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Study Calls on Impact Investors to Close Educational Attainment Gaps
According to a recent Global Impact Investing Network survey, impact investments in the education sector accounted for only 2 percent of global impact investing assets under management. The report further suggests that foundations can play a catalytic role in ensuring the flow of capital to educational organizations and for interventions designed to boost equitable access to higher education for underserved populations through the provision of "blended capital" (a combination of grants, "patient" or more affordable equity, and/or debt capital).
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New Partnership Aims To Lift Women Microentrepreneurs In Myanmar Out Of Poverty
OPIC and DAWN announced in early May that the former had agreed to provide a $5 million loan to support DAWN’s activities in the country. An outgrowth of Save the Children’s Myanmar operation, DAWN has been operating independently of the NGO for the past two years, with strong support from Accion and other stakeholders. When DAWN launched in 2015, it had 27,000 clients carried over from Save the Children. Two years later, it serves 80,000 women and has its eye on rapid expansion.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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Building an App in Africa: Lessons From an Aspiring Tech Disruptor
The motorcycle taxi, or boda boda, industry is the second-highest employer in Uganda, but is marked by rising crime and road accidents. SafeBoda, founded in 2015, wants to change this through an app that connects its community of trained, professional drivers with passengers who are looking for a safer ride. The company's co-founder discusses what they've learned so far about building an app in Africa.
- Categories
- Technology, Telecommunications, Transportation
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Meet Vikash Das, who left his high-paying job at IBM to help tribals become social entrepreneurs in India
Even as he was making big bucks at IBM, his heart yearned to do something for the tribal community in India. At a time when people at his age are focussed on career making and launching their startups, Vikash wanted to become a social entrepreneur and enable the tribal communities in eastern India as well.
- Region
- South Asia
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Smallholder farmers in Kenya in the race against climate change
For years, the farmers’ efforts in small-scale agriculture produced little meaningful return. But this did not stop the community from having a collective vision for their prosperity: They wanted to improve their living standards, educate their children, engage in farming as a business and add value to cash crops to increase their income. What they lacked was the knowledge to make this happen.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Environment
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Cambodian Government Launches $60 Million Project to Help Small Farmers
“The supply and demand in the country is not balanced—like with vegetables, so there are imports to fill the demand,” Commerce Minister Pan Sorasak said at the event yesterday at the Commerce Ministry in Phnom Penh. “We need to understand and organize a system to boost the harvests of these crops.”
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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Foreign aid is being cut, but business will keep fighting poverty
In the past 10 years, private sector investment to developing countries has been growing faster than foreign aid. Indeed, developing countries now receive 27% more foreign business investment than development aid – a trend likely to grow over time. Even the lowest-income countries, as classified by the World Bank, have seen business capital flow into their economies at dizzying rates, with investment increasing nearly nine-fold since 2000.
- Categories
- Investing
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Rural Knowledge Meets Tech Innovation: What Ultra-Poor Entrepreneurs Can Teach the World
What happens when Barefoot College, a global NGO which trains entrepreneurs in poverty-stricken rural areas, melds its expertise and values with tech innovators like Apple? It sparks the emergence of a new kind of entrepreneur who has much to teach the world, says Scot Bolsinger – along with new opportunities for rural communities to share and connect in ways never before possible.
- Categories
- Education, Technology
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