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Meet MicroMentor, a Free ‘Dating’ Site for Business Mentorship
A business networking site might seem like an odd duck in the portfolio of its owner, Mercy Corps, an international NGO. But MicroMentor provides an affordable solution, especially for microentrepreneurs from low-income backgrounds. It’s already served more than 10,000 entrepreneurs.
- Categories
- Technology
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What Nepalese Mountaineers Can Teach You About Business
Sherpas are famous for trekking to the summit of Mount Everest. But one entrepreneur says they have much to teach the business world.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Region
- South Asia
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Good show! How an NGO convinced commercial TV to serve the poor
Information is power, but only if people have access to it. In 2006, a Swiss NGO teamed with Indonesian media to bring that power to small businesses.
The program, Cabe Rawit, premiered to commercial success and a great deal of viewer interest. It increased profits for businesses featured on the program by an average of 18 percent, and managed to draw more than half its funding from outside the NGO.- Categories
- Education
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Eight Meters Squared: A Colombian startup aims to help small producers at the BoP
In Colombia, $2.8 billion in international aid money is currently being allocated for 2,560 projects. Of this amount, only three percent goes toward strengthening productivity and competition. As a result, many of these projects fail because they stop generating profits when their products don’t sell. Eight Meters Squared (8M2) seeks to change this by supporting vulnerable communities in marketing their products.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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Why we must talk more about failure in social enterprise
Last year, in a live Q&A on planning for success and failure, some of the experts talked about using business failure as a valuable learning experience. One expert even said that in the US you're more likely to get finance if you have the knowledge of failure under your belt.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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Village Capital: Lessons Learned from our First 15 Programs: And announcing our 16th and 17th
Village Capital operates accelerator programs worldwide for early-stage enterprises serving the BoP. In our three-month programs, groups of 10-20 entrepreneurs build world-changing innovations in education, health, financial services, energy, and more. In March, we’ll be wrapping up our 15th program, and we’d like to share a few of our key learnings about the seed-stage/accelerator space.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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Special Series (Part 5): BPO for the BoP – The Path Towards Sustainability and Scale: Lessons on Expansion from a Mature Impact Sourcing Provider
In part five of our six-part series on Impact Sourcing, we highlight Digital Divide Data (DDD), an internationally acclaimed social enterprise that employs more than 1,100 people and operates in several countries, including Cambodia, Laos and Kenya. It recruits, trains and employs youth to perform BPO work, while also providing them financial support for higher education.
- Categories
- Education, Technology
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Resilience Meets Disaster Economics: Investing to stop disasters before they start can save lives and money
Global needs for crisis response are increasing. From drought in the Horn of Africa to battering storms in Haiti, natural disasters are becoming common and responding to them can be expensive. At the same time, donor funds are becoming scarce. This confluence of circumstances should drive a change in how the world funds crisis response.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
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