company has built in India as part of a growing effort by entrepreneurs to ...

Source

MIT Technology Review (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia

Tags

Base of the Pyramid

Acumen Fund Announces Sixth Class of Global Fellows

Acumen Fund , a nonprofit venture firm addressing poverty in South Asia and East Africa, announced its 2012 class of Global Fellows today from a highly competitive pool of 550 applicants in 65 countries. The program addresses a talent gap in the social sector, cultivating the next generation of global leaders by fusing the operational and financial skills of its young professional recruits with moral imagination to create new solutions to global poverty...

Source

PRWeb (link opens in a new window)

Citi Increases its Microfinance Work Across the Region

While most banks across Asia seem to be focusing on the high-net-worth market in Asia, some are also concentrating on the promising mass market. Most view licences in China as an opportunity to capitalise on the China Dream; others see microfinance as a means to build long-standing relationships across the region. According to the India Development Foundation, nearly 9 million Indian households that had access to microfinance moved above the $1.25 a day consumption threshold between 199...

Source

FinanceAsia (link opens in a new window)

Region

Asia Pacific

Tags

supply chains