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Making Connections: Mercy Corps’ Market Mission : A Q&A With CEO Neal Keny-Guyer
Earlier this month, we formally welcomed Mercy Corps as a NextBillion Content Partner. I had a chance to speak with Mercy Corps CEO Neal Keny-Guyer, who has lead the organization since 1994 and taken it in new directions. "We try to make use of already existing market relationships – those between buyers, sellers, producers and consumers – to bridge social and political divides via business and trade."
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A Look Inside Pipa, Brazil’s First Start-Up Incubator
Pipa (Portuguese for “kite”) is an incubator, or to be more specific an accelerator, focused on supporting entrepreneurs looking to create long-term sustainable value through business. We aim to support these entrepreneurs in their quest to create positive social, environmental and financial impact, something Brazil is engaging with more and more.
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- Environment
- Region
- Latin America
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NexThought Monday: Franchising at the BoP – Identifying Best Practices: The book ‘Fairplay Franchising’ presents principles that apply across franchise models
Best practices for BoP franchise models are constantly evolving. New and existing franchises alike regularly look to one another for advice. Now they have another touchstone resource: Waltraud Martius and her book Fairplay Franchising. The book presents a set of principles that apply across franchise models.
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- Education
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74 Million Served, and Counting: 10th Annual Class of Global Social Entrepreneurs Coming to Silicon Valley
SANTA CLARA, Calif., Aug 02, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Anuj Sharma's startup company, Sarvajal, has found a way to bring clean water to thousands of households in rural India, who would otherwise have to walk miles or drink disease-causing dirty water. Sarvajal dispenses water from solar-powered, ATM-like machines. Customers pay around $3 a month with their cell phones, and special mobile technology alerts the company if there are problems with any of its 157 franchised machines.
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Waste Not, Want Not: Eco-Fuel Africa
Sanga Moses, is the founder of Eco-Fuel Moses recently applied for the WWF Switzerland Tropical Forest Challenge – a challenge that is working to identify the best for-profit solutions having a positive impact on tropical forest biodiversity in any of the 75 tropical forest-rich countries around the world.
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- Energy, Environment, Technology
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NexThought Monday: Shape Up and Scale Up: The Value of Mentors for Guiding Impact Entrepreneurs (Part 1)
A recent study by I-DEV International analyzed incubator/accelerator models and best practices across the globe and determined that mentor and peer learning are, in fact, the strongest components of existing social incubator/accelerator models. Given their importance, we wanted to get a handle on the types of mentor programs currently offered by a few of these incubator/accelerator programs.
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The Art of ‘Nice,’ Putting ‘Care’ In African Healthcare
What’s the secret to attracting 300 patients a month to a brand new, three-room health clinic in a sprawling industrial area? It might be the free manicure/pedicure women receiver after paying for a full “head-to-toe” checkup, but more likely, it’s the value of Penda. In Swahili, Penda means love, and that’s the key to Penda Health Clinics, a new chain of low-cost health facilities in Kenya that puts “care” at the center of their business model.
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- Health Care, Social Enterprise
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The Hidden Agenda at Rio+20
As everyone knows by now, the "main event" – the official negotiations among government leaders –was a disappointment. The general consensus among participants was that the official agreement, spelled out in agonizing detail in a document entitled "The Future We Want," would not produce the future we want. It is, at best, an exercise in rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. As the week wore on, it became clear to me that the so-called "side events" (organized by companies, NGOs, and consortia) had really become the main event.
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- Environment