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Special Series (Part 2): BPO for the BoP – The need for (and promise of) Impact Sourcing
In part one of this series, we defined Impact Sourcing and some of the factors accelerating its growth. Now, let’s look a little deeper into the two key trends driving interest in the space and whether these can be married through Impact Sourcing in a manner that drives benefit for both the BPO industry, as well as poor and vulnerable communities in emerging economies.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Education, Impact Assessment, Technology
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Special Series (Part 1): BPO for the BoP – defining Impact Sourcing and its potential to boost employment opportunity
Impact Sourcing, also known as socially responsible outsourcing, is an exciting and emerging space within the business process outsourcing (BPO) sector. Through work performed by the William Davidson Institute and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, this series explores the challenges and potential for impact sourcing to alleviate poverty for millions of people in a sustainable manner through job creation and employment.
- Categories
- Education, Technology
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NexThought Monday: Training Half a Billion People for Good Jobs: How Governments and Vocational Efforts Are Leaving Out the BoP, How to Reform Them for Inclusion
Outdated curriculum and low-paid teachers mean many vocational institutions are simply unable to prepare the students for employability. In the past decade, however, a handful of institutions have been able to provide high quality vocational programs to the bottom of the pyramid.
- Categories
- Education
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Incubating Women’s Businesses in Palestine
In recent years, business development and entrepreneurship programs surfaced across the West Bank and Gaza, and suddenly there was an influx of people trying to start their own business to escape the crushing levels of unemployment.
However, many of the programs put in place lacked follow-through. Entrepreneurs were left to sink or swim on their own. The Women’s Empowerment Programs at Tomorrow’s Youth Organization (TYO) based in Nablus, Palestine took a very different approach.- Categories
- Education
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Testing Assumptions About Women and Technology
Many at LifeSpring, including outreach workers themselves, agree that the hospital could benefit from digitally collecting information about its clients. But nobody was very excited about trying it. The reason: Most existing mobile health (mhealth) solutions are built on SMS (short message services, or simply text message) platforms, and LifeSpring was not confident about its outreach workers’ ability to use text messaging – or even about their ability to navigate and comprehend a text-based data collection system.
- Categories
- Education, Technology
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DBS China launches social enterprise program
Development Bank of Singapore (China) announced the launch of a program to support the development of social enterprises in China on Wednesday.
- Categories
- Education
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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Off the Grid Solutions in Mobile, Solar Schools: Four mini case studies of business, nonprofit, CSR, models
Beep beep! For some students, hopping on the school bus is hopping into the classroom. Four communities are using solar-powered mobile classrooms to overcome inaccessibility to the power grid.
- Categories
- Education, Energy, Impact Assessment
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Guest Post: Setting Up an Export Business (Or Folding a T-Shirt) Without Wrinkles: Brazil’s Maos de Minas helps artisans connect to global market
Maos de Minas (“the hands of Minas”) promotes the artisan sector and preserves the cultural identity of the region Minas Gerais, the fourth largest of the 26 states of Brazil. Some 500,000 of the state’s approximately 20 million inhabitants are artisans, and about 7,000 of them are active members of Maos de Minas. Our project with the Maos de Minas organization is part of the SAP Social Sabbatical program.
- Categories
- Education