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The Clean Energy Scam
By Michael Grunwald From his Cessna a mile above the southern Amazon, John Carter looks down on the destruction of the world’s greatest ecological jewel. He watches men converting rain forest into cattle pastures and soybean fields with bulldozers and chains. He sees fires wiping out such gigantic swaths of jungle that scientists now debate the savannization of the Amazon. Brazil just announced that deforestation is on track to double this year; Carter, a T...
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Wiring Money Turns Wireless in New Plan
Western Union Co., hoping to boost its share of the money-transfer market, is teaming up with ...
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Nobel Laureate Yunus Unveils Bangladesh Clean Water Deal
AFP, 31 March 2008 - Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus on Monday unveiled a deal between his pioneering Grameen bank and French group Veolia Environment to provide clean water to poor rural communities in Bangladesh. The Bangladeshi economist also sought support from President Nicolas Sarkozy for creating more microcredit schemes to fight poverty, particularly in Africa. I wanted to make him understand how effective a tool microcredit is in helping the poor people...
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Inclusive Business in Latin America
Growing up in Calcutta (now Kolkata) I saw poverty first hand, so I naturally admired my father’s commitment to implementing social justice to helping the poor citizens. Dad’s opposition to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s economic and social policies landed him in jail during India’s Emergency rule in 1975. I moved to the United States in 1984 and experienced the benefits of capitalism. I watched with excitement India’s move to globalization and hoped that this also ...
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Social Entrepreneurs Seek New Investments to Reach a ’Tipping Point’
On Oxford University’s 900-year-old campus, the new field of social entrepreneurship - which blends business techniques and social goals - this week grappled with its need for more money to finance growth. Nonprofit leaders, scholars, business people, and policy makers from 40 countries gathered at the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship at the Said Business School here. There’s still a shortage of funds, and the funds that are there are still ver...
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Development Thrills Of Microfinance
Microfinance is often considered as one of the most effective and flexible strategies in the fight against global poverty. It is sustainable and can be implemented on a massive scale necessary to respond to the urgent needs of those living on less than N120 ($1) a day, i.e, the world’s poorest. If we close our eyes to the cities for a while and go back to the villages and rural areas, the effect of poverty and the developmental roles of microfinance can be felt in its fullest ...
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Designing New Technologies for a Better Life
By Lauren Wi lcox World Ark Contributor In 1985, a young mechanical engineer named Martin Fisher traveled to Kenya on a Fulbright scholarship. Fisher planned to stay for a few months, putting his degree to meaningful use working on projects for the rural poor, but he soon found himself absorbed in the world of international development. Months turned into years as Fisher worked on rural water projects with communal wells, helped wo...
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Procter & Gamble’s Partnership with Non-profit organisations is Proof that Local Markets can be Won
Procter & Gamble’s partnership with non-profit organisations is proof that local markets can be won over to new products. In 2003, a $20 million R&D and marketing project at Procter & Gamble (P&G) had reached a financial impasse after eight years of work. A decade earlier, the company had spotted an opportunity to supply a water-purifying product to the developing world, which, it was hoped, would increase the company’s share of the mas...
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