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Enabling the Business of Recycling: How Innovative Public-Private Partnerships Help to Build Sustainable Cities
Conversations around environmental sustainability often reduce the issue to a false dichotomy: better policies vs. better business practices. But in fact, leveraging both the government and business sectors can provide unique benefits, say Jorge Noguera at Mastercard and Caleb Shreve at Global Fairness Initiative. They explore the impact of an innovative public-private partnership linking city governments in Peru with a network of waste-pickers to deliver recycling services to households and businesses.
- Categories
- Environment
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What Was the Top NextBillion Post of 2018? Vote for Your Favorite
As 2018 comes to a close and we look back at the year's top posts, it's clear that the social sector is developing an increasingly willingness to challenge long-held assumptions – even when this leads to uncomfortable discussions and difficult course corrections. As NextBillion launches our seventh annual "Top Post of the Year" contest, we encourage you to vote for the post that influenced you most in 2018. You can vote up to once every six hours until 12:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (U.S.) on Jan. 3, and the winners will be announced on Jan. 4. Thanks for reading, and happy holidays!
- Categories
- Agriculture, Energy, Entrepreneurship, Finance, Investing, NextBillion Originals, Technology
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Viewpoint: Almost Everything You Know About Impact Investing Is Wrong
Growing confusion about impact investing's key principles and practices has it headed for a fall.
- Categories
- Investing
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Viewpoint: Impact Investing As A Poverty Solution: The Case For Patient Pessimism
Based on my experience over the last 50 years in poverty reduction in the developing countries, the high expectations of impact investment are at best unreasonable.
- Categories
- Investing
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Viewpoint: ‘Impact Investment’ Funds Advertise Great Returns and Social Impacts. They Aren’t Delivering.
Socially responsible investment is a $12 trillion industry. Does it make the world better? Probably not.
- Categories
- Investing
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Viewpoint: How Socially Responsible Investing Lost Its Soul
ESG funds that promise to align your money with your values are often more marketing than science.
- Categories
- Investing
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The Trouble with ‘Free’: Why Treating the Poor as Customers Works Better than Charity
Lack of access to safe water is a leading cause of illness in developing countries. Yet for years, Guatemalan entrepreneur Philip Wilson's family foundation worked to distribute free water filters across the countryside, only to see recipients repurpose them as flower pots and garbage cans. After going into the field to meet real families that were living with unsafe water, he came up with a better approach: a business model that treats the rural poor as consumers of products rather than objects of charity. He explores the reasons this model is working, and the challenges it has faced.
- Categories
- Entrepreneurship, WASH
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How Western Definitions Perpetuate Ethnocentric Bias – Even Among the Social Impact Crowd
You'd think that ethnocentrism – judging another culture by the standards or values of one's own – would be relatively rare in the global, cosmopolitan social impact sector. In fact, says KadAfrica founder Rebecca Kaduru, it's alive and well, as social entrepreneurs must often adapt to ethnocentric definitions to secure the funding necessary to grow their enterprises. She explores why this dynamic has to change.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Education, Entrepreneurship
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