Improving the Entrepreneurial Value Chain in Panama
When Aurora Escalante’s son was diagnosed with meningoencephalitis in 2007 she was forced to leave her job and devote herself full-time to his treatment and recovery. The disease left him with hemiparesis, a weakness on one side of the body, and attention-deficit disorder requiring Aurora to become his full-time carer for several years. Last year, […]
The Business Call to Action Annual Event 2013
The Business Call to Action (BCtA) held this year’s Annual Event on September 19th in New York City, in conjunction with the United Nations Global Compact Leaders Summit, and in advance of the 68th Session of the United Nations General Assembly. The Event convened close to 150 people—including representatives from BCtA member and non-member companies, […]
Supporting Entrepreneurs in Latin America
SABMiller, has announced the launch of ‘4e, Camino al Progreso’, a major five-year initiative that will benefit over 40,000 entrepreneurs throughout Latin America.The program will provide selected shop owners – or ‘tenderos’ – in six countries (Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras and Peru) with professional training, advice and assistance to support the growth of […]
New Approaches to Financial Services for the Poor
The vast majority of poor people live and work in the informal economy. In economic terms, they are producers and consumers at the same time – not by choice, but by necessity. As such, they have to lead very active financial lives to create livelihoods for themselves, build assets, smooth expenditures and manage risks. The […]
Doing Well By Doing Good In Colombia
The EPM Group is a Colombian utility company that provides water, domestic gas and electricity in Colombia and other countries like Guatemala, El Salvador, Panama, Mexico and Chile. Many of our clients belong to the low-income segment of the population. Instead of discouraging us, this reality has become a challenge in which innovation and, above […]
Empowering Women through the Coca-Cola Value Chain
Photo: Regina Maria Silva Gomes, Recycling Cooperative Founder, Brazil The CSR Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School and Business Fights Poverty Release New Study of The Coca-Cola Company’s 5by20 Initiative Women’s economic empowerment is a powerful development driver. For instance, Goldman Sachs estimates that closing the gender gap in 15 high potential emerging markets could […]
Helping Women Overcome Cultural Norms to Become Innovative Entrepreneurs
With a focus in economic development in Africa, I decided to spend my summer interning with a nonprofit organization in Ghana. The organization addressed development issues from the aspect of women empowerment, by creating a global market for the goods produced by women entrepreneurs. They were seamstresses, bead makers, and batik makers; batik is an […]
Ten Education Lessons from Tunisia
g.Maarifa aims to develop human capital in emerging markets where it is usually hardest to do so. We develop customizable and interactive platforms that increase access to educational and training content via mobile phones. Our platforms: deliver content, evaluate through testing, track performance, and manage data on a range of mobile phones. I went to […]
A Unique Opportunity to Reach the Rural BoP
The significance of harvest time for farmers is not going to shock many but less obvious, perhaps, is its importance for those trying to reach the rural BOP. Through its social enterprise, SunnyMoney, SolarAid has now reached over 3 million people with pico (<10 watt) solar lights, selling over 670,000 in East Africa and eradicating […]
Education and the Global Jobs Challenge
In preparation for the recent 2013 Annual Conference and 10th Anniversary celebration, the Global Business School Network produced a research paper, putting the global employment crisis into context, titled “Education, Employment and Entrepreneurship: A Snapshot of the Global Jobs Challenge.” Employment has always been a central issue in development. In recent years we saw a […]
Designing Products and Services for Illiterate Users
Designing services and communications for illiterate people is a common challenge for many businesses operating in rural areas in emerging countries. In Ethiopia, M-Birr is currently in the final phase of piloting the country’s first mobile money service, in collaboration with several micro-finance institutions. The service enables people to conduct basic financial transactions from their […]
Save the Children Looks to Scale Up its Business Partnerships
Save The Children has had a long standing relationship with a number of corporates since its inception. Historically that relationship was predominately a traditional CSR relationship where businesses gave us a grant to either to contribute to our core costs as an organisation, or to implement a project in a specific country around health, education, […]
Transforming India's Urban Waste Management System
When India changes its urban waste management system, it matters. Ashoka Fellow Ravi Agarwal has spent the past two decades moving mountains… of rubbish. He is counting on the youth to give the final push. With global waste measured in millions of tonnes, it is easy to question whether recycling your water bottle or daily […]
Transforming India’s Urban Waste Management System
When India changes its urban waste management system, it matters. Ashoka Fellow Ravi Agarwal has spent the past two decades moving mountains… of rubbish. He is counting on the youth to give the final push. With global waste measured in millions of tonnes, it is easy to question whether recycling your water bottle or daily […]
The Power of Insurance and Haiti’s Future
The Haitian people face repeated natural and man-made disasters every year – just last week a tropical depression hit the island bringing heavy rains. Haiti is not the only Caribbean country exposed to extreme weather events, but we are the most vulnerable and terribly ill-prepared. What would pass as a shower in the Bahamas leads […]
How Farmer Producer Organisations Can Become a Recipe for Success
Besides some notable exceptions, Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) are born prodded by someone else than the producers themselves having realised the need. These top down nature of formation of FPOs is necessary as otherwise these organisation may not come into being. The associated rationality of economy of scale, bargaining power to the producers and higher […]
Enterprise-Driven Innovation in South Africa
Encouraging and fostering entrepreneurship is increasingly viewed as the best way to empower communities and bring about social change. Large corporations are joining in cross-sector collaborations with public bodies to support impact investment projects that accelerate social and environmental improvements. SABMiller has long placed Enterprise Development at the core of its long-term Sustainable Development strategy. […]
How Brazil’s Tenda Atacado Serves the Base of the Pyramid
Executive Director, VoxCred S/A The Tenda Atacado Group has 19 cash & carry stores in São Paulo, Brazil. By the end of 2013, we’re projecting revenues for U$900 million. Every month, we serve 1.3 million clients in our stores, 25 per cent of whom are entrepreneurs representing 50 per cent of our sales. We understood […]
Tea Companies See Returns After Investing in Worker Empowerment
CARE International has written about the business case for empowering women producers before; but the financial justification for inclusive business goes much further than that. This week, CARE International published “A Different Cup of Tea: The Business Case for Empowering Workers in the Sri Lankan Tea Sector” which demonstrates that companies investing in one worker […]
Celebrating Successful Impact Investment in South Africa
Enterprise Development is at the core of SABMiller’s long-term Sustainable Development strategy, helping create jobs and develop entrepreneurial skills in poor communities around the world. Encouraging Enterprise Development is a key SABMiller sustainable development priority – and well integrated into day-to-day business – for it is enterprise-driven innovation that can act as a change-maker for […]