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Root Capital Makes Money By Investing Where Wall Street Won’t: Poor, Rural Farmers
Small money, big change. That, in essence, is what William Foote was banking on when he ditched Harvard Business School to start what is now Root Capital , a "nonprofit social investment fund" that lends to small and medium rural businesses in developing countries. Root Capital’s business model is to go where other banks will not --the agricultural sector of poor countries --and loan rural businesses as much as $500,000 to expand or improve t...
- Region
- Latin America
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Making the Global Ad Market Work for the BoP, One Bike At a Time
Global advertising spending is forecast to surpass $500 billion in 2011. When Coca Cola paints a roadside kiosk in Kikuyu, they’re paying someone. Why doesn’t that someone include you? That’s the question social entrepreneur Magali Bongrand asked in founding INSTINCT - a social enterprise leveraging corporate ad money to finance social ventures.
- Categories
- Environment
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Examining Poverty Footprints and Partnerships
In March, Oxfam America in partnership with the Coca-Cola Company and SABMiller released a report on their shared poverty footprint and value chain analysis work. This new report highlights the impacts Coca-Cola and SABMiller are making on poverty within El Salvador and Zambia, and also reveals opportunities for improvement.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
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Embrace Warms Up Premature Babies At the Bottom of the Pyramid
A mother living in a rural village outside of Bangalore, India gives birth to a baby two months prematurely. Her family cannot afford to go to the city hospital in Bangalore, so her husband, who raises silkworms that he warms under lamps, decides to care for the baby in the same way. A few day later, their baby dies. Stopping this tragedy - there are 20 million low birth weight and premature babies born each year - is the primary mission of Embrac...
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When the Shoe Doesn’t Fit: An Investor’s Take on One-for-One Models
There is one model that has grabbed significantly more mainstream attention than the rest: the "one-for-one." TOMS Shoes, the best-known example, gives shoes to the shoeless when you buy a pair for yourself. But as an investor have a new set of concerns about whether and how one-for-one models can become sustainable, scalable organizations.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Social Enterprise
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Indian Mobile Initiative Sweeps MIT?s Service Challenge
Thirteen other teams snagged implementation awards to partner with communities on innovative projects overcoming gaps in water/sanitation, agriculture and medical accessibility as part of this year?s MIT IDEAS Competition and the newly launched Global Challenge. This year 45 teams in all competed for $150,000 in awards to fight global challenges.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology
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Untying the Knot
Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty. By Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo. PublicAffairs; 336 pages; $26.99. To be published in Britain in June by PublicAffairs; £15.99. Buy from Amazon.com , ...
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Narratives Are Not Enough
Many of you have been tracking the aftermath of the 60 Minutes report about Greg Mortenson?s non-profit, Central Asian Institute (CAI), the allegations of mismanagement and misrepresentations in his book, Three Cups of Tea. It shows how critical it is to collect actual data on how organizations impact poverty. How can we increase transparency?
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
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