NextBillion - A WDI Publication

In Pockets of Booming Brazil, a Mint Idea Gains Currency

SILVA JARDIM, Brazil-After school and on weekends, Carlos Leandro Peixoto de Abril sells ice cream made by his grandmother from a stoop alongside the family’s cinder-block home. Instead of Brazilian reais, though, the 11-year-old prefers payment in capivaris-a local currency emblazoned with the face of a giant rodent. Bills in hand, Carlos then heads to a local grocer and buys ingredients, at a special discount, for another batch of grandma’s goods. The capivari circulates...

Source

The Wall Street Journal (link opens in a new window)

Region

Latin America

A Lesson in Social Entrepreneurship: Fundacion Paraguaya

Recently, I interviewed Martin Burt, founder and CEO of Fundación Paraguaya , an NGO devoted to the promotion of entrepreneurship among the world’s poor. A pioneer in microfinances and youth financial literacy in Paraguay, Burt developed one of the world’s first financially self-sufficient agricultural schools for the rural poor - creating a radical new model for education. In ad...

Source

Forbes (link opens in a new window)

Region

Latin America

Omidyar Network and IGNIA Lead $13.75 Million Series B Round in Finestrella

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Sept. 7, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Omidyar Network and IGNIA announced today they are leading a $13.75 million Series B round of financing in Finestrella, a provider of innovative mobile telephony services to low-income and unbanked populations in Mexico. Finestrella will use the funding to rapidly expand the availability of its current offerings while developing new products and services, including smart phones and data plans that address the needs of its customers. Th...

Source

PR Newswire (link opens in a new window)

Region

Latin America

How a Pharmaceutical Giant is Battling Malnutrition on the Ground in Haiti

All too often, corporate philanthropy involves dropping a wad of money on organizations that are doing work on an issue that the corporation "cares" about, and then saying goodbye. But sometimes, corporations actually bring their know-how and human capital to bear on a problem, in addition to just giving money. The global pharmaceutical company Abbott is taking the second path, focusing on long-lasting initiatives that can grow local economies in struggling areas. Case in point: Abbott’s ...

Source

Fast Company (link opens in a new window)

Region

Latin America

Funding Sustainable Agriculture in Latin America

Recently, the Inter-American Development Bank Group (IDB) through its Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF) approved a loan and technical assistance of $4.9 million to Root Capital, a non-profit social investment fund. Root Capital provides finance for cooperatives, producers’ associations, and small and medium-sized enterprises in rural areas producing under sustainable agricultural schemes in Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua. This project is aimed at providing an innovative financin...

Source

Microfinance Focus (link opens in a new window)

Region

Latin America

Bolivia’s First Crop Insurance Scheme Promises to Empower Farmers

Natural disasters can come with six-digit figures of damage and debt attached, even in Latin America’s poorest country. Bolivia ’s rural areas, still dependent on rain cycles, are the most financially vulnerable to drought, frost, hail, floods and other weather adversities. Lose your crops, farmers say, and you’re left with nothing but your debts. Luis Alvaro Toledo, who’s wo...

Source

Guardian.co.uk (link opens in a new window)

Categories

Health Care

Region

Latin America

Tags

nutrition

Microfinance Records Lowest Investment Growth in Six Years ? MicroRate

According to MicroRate’s ’The State of Microfinance Investment 2011’ report, the lingering effects of the economic crisis led to the lowest microfinance investment growth rate observed in the past 6 years, with total Microfinance Investment Vehicle (MIV) assets growing 12% in 2010. Rating agency MicroRate has been doing annual survey and analysis of MIVs for the last six years and this year it received information from 80 MIVs covering 92% of global assets under management. ...

Source

Microfinance Focus (link opens in a new window)

Region

Latin America

Haitians Return to Africa, Bringing Solar Energy

SEATTLE, U.S., Aug 2, 2011 (IPS) - Jean Ronel Noël, a young Haitian engineer, stood in a centuries-old fort on a small island just off Dakar and looked out at the Atlantic through a portal that once led enslaved Africans to the ships of the Middle Passage. "Finally we come to ’the door of the voyage of no return’," he wrote in a blog . "My blood wouldn’t stop boiling, wave after wave of...

Source

IPS (link opens in a new window)

Region

Latin America