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Viewpoint: The Evolving Microfinance Revolution Has Yet to Run Its Full Course
Forty years ago, before microfinance was called microcredit, before it even had a name, I made $50 loans to 800 Guatemalan farmers in the form of six bags of 12-24-12 fertilizer, which dramatically increased their yields on the plots of maize and beans they cultivated.
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- Uncategorized
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Press Release: MasterCard Fndn. Announces $150,000 Award for the Most Client-Centric Organization Advancing Financial Inclusion
The MasterCard Foundation today announced the opening of its Clients at the Centre Prize competition, a US$150,000 initiative to find and recognize the most customer-focused organization working to enable poor people in developing countries to access formal financial products and services.
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- Uncategorized
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Germany pushes climate insurance as alternative to traditional development aid
Germany's Environment Minister wants the G7 to look at insurance policies as an alternative to traditional development aid.
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OPINION: Why I’m Done With the Foundation World
I’m done. I’ve spent 10 years working in the charity sector and my conclusion is that the organisations that finance it are so bad at their jobs, that they make the rest of us bad at ours.
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- Impact Assessment
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How the World Bank Should Help the Planet’s Poorest: Pay Them
Last weekend the World Bank issued a report on the dramatic rise in global access to financial services. From 2011 to 2014 alone, 700 million people worldwide opened a bank account or joined a mobile money service.
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Why Water Is Key to Beating Poverty
Extreme poverty is one of humanity's grave injustices. Across the world, more than 1 billion people live on less than $1.50 a day for all their needs -- food, housing, medicine, water, sanitation, everything. What's more astonishing is that 748 million people around the world do not have access to clean water. And 2.5 billion people do not have access to basic sanitation -- that's one out of every three individuals on the planet. Think about that for a second.
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- Agriculture, Health Care
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‘By making it available to people, you are almost by definition doing good’: Grameen Foundation CEO Alex Counts, on microfinance’s past and future
Microfinance has careened from hero to villain status over the years, before settling into its current persona as a useful but not transformative anti-poverty tool. Alex Counts has had a front-row seat in the sector’s turbulent development, as founder and long-time president/CEO of Grameen Foundation. He shares his frank perspectives on microfinance’s past and future in this video Q&A.
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- Impact Assessment
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Ikea Launches Range Made by Worker Co-operatives
IKEA has launched a new range of products created by women’s co-operatives in rural India.
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- Uncategorized
- Region
- South Asia