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Red Bull Announces Final Participants for First-Ever U.S. Social Entrepreneur Program
Sexual violence, food deserts, education equality, public transportation, and gender equality are just some of the issues being addressed by the social innovators selected for the Red Bull Amaphiko Academy, a global program for social entrepreneurs - taking place in Baltimore, MD on August 11-20.
- Categories
- Entrepreneurship
- Region
- North America
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From Extremely Poor to Entrepreneur: A Starter Asset Combined with Mentorship Forges Pathway Out of Poverty
Today Arfa Bibi runs a successful vegetable farming business in India. Only a few years ago, however, Bibi and her husband struggled to feed their family and she even resorted to begging. Her transformation into entrepreneur came thanks to Kolkata-based nonprofit Bandhan-Konnagar's graduation model program Targeting the Hardcore-Poor, whose success was cited in a six-country MIT study of 21,000 of the world's poorest people.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Entrepreneurship, Financial Inclusion
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Addressing Eye Care in Emerging Markets with Blended Finance
WHO estimates that 39 million people suffer from blindness, more than half of them due to cataracts, and more than 90 percent of blind people live in the developing world. Cataracts are often curable but the traditional surgery is expensive. Convergence is supporting GlobalVision's plan to build on the affordable eye model that Aravind pioneered in India and establish a network of 60 eye care hospitals in emerging markets over the next 10 years, borrowing techniques from the microfinance sector.
- Categories
- Entrepreneurship, Health Care, Investing, Technology
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Full Financial Inclusion in India? How the ‘JAM Trinity’ Can Help Businesses Make it a Reality
Changes in India’s financial inclusion ecosystem in the past 10 years have increased access, writes Prabhat Labh, CEO of Grameen Foundation India, but that's only part of the equation. More must be done to ensure poor families can actively use these services. Fortunately, the JAM trinity – Jan Dhan accounts, the Aadhaar ID system and mobile technology – has enabled completely new business models that scale processes for customer acquisition.
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- Entrepreneurship, Financial Inclusion
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Village women transform into clean energy entrepreneurs in Nepal initiative
Since it began operations in 2012, Empower Generation has created over 20 women-led businesses, employing 300 female distribution agents who go from village-to-village, selling, maintaining and collecting repayments for products.
- Categories
- Energy, Entrepreneurship, Environment
- Region
- South Asia
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African startups slowly realize value of informal economies
The company’s chief executive officer (CEO) Vahid Monadjem says as one of the largest and least well-served parts of African economies there are numerous opportunities for companies offering solutions to informal markets. “The two areas that I see the most immediate opportunities are in financial services and logistics. Within financial services, payments is still a massive opportunity, and increasingly there are new opportunities becoming possible as payments rails go deeper such as micro-insurance, savings, on-demand products…” he said.
- Categories
- Entrepreneurship
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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The Future of the Graduation Approach: Taking a Proven Anti-Poverty Measure to Scale
How can the "graduation" approach to fighting extreme poverty achieve a scale commensurate with extreme poverty itself? Increasingly, the answer is to embed graduation within government-run social protection programs that already operate at massive scale. MetLife Foundation's Krishna Thacker explores why the approach works, and how innovative organizations are taking it to the next level.
- Categories
- Education, Entrepreneurship, Financial Inclusion
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Subscribe to NextBillion Notes in July, Get Free Chapter of Jonathan Lewis’ New Book, ‘The Unfinished Social Entrepreneur’
If you're into social business, you're probably familiar with Jonathan Lewis. He has founded multiple social enterprises – and now he's sharing his insights in a new book, "The Unfinished Social Entrepreneur." It's a great read, and all the book's profits will be donated to social justice causes. To celebrate our Entrepreneurship Month, we're giving away a free chapter to all subscribers of NextBillion Notes, our e-newsletter. Sign up in July to take advantage of this free offer.
- Categories
- Entrepreneurship, NextBillion Originals
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