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Rural Vietnamese hope to benefit from community latrines. <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/wanhoff/2684767918/sizes/z/in/photostream/"> Flickr </a>

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Value Chains

Unilever will train rural Vietnamese to build demand for toilets

Unilever is rejecting the latrine handout model in favor of a sanitation market sourced and supported wholly by local entrepreneurs.

Kenyan smallholder farmers. <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/38476503@N08/5367334314/">Photo: CIAT International Center for Tropical Agriculture (flickr)</a>

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Value Chains

Four ways to make contract farming work for the very poor

Will contract farming, done right, serve as the missing link between small farmers and markets?

Left: Patricia Wolff, founder and executive director of Meds and Food for Kids. (Photo: MFK.) Right: Paul Farmer, founder and executive director of Partners in Health. (Photo: <a href="http://flic.kr/p/csKJu9">Nyaya Health, Flickr</a>.)

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Social Enterprise

Devil take the hindmost? Haiti peanut battle puts NGOs head to head

When antipoverty nonprofits compete, it's not always clear who will lose more: the one whose business is threatened, or the people both nonprofits set out to serve.

B Lab, 5 minutes to curtain. <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/structures-nyc-photos/5280663070/">flickr, Structures:NYC</a>

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Social Enterprise

B Lab looks to make social enterprises great and powerful

In the world of social businesses and impact investing, B Lab is the man behind the curtain.

Filipino farmers plant rice. Photo: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/20119750@N00/2680751025/">Schubert Ciencia (Flickr)</a>

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Social Enterprise

On World Food Day, praise for a humble business structure: The co-op

For agriculture cooperatives, this year’s World Food Day has been a day in the sun.

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Mobile, solar schools literally bring power to the powerless

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.

Kenyan flower farmers are making more money thanks to a new middleman. <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/worldbank/2629345354/">Photo: World Bank (flickr)</a>

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Value Chains

Your Walmart bouquet may have been grown by these Kenyan farmers

Flower growers in Kenya have plenty to sell, but no buyers. Meanwhile big-box retailers in the U.S. and UK want more flowers. New research reveals that a middleman connecting them could be profitable for both.

Satellites orbiting the Earth may turn out to be much cheaper than either insurance adjusters or local weather stations. Photo: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/nasaearthobservatory/7420745884/in/photostream/">NASA Earth Observatory</a>

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Financial Inclusion

Satellite maps of African weather promise a microinsurance breakthrough

High above Africa, a fleet of satellites are now staring like hawks at the continent's weather patterns. Their goal: cheap farm insurance.

Young Greeks face tear gas at a protest in Athens, December 2008. Photo: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/42632457@N00/3098761766/">How Will I Ever (Flickr)</a>

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UN group: Vast numbers of unemployed youth threaten global stability

The swelling ranks of unemployed youth threaten to create a lost generation that endangers the global economic system, a new report warns.

Mobile money transactions are now much easier in Zimbabwe - perhaps easier than cash - thanks to EcoCash. Photo: Erin Wildermuth for MercyCorps

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How a mobile airtime vendor became Zimbabwe's fastest-growing bank

Money is whizzing through the airwaves and cell towers of Zimbabwe, as a mobile cash transfer system is on track to become the country’s biggest bank.

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Citi and USAID offer 10 tips for a mobile money boom

Before mobile money can reach its long-awaited crescendo, everyone in the symphony has to be playing from the same sheet of music.

A young developer participating in a Google training event in Gaza. Photo: Mohammed El Baba for Mercy Corps

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How the Arab world can build a tech sector of its own

Entrepreneurs and young workers in the Middle East and North Africa have a golden opportunity as local demand rises for the Internet and U.S.-based web services.

As the world's consumers get richer, older, more urban and more demanding, small companies will see more and more rewards for exporting their goods. Photo: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/usdagov/5978367807/in/photostream/">USDA (Flickr)</a>

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How 'itty-bitty multinantionals' can serve the world's rising middle class

The global consumer market is changing, and big companies are taking notice.

A Riders healthcare worker. Photo: <a href="http://www.riders.org">Riders for Health</a>

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The missing link in African health systems? The auto mechanic

Twenty-four years ago, Barry and Andrea Coleman saw women in labor being carted to hospital in wheelbarrows. Today their organisation, Riders for Health, mobilizes 3000 health workers with reliable transportation and ensures 12 million Africans have access to health care.