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South Africa’s Energy Schizophrenia: Why Hasn’t the Country Achieved Affordable Power for the Poor?
There are vast extremes between the energy rich and poor in South Africa, despite the country's great potential to make energy universally available. A new report by Impact Amplifier examines the reasons behind the discrepancies and describes five energy access business models for low-income communities: biogas, solar home systems, mini/micro grids, solar kiosks and solar appliances.
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- Energy, Environment
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MBA Programs Help Students Change the World
Sarah Millar spent her first years out of college doing stock market research for a New York City financial firm. In her spare time, she taught English as a second language and fostered homeless dogs. "I was getting a lot more fulfillment from those things," she says, "than from work."
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- Education
- Region
- North America
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The Distributed Economy: Four Ways Blockchain Can Transform MSMEs in Emerging Markets
Micro, small and medium enterprises are the largest employers in many developing countries, but their growth is limited by a lack of access to savings, insurance, credit equity and payments services. Traditional companies aren't stepping up to solve the problem, but blockchain can help. Here are four ways this new type of data application can further MSME growth.
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- Technology
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Social Business Roundup: A Defiant Asset Manager, Salty Doorknobs and Who Has it Worse?
This week in social business, the world's third-largest asset manager is pressuring companies to add more women to their boards; a Nobel Prize winner's ponderings on inequality within nations might make you rethink life in America; and salt earns a chance to be a hero – for a change.
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- Energy, Environment, Health Care, Investing
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‘I Know Where I’m Going’: Lessons from the ‘Vital Voices’ Accelerator for Female Entrepreneurs
In the final article in a six-part series on entrepreneurship's role in women’s economic empowerment, Nathan Rauh-Bieri highlights the experiences of five entrepreneurs in the year-long Vital Voices GROW Fellowship. The women reflect on what they learned from the training, and evaluate its usefulness to their businesses and their leadership development. Their experiences provide six lessons about how to optimize the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education.
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- Uncategorized
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A Tale of Two Islands: Solar Helps Indian Resort Shine
The author, Simmi Sareen, visited an island chain in the Indian Ocean. One island, Kadmat, has a solar plant that provides all the comforts travelers have come to expect. Another, Thinnakara, runs on undependable diesel power. Solar is the key that has enabled Kadmat's tourism-based economy to hum, Sareen says, and Thinnakara's could, too, if it would transition from diesel.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment
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Social Business Roundup: Biblical Impact Investing, Salt from Solar in Kenya and Invoices of Inclusion
In this week's social business roundup: “Biblically responsible investing” is offering another path to the predominately secular space of SRI, one of Kenya's largest solar projects could be a model for rural power and how one company's approach to the tedious process of invoicing customers could lead to more financial inclusion in the Philippines.
- Categories
- Energy, Health Care, Investing
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Finding New Pathways to a More Inclusive and Humane Economy
Social entrepreneurs, in their pursuit of the common good, have taught us that solutions won't come from a single sector or organization. And that's been reinforced by recent collaborations that reflect a complete new way of envisioning social change and clear the path for a more inclusive and humane economy, where social innovation is also a source of economic performance and gradually infiltrates the DNA of every company.
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- Uncategorized