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Courage, Optimism, Defiance: Impact Investment Exchange Founder Durreen Shahnaz Discusses her Journey of Empowerment
Growing up in Bangladesh, Impact Investment Exchange (IIX) Founder Durreen Shahnaz tended to rebel against tradition, preferring boys’ clothes to saris, and exploring the streets on her bike rather than staying indoors. Yet she never rebelled against her family's core focus on charity. Her long and distinguished career in social business and investing has been defined both by her maverick spirit and by her humanitarian values. NextBillion caught up with Shahnaz to discuss her inspiring story and IIX's ongoing work, as the company celebrates its tenth anniversary.
- Categories
- Investing
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Press release: BBOXX Unveils Its Vision for the “Community of the Future” for the Developing World
Tomorrow’s Connected Community is being rolled out in the rural village of Sikpé Afidégnon in Togo, following its inauguration by the H.E. President Faure Gnassingbé, President of the Republic of Togo. The entire village comprised of 300 houses and 4,000 people in the south of the country is to be powered by solar electricity including, streetlights, households, schools and small shops.
- Categories
- Energy
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Adapt or Die: Accelerating Growth Amid a Rapidly Changing Energy Landscape
The clean cooking sector has made incredible strides in the past decade, with bilateral organizations and the development community working together to create standardized environmental impact goals. Now the industry is facing a new set of scaling challenges, say Jessica Alderman and Ron Bills of Envirofit International. The two share advice for enterprises seeking to level up, including how to avoid mission creep.
- Categories
- Energy, Social Enterprise
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Why Health Benefits Could Drive Customer Value for Solar Lighting and Clean Cookstoves
Solar lighting and improved cookstoves have multiple benefits. But according to a new FINCA International survey of end-users in Uganda, the benefits customers value most involve the products' perceived contributions to a cleaner, healthier household. Scott Graham and Anahit Tevosyan at FINCA explore how highlighting these benefits can help product manufacturers and distributors – and the donors and investors who support them – to strengthen the uptake and usage of off-grid products.
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- Energy, Environment
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Stupid Stoves: Why Rebranding Won’t Solve the Clean Cooking Alliance’s Problems
In her recent interview with NextBillion, Clean Cooking Alliance CEO Dymphna van der Lans described the organization's ambitious new vision. But her words didn't sit well with Warm Heart Worldwide founder Michael Shafer, who raises a pointed question: After nearly 10 years of massive investment, hype and exposure, he asks, "Where is the Clean Cooking Alliance now? Getting rebranded and starting over!" Shafer argues that the Alliance's current efforts fail to address the major issues that have hampered it from the start – and proposes a different way forward – in this provocative post.
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- Energy, Environment, Social Enterprise, Technology
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When Will Clean Cooking Hit the Gas? An Interview with New Alliance CEO Dymphna van der Lans
In March 2018, Dymphna van der Lans was appointed CEO of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, an industry group representing businesses, investors and NGOs. The organization has since rebranded as the Clean Cooking Alliance and has set a new goal: to achieve universal access to clean cooking by 2030. In this video interview with NextBillion editors, we ask van der Lans about how the alliance is helping to reach those goals – as well as the criticism it has faced about the sector's social impact.
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- Energy, Environment
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How to Build an Impact Industry: Four Strategies from the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves
Almost 3 billion people worldwide cook with materials that are inefficient, unsustainable and polluting. Since 2010, the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves has sought to make clean stoves and fuels commonplace across the developing world, by building an industry that could deliver this vision. Colm Fay and Ted London at the William Davidson Institute share insights from the Alliance's efforts to catalyze this new industry, breaking down four key stages of acceleration and their lessons for other impact-based accelerators.
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- Energy, Social Enterprise
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The Switchback Solution: Is ‘Pay and Cook’ a Game Changer in the Movement to Popularize Cleaner Cooking Fuels?
For years, countless entrepreneurs have been trying to enable low-income people in emerging markets to move from traditional fuels to clean cooking fuels. But they've struggled with the same problem: customers’ tendency to switch back to traditional fuels when it comes time to buy refills for their clean cooking fuel tanks. Emmy Wasirwa at WANA Energy Solutions discusses his company's innovative solution to this challenge.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment, Social Enterprise
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