-
Guest Post: How USAID is Putting Local Wealth to Work
In our 12-year history issuing credit guarantees, the Development Credit Authority (DCA) has worked directly with more than 200 local private financial institutions, reaching more than 100,000 credit-worthy, but underserved borrowers. In 2011 we established 37 guarantees that will mobilize an additional $200 million in commercial capital in 21 countries.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Tags
- microfinance, scale
-
Tara Thiagarajan Wants the Poor to Get More Out of Their Micro Borrowings
Tara Thiagarajan believes that microfinance institutions (MFIs) have been pursuing the wrong goal. Instead of scale, they should be looking to make loans more effective. That means borrowers should get more out of their borrowings. Along with credit, they should also get the tools and the benefits of a large network to make the most of the credit.
- Categories
- Education
- Region
- South Asia
-
UN: Soaring Demands Will Add More Stress to World Water Supplies
Despite recent good news that millions more people now have access to potable water, a new report finds sharply rising demands for water threaten a myriad of development goals.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Tags
- scale
-
Weekly Roundup: 2-12-12 – ROI (Return on Impact)
Credit Suisse Research Institute, in collaboration with the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, recently released “Investing for Impact: How social entrepreneurship is redefining the meaning of return." It’s a detailed yet eminently readable report on the state of play.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Tags
- impact investing, scale
-
The Real Architects of Social Change: Live from Davos
Everybody seemed to agree that the world is now facing some serious problems: Climate change, persistent poverty and inequality, the failure of financial systems, environmental degradation, the impeding exhaustion of cheap minerals and oil and so on. And everybody seemed determine to provide solutions to these problems.Prominent among these proposed solutions: Social entrepreneurship.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Tags
- Base of the Pyramid, scale
-
Growing Up Fast, What the Dalberg Survey Tells Us About Successful Social Entrepreneurs
Want to find out what made the good enterprises great - and not just in anecdotal form? Dalberg Global Development Advisors clearly thought so. Working with Harvard, the consulting firm polled more than 60 social entreprenurs to find out how they lept the hurdles that every venture faces. Check out the survey and a replay of the live webinar.
- Categories
- Education, Social Enterprise
- Tags
- impact investing, research, scale
-
NextThought Monday: Market, Government and Finding Synergies Between the Two
It’s easy to let advocacy - the process of scaling a solution through policy change - slip into the distance and focus on the market-based approach to scale. Social change has swung toward the market-based approach to scale and largely lost sight of the other method, which involves those sometimes taboo words: institutions, lobbying, and policy.
- Categories
- Environment
- Tags
- scale
-
How would Muhammad Yunus Redesign Microcredit? How Can We Better Design Models for Social Change?
Given the past year of controversies in microcredit and an opportunity to meet Dr. Muhammad Yunus at Change Model, a workshop focused on innovating development approaches, we asked Dr. Yunus how the sector could have been designed differently. His resolute response: "I would not let the profit-makers be part of the movement."
- Categories
- Technology
- Tags
- scale