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A Light in the Darkness
Some mountainous parts of Mexico are so remote that the electricity grid fails to reach them, let alone the banking system. A five-year-old social enterprise, Iluméxico, hopes to change that. It provides more than 20,000 people with loans to buy low-cost solar panels and batteries, enabling them to switch lights on, watch television and charge mobile phones, sometimes for the first time.
- Categories
- Energy
- Region
- Latin America
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Prescription for Shoes
We walk into the exam room—Jeremy, a fourth year medical student on the cusp of finishing a clinical rotation at the Mayan Medical Aid health post, and me, a global health graduate student eager to learn about healthcare in indigenous communities in Guatemala.
- Categories
- Health Care
- Region
- Latin America
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School in Bolivia Cleans Up Using Pedal-Powered Soap
Freddy Candia Aguilar, affectionately known as “MacGyver” for his uncanny ability to make something out of nothing, proudly held a banner with the words “Cochabamba Pedal Project” emblazoned on it. He had been providing free bike tune-ups all day to participants in Cochabamba, Bolivia’s first Bike and Pedestrian Day, while promoting his new social enterprise.
- Categories
- Health Care
- Region
- Latin America
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How the Red Cross Raised Half a Billion Dollars for Haiti and Built Six Homes
The neighborhood of campeche sprawls up a steep hillside in Haiti’s capital city, Port-au-Prince. Goats rustle in trash that goes forever uncollected. Children kick a deflated volleyball in a dusty lot below a wall with a hand-painted logo of the American Red Cross.
- Categories
- Health Care
- Region
- Latin America
- Tags
- philanthropy
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Ecuadorian Banks Must Adopt Official Electronic Currency – or Else
While companies worldwide are embracing the rise of decentralized cryptocurrency bitcoin, Ecuadorian officials have chosen to make local banks adopt a home-grown state digital currency — whether they like it or not.
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- Uncategorized
- Region
- Latin America
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Latin America development bank CAF eyes presence in Cuba
The Development Bank of Latin America (CAF) aims to be the first multilateral lender present in Cuba, its executive president said on Thursday, as the communist-run island seeks foreign investment amid a diplomatic opening to the United States.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
- Region
- Latin America
- Tags
- lending
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Catholic Trust Looks to Brazilian Fund for Social Returns
A Brazilian investment fund is taking to heart theVatican’s endorsement of leveraging capitalism’s tools to help address inequality.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
- Region
- Latin America
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New GSMA Report Finds That Latin America and the Caribbean Have Fastest Growth in Mobile Financial Services Globally
At the Mobile 360 Latin America event today, the GSMA issued the report, ‘Mobile Financial Services in Latin America and the Caribbean: state of play, commercial models and regulatory approaches’, which examines the current state of mobile financial services across Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region. The report outlines important advances in mobile money adoption in the region, showing that nearly two thirds of markets have at least one live mobile money service. Today, there are a total of 37 mobile money services, accounting for roughly 14.9 million registered mobile money accounts, in 19 countries1 in the region. This includes seven new services launched in Brazil, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Panama and Peru since 2014.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Region
- Latin America