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Going global
The British brand of corporate responsibility is seen as the gold standard, says Julia Cleverdon, chief executive of Business in the Community, which for 25 years has been championing the cause in Britain. And it is true that Britain, especially London, has been a hive of innovation in CSR since the mid-1990s, thanks to a creative cluster of think-tanks, NGOs, consultancies and inventive bosses. But according to Simon Zadek of AccountAbility, a think-tank that has been part of the cl...
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Stove for the Developing World’s Health
Envirofit has been visiting rural areas to study factors like the ergonomics of cooking habits and preferred color schemes. In India, women tend to squat while cooking, making height an important consideration. Envirofit will offer a variety of sleek ceramic stoves from single to multipot, with and without chimneys, and with colors like apple red, baby blue and gold. The cost is to start at $10 to $20 and run to $150 to $200.. ?The women and the families that are buying...
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Third World First
By Jeremy Khan Bapi Das, seated next to an open sewer in a teeming slum on the outskirts of this Indian city, combs his hand through his hair, smooths his moustache, and prepares to enter the global financial system. Das, a 42-year-old commercial painter, grins as a worker for a local micro-finance group frames his face with a digital camera and zooms in. It is an important moment. His photo will adorn a smart card that, with help from a mobile phone and a finge...
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A New, Global Oil Quandary: Costly Fuel Means Costly Calories
By Keith Bradsher Rising prices for cooking oil are forcing residents of Asia?s largest slum, in Mumbai, India, to ration every drop. Bakeries in the United States are fretting over higher shortening costs. And here in Malaysia, brand-new factories built to convert vegetable oil into diesel sit idle, their owners unable to afford the raw material. This is the other oil shock. From India to Indiana, shortages and soaring prices for palm oil, soybean oil and many oth...
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Intel’s Amazon Ambitions
By Richard Shaffer It is, as Intel’s press release put it, one of the most remote inhabited places on earth. Parintins, Brazil, is on the outskirts of nowhere. The closest highway ends in ?bidos, a day or two downriver. So in 2006, when Intel wirelessly connected the Amazon city to the rest of the online world, chairman Craig Barrett promised that the venture would bring the expertise of specialists, sophisticated medical imaging, and the world&#...
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Small Wheels, Big Lessons (Opinion)
By NK Singh The flutter created by the Nano, Tata Motors? new low-cost car, will not subside anytime soon. This car, costing about a lakh rupees ($2,500), is half the cost of the next cheapest car, made in China ($5,000). It reportedly meets the required benchmarks on safety, fuel efficiency and emission norms. Sceptics question these claims, asking us to wait for drive tests to validate them. However, the widespread enthusiasm accorded to the car represents a new mid...
- Source
- The Financial Express
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Banker to the Poor Goes Beyond Microlending
Muhammad Yunus, who won a Nobel prize for inspiring a global microfinance movement, is now pioneering an idea he calls social business as a way to fight poverty. In a new book, Creating a World Without Poverty (PublicAffairs, $26), the Bangladeshi economist describes social businesses as those dedicated to social causes rather than profit. Nicknamed the banker to the poor, Yunus started his movement 30 years ago with a $27 loan to women i...
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Third World First
Das, a 42-year-old commercial painter, grins as a worker for a local micro-finance group frames his face with a digital camera and zooms in. It is an important moment. His photo will adorn a smart card that, with help from a mobile phone and a fingerprint reader, will allow Das to store money electronically, make small cash withdrawals, and send money to his family on the other side of the country. It is the first bank account he has ever had. This might seem like a classic example of...
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