Using Mobile Money for School Fee Payments
Sometimes it seems like everyone is talking about mobile money. Last week Jim Kim said that he sees mobile money as a path to give financial …. Bill and Melinda Gates boldly bet that mobile money will help the poor transform their lives in the next 1…. We responded with a piece on how NGOs […]
Empowering Female Entrepreneurs in Rural Communities
I met Tania five weeks ago during a field visit to Barisal, a city in Southern Bangladesh. I had gone to collect stories from female entrepreneurs in a small sub-district and learn about their lives before and since they began generating an income. Tania clearly stood out as the youngest of all the women I […]
#girlhero: The Story of a Girl Fighting for Education
International Women’s Day – held on 8 March – offers a great opportunity to reflect on equal pay in the workforce, equal opportunity in the community, and equal access in society. But for me, above all, it is a time to reflect on the gift of education and the profound heroism of girls fighting for […]
Innovative Young Africans Fixing An Education System
Illiteracy rates in West Africa were the highest in the world in 2009, but as recently as 2013 the World Bank reported that things were turning around. Across the region, many more children, especially girls, were enrolling in primary school. Despite these significant gains in enrollment rates, the underlying problem was glaringly clear: enrolling in […]
Solar Seaweed Drying Transforming Lives in Zanzibar
Dar es Salaam, Dec 10th, 2015: Seaweed farming in Zanzibar is undergoing a dramatic transformation thanks to an innovative new way to dry the product during the rainy season. Despite Zanzibar producing some of the best seaweed in the world, the industry is extremely inefficient. Production is among the lowest and cost per kilo is […]
How Nestlé is Creating Shared Value in Mexico
A few months ago, I was invited by the Nestlé Creating Shared Value team in Mexico to participate in a visit to their dairy producers in Aguascalientes, Mexico. We left bright and early for this day trip, which turned out to be an eye-opening experience. We saw first-hand the difficulties that small and growing dairy […]
Innovations Shaping the Future of Fertilizer Use
When a farmer has access to the right kind of fertilizer, the rewards can be great. She will see a dramatic improvement in the yield she can get from her land. In the world’s poorest countries, this will mean the difference between her and her family going to bed hungry or with a full stomach. […]
Counterintuitive Ideas and Sustainable Enterprise
Most business models are formulated by the top of the pyramid. Many business leaders and academics write on the musts haves of a successful base of the pyramid (BOP) business model. Still quite a few of those business endeavors fail. While reasons for failure vary, experience shows that the ability to observe, listen and understand […]
Local Innovation to Help Save Lives Globally
Innovative technologies or interventions that transform healthcare and save children’s lives in poorer countries often remain local. Without funding or a platform to expand, they can make a substantial difference in their immediate vicinity, but rarely have the chance to spread their wings. This matters because preventable diseases such as malaria and diarrhoea are claiming […]
Major Problems, Micro Solutions
Access to healthcare in Indonesia is an on-going crisis – with 152,000 children under five years old dying annually, and an average life expectancy approximately 10 years lower than the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development average. With a gross national income of $3563 per capita, and around 28 million people living below the poverty […]
Women in Rajasthan Improving Nutrition for Thousands
Helen Davison, Senior Associate External Affairs, GAIN In a remote village in rural Rajasthan 10 local women own and operate a factory delivering 30 metric tons of a flour enriched with vitamins and minerals daily to 6,000 children under the age three and nearly 3,000 pregnant or lactating women. Rajasthan is India’s largest state and […]
Radical Collaboration – 10 years later
How a Multi-stakeholder Meeting Lead to the Creation and Success of the Diamond Development Initiative As we look forward to a dynamic and successful 2015, we are also looking back – ten years back, to the original conception of the Diamond Development Initiative . Rich Man, Poor Man The idea of DDI took shape in […]
Tracking Reach at the Base of the Pyramid
By Lara Sinha, Hub Manager, The Practitioner Hub for Inclusive Business Changing lives for people at the Base of the Pyramid (BoP): easy to say, tough to deliver, and very tough to define and measure. Although nearly all inclusive businesses and social investors aim to benefit clients at the BoP, there is huge diversity in […]
Youth Innovations for Employment in Africa
“As an entrepreneur, there is the tendency to think that money is what gets things done,” said Olumide Adeleye, the founder of the Twim Academy in Ibadan, Nigeria, a school of media and creative arts. He has a different take on what’s required when starting a business—he launched his as a first-year college student, with […]
Improving Health and Tackling Climate Change
Today, climate and sustainable development expert ClimateCare, celebrated its 18th Birthday by launching a fund that aims to create a new market for ethanol cookers, improving the health of the local community and protecting the environment by cutting CO2 emissions. The work is part of a broader programme of activity that ClimateCare has been selected […]
Young People Addressing Youth Employment
Ashoka Changemaker African business and political leaders, including Zambia Finance Minister Alexander Chikwanda, have described Africa’s youth employment challenge as a “ticking time bomb.” The deepening gap between young people’s skills and the needs of employers has been linked to education systems that simply are not up to snuff, but also to a general lack […]
Enabling Local Entrepreneurs to Offer Energy Access
While the work of companies led by experts may be crucial to prove new solutions, we believe that in order to provide access to basic services at scale, the world needs viable business models that encourage local and national entrepreneurs to meet the needs of their neighbors. Lumeter Networks’ mission is to overcome the barriers […]
Passion Fruit and a New Approach to Agriculture
Partnering to Scale Impact of Sustainable Entrepreneurs
A woman using a solar energy charger, supplied by Kumudzi Kuwale, 2014 SEED Africa Award Winner By Helen Marquard, Executive Director SEED & Anais Mangin, Project Manager SEED Are locally-driven social and environmental enterprises too small to have an impact? We at SEED don’t think so, and Organic Africa demonstrates that. In 2007, when everyone […]
No Strings, Big Risks and Even Bigger Rewards
We are taught at school if at first you don’t succeed, then try, try and try again, yet how many charities put this mantra into practice? Too many charities avoid risk and rarely admit failure, especially to their donors, which prevents them from learning from mistakes or revising their strategies. Yet charities have such huge […]