NextBillion - A WDI Publication

Eastern Europe?s Untapped Market

BCG calculates that 200m of the region?s 350m people live on incomes above the poverty line and below median household income ? or $500 (?360, ?245) to $1,300 a month in central Europe, and $350 to $1,050 in the former Soviet Union. Together they account for half the region?s disposable income, most of it concentrated in just three countries ? Poland, Ukraine and Russia. This is a much larger market than the 50m people on top incomes that multinationals have already successfully reached. Go to a...

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Financial Times (link opens in a new window)

Echoing Green Seeds Twenty New Organizations And Tops $25 Million Invested In Social Change Since 19

The bold and creative spirit of these entrepreneurs underscores Echoing Green’s commitment to support undiscovered leaders who can make a real difference in our world, said Dr. Cheryl Dorsey, President of Echoing Green. These fellows come to us with passion and drive; we then provide the early stage funding and vast network of social entrepreneurs to help them secure sustainability and more quickly achieve the impact of their ideas. As the newest example of its twenty year and mo...

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PR Newswire (link opens in a new window)

How to Market to Asia’s Masses

Don’t Overlook the Fact That Even Low-Income Consumers Have Needs They Want Help Meeting. For decades, the majority of multinational corporations marketing in Asia have focused on the affluent minority, those who tend to live in urban areas and have shopping habits and product needs that are quite similar to those in the West. But by focusing only on the upper-income urbanites, marketers are missing a vast opportunity at the bottom of the economic pyramid. About 4 billion people i...

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Advertising Age (link opens in a new window)

Tamweelcom Launches Educational Grant Programme, ’Marketing gateway?

Microfinance is in no way charity, rather it is a proven effective tool to assist low-income families move beyond hand-to-mouth survival and plan for the future. With this in mind, one of the Kingdom’s major micro-lenders, Tamweelcom, held an event on Saturday to launch an educational grant programme and a newly developed marketing gateway. Tamweelcom has looked beyond lending like traditional microfinance institutions. We are providing a value chain s...

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Jordan Information Center (link opens in a new window)

The Fortune in Commercialization of African Biosciences

Commercialization of African science is the fundamental solution to healthcare development in Africa and a sustainable solution to the global health challenge. This transformational insight issued out of the KDNC Fourth Business Workshop (KB4W) which took place in Washington, D.C. in August 2006. Previous workshops (KDNC Second Business Workshop [K2BW], and KDNC Third Business Workshop [K3BW]) firmly established that market failure was the primary reason of underdevelopment in Africa, and failur...

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African Path (link opens in a new window)

NGO Brings Lighting Services to Poor Households in India

A new nongovernmental organization is forming a critical link between poor communities, renewable energy providers, and local banks in southern India. Over the past three years, the Small-Scale Sustainable Infrastructure Development Fund, Inc. (S3IDF) has implemented 35 low-investment renewable lighting projects for urban and rural communities, benefiting about 5,500 people. ?Increasing evolution of technology and materials is driving small-scale solutions to be much more cost effective in poor ...

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World Watch (link opens in a new window)

India Nurturing Homegrown Ideas

A little seed money has helped to unleash the potential of this rural nation’s many back-yard inventors. IMPHAL, India. Uddhab Bharali wanted to be a mechanical engineer. But before he could get a college degree, his father developed asthma and could no longer work. The youth decided to start manufacturing plastic bags to support his family. But the machine he needed cost $12,500, five times what he had in savings. So he built his own. Twenty years later, he has invente...

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Chicago Tribune (link opens in a new window)

PM: Find Ways to Tackle Poverty

Enough talk, let?s find real solutions to poverty in the world. Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said immediate action must be taken to resolve the problem of the poor. Let us, therefore, in the next two days, concentrate on finding solutions to this problem, he told some 400 participants at the opening of the Eighth Langkawi International Dialogue (LID) 2007 here last night. LANGKAWI: Enough talk, let?s find real solutions to poverty in the world.

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NST Online (link opens in a new window)

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Asia Pacific