NextBillion - A WDI Publication

A Spoonful of Ingenuity: New Ideas for Raising Money for Medical Care

IN THE old days, the job of eradicating disease fell to governments and inter-governmental bodies. Then charities, often led by celebrities or entrepreneurs, joined in. Finally, in the Western world at least, governments accepted the need to pool their efforts with those of private donors, big and small. The effort still seems unequal to the task. Every year, nearly 11m children die before the age of five because of a mixture of poor nutrition and preventable disease. Many of the United Natio...

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The Economist (link opens in a new window)

Cascade Engineering and Windquest Group Form Venture for Safe Water

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West Michigan Business (link opens in a new window)

Rural Banks’ Service in the Philippines

Rural banks do the nation a great service that people in the cities seldom give a thought to. They serve a market segment big banks don’t want to be bothered with. The money of the farmers, rural businesses and agricultural and fishery entrepreneurs that make up that market segment is too small-and therefore too expensive-for the large commercial banks to attend to. Indivi...

Source

Manila Times (link opens in a new window)

Region

Asia Pacific

GSK, Nestle, Coca-Cola & Dabur Top Up Effort to Tap Rural Consumers

NEW DELHI: Consumer product makers such as GlaxoSmithKline, Nestle, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Hindustan Unilever, Marico, Godrej and Dabur ar are rushing to the bottom-of-the-pyramid market with custom-made products six years after management guru CK Prahalad said consumers with incomes less than $2 a day can be a profitable segment for marketers. Estimated at close...

Source

Economic Times (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia

Women on the West Bank Fight Poverty with Enterprise

Nearly a year after the war in Gaza, women in the West Bank are overcoming poverty by running their own co-operatives. With help and funding from several aid agencies, women have been able to set up their own small businesses providing training and marketing assistance...

Source

SOS Children (link opens in a new window)

Region

North Africa & Near East

Trinidad and Tobago: SMEs Have Borrowed $225 million

Even as Gerard Talbot-Paul, acting chairman, National Entrepreneurship Development Company (NEDCO), called for a smoother system to be put in place to foster the growth of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), he said they have borrowed $225 million in the last seven years. He said ...

Source

Trinidad and Tobago Guardian (link opens in a new window)

Region

Latin America

Pakistan: USAID to Finance Gov’t for Livestock Uplift

KARACHI - The Sindh government has planned to set up Sindh Dairy and Meat Development Company and to initiate master plan study on livestock meat and dairy development under JICA grant during current fiscal year. This was informed at Provincial Development Working Party meeting held under the chairmanship of Additional Chief ...

Source

The Nation (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia

A Fresh Start: Asian Villages Carve Out a New Life

The village of Tmatboey in the northern plains of Cambodia seemed to have little going for it. It lacked clean water; there were no real roads. The people toiled mostly at subsistence farming, barely scraping by. The villagers didn’t realize they had a valuable asset -- hiding in plain sight, so to speak: a tourist attraction that a niche group of international travelers would happily pay to see, even if it meant a stay in basic accommodations. And now they’re making money...

Source

Wall Street Journal (link opens in a new window)

Region

Asia Pacific