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Accelerating the SDGs: How Digital Finance Can Ignite Faster Progress Toward the Global Goals
With 2030 gradually drawing nearer, how can the world accelerate progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals? Global leaders discussed that question at the United Nations General Assembly last week, and according to Ruth Goodwin-Groen at the U.N.-based Better Than Cash Alliance, digital financial inclusion is emerging as a key answer. She discusses how digital financial services can be an important part of the solution for critical issues like hunger, health and climate change – and profiles a few of the growing number of governments and companies that are leading by example.
- Categories
- Finance
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Girls Empowerment Programs Are Working: Now What?
In spite of the work of countless organizations, progress towards meeting the Sustainable Development Goals for women and girls “remains unacceptably slow,” according to the U.N. Yet a growing body of evidence clearly shows the impact of girls empowerment programs – particularly those that bundle life skills and livelihood training with financial support. The question now is: How can these successful approaches be improved and scaled, while serving the unique needs of different cultures? Sarah Allen at BRAC USA explores some answers.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
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Sri Lanka, UNDP launch social impact funds to support small businesses
Sri Lankan small firms and micro enterprises whose goals include ending poverty and environmental protection will be able to get money and management support from two social impact funds with total capital of US$25 million launched Wednesday.
- Categories
- Investing
- Region
- South Asia
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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.
- Categories
- Energy, Social Enterprise
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Microsoft launches $40 million AI for Humanitarian Action initiative
One initiative to receive a grant from Conservation Metrics is using AI to recognize the unique sounds of elephants’ calls to track them over time. More than 100 AI for Earth grants have been awarded thus far.
- Categories
- Technology
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Global goal to end poverty by 2030 unlikely to be met, World Bank says
Without significant shifts in policy, about 480 million people - some 6 percent of the world - will remain in extreme poverty in 2030, the majority in poor African countries which are lagging behind, it said in a forecast document.
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Bill and Melinda Gates Sound The Alarm on Poverty
“We usually express our optimism by highlighting some of the recent mind-blowing improvements in the human condition—like the fact that advances in medicine have saved 50 million lives just since we started our foundation in 2000. We believe it’s worth repeating that until we’re blue in the face,” they begin.
- Tags
- global development, SDGs
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Press release: WHO launches first investment case to save up to 30 million lives
“As it embarks on its eighth decade, the World Health Organization is as essential and central as ever,” said Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda. “It has a unique role in developing new norms and standards, and sharing life-saving tools and technologies.”
- Categories
- Health Care, Investing
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