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NextBillion’s Most Popular and Most Shared Posts in the 4th Quarter of 2015
Our most-viewed and most-shared blog posts from the months of October, November and December explored the history and future of impact assessment, a randomized control trial around financial inclusion in Afghanistan and technology solutions for mitigating the youth jobs shortage.
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- Education, Health Care, Impact Assessment, Investing
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Weekly Roundup: Will Narayana Health’s IPO Hearten Investors and Patients Alike?
The collective ears of the healthcare world pricked up this week on the news that Narayana Hrudayalaya is going public. Narayana has combined economies of scale and specialization to turn a profit while charging an average of only $2,000 for open-heart surgery. So it might be fair to ponder: Does an IPO mean the model so many have held up so high will stop working?
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- Health Care, Impact Assessment
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Measuring Environmental Performance in Microfinance
What responsibility does the microfinance industry have in reaching each of the Sustainable Development Goals? Of the 1,100 microfinance institutions reporting social performance information to MIX in 2014, 40 percent reported that they raised clients’ awareness of environment impacts. Additionally, 34 percent claimed to have some form of environmental risk management in place and 19 percent said they offer environmentally-friendly credit products. But the microfinance sector still lacks a set of established metrics to track their green performance management.
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- Environment, Impact Assessment
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Does Your Organization Actually Empower Women?
Although many organizations working in international development make grandiose claims of their programs’ ability to empower women, with few tools available to actually measure empowerment, it is hard to tell if these claims are based on fact. The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index is one way to ensure that they are.
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- Agriculture, Impact Assessment
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Smallholder Farmers and Big Business: 5 Insights from the Field
Modern agricultural practices and new technologies have transformed the productivity and lives of large farmers, but often fail to reach small and very small farmers for a variety of reasons. However, some pioneer companies and organizations across the world have sustainably increased the income and livelihoods of millions of smallholder farmers, by sourcing produce from them or selling products to them. What do these pioneers tell us?
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- Agriculture, Impact Assessment
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Mobile-izing Savings with Defaults in Afghanistan
The number of people with phones is far higher than the number of people who have easy access to traditional bank branches, especially among the rural poor. Until now, however, no one has tested whether mobile banking can facilitate default savings programs. This is exactly what a team led by Innovations for Poverty Action set out to do in Afghanistan.
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- Impact Assessment, Technology
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NexThought Monday: A New Checklist for Developing Markets for Underserved Communities
New research highlights the significance of incorporating a more “bottom-up” and participatory approach to market development – a position that contrasts with top-down methods that have dominated academic, policy and practitioner discourse.
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- Education, Energy, Impact Assessment
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NexThought Monday: And the big winners in the move to SDGs are … why not everyone?
As we move from the Millennium Development Goals to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the transition process is filled with a mix of excitement, expectation and guarded optimism. Perhaps some of the early hesitation voiced by various stakeholders, in both the public and private sector, trying integrate the SGDs will come to pass. However, the flourishing ecosystem of large companies diligently working in corporate social responsibility, shared value and in the inclusive business arena is encouraging.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
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