Health

Tienda owners in rural Guatemala stand proudly in front of their store, newly stocked with much-needed health products. Photo: Lindsay Murphy/Mercy Corps.

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Guatemala’s Tiendas de la Salud: Where profit and social impact meet

Companies are working to empower in the tech sector. Photo: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/unwomenarabstates/7245942414/sizes/m/in/photostream/”> UN Women Arab States (Flickr)</a>

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Youth Skills

Geekery for all: Google chips $6m to youth tech empowerment

With the iLab educating in Liberia and the Switchboard mobilizing health across Africa, Google is working on global technology empowerment.

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.

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A closer look at India's new health microinsurance scheme

As mentioned in last week's post, India set out four years ago to achieve universal health coverage for poor families using a massive system of state-subsidized private microinsurance.

India is subsidizing more than 100 million small-value insurance policies in an effort to help people treat health problems without falling into poverty. Photo: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/nadya/4789818776/in/photostream/">Nadya Peek(flickr)</a>

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Financial Inclusion

India: Knocking the poor back on their feet with microinsurance

Hospitalization can save a life--at the cost, sometimes, of throwing it permanently off track. Two very different countries, India and the United States, recently chose a similar solution: subsidized insurance.

Rainforest advocates in Indonesia. One thinker claims the modern environmental movement has played little role in staving off the catastrophes it predicted in the 1970s. Photo <a href="http://flic.kr/p/aaj1bD">Rainforest Action Network (Flickr)</a>

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Sustainable Energy

Don't panic, environmentalists: A richer world can be a better one

Forty years ago, a shocking report tagged economic growth as the catalyst for environmental collapse. Now, a new article claims the world's responses to that forecast failed to make things better.

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Cardiogram by tablet, Cows by phone: 3 new innovations for Africa

From tablets that diagnose cardiovascular disease to potatoes that reduce childhood blindness, The Guardian’s list of 15 innovations that are helping transform Africa has a little something for everybody.

With the population of the world's urban areas exploding, creative city planning and design is more important and vibrant than ever. Photo: <a href="http://www.designother90.org/cities/solutions/10x10-sandbag-house">Design with the other 90%</a>

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How to find the world's best urban designs: An interview with Cynthia Smith

"Design With the Other 90%: CITIES," an exhibit of innovative designs and technologies from the world's fast-growing urban areas, debuts on the West Coast at Mercy Corps'

With just a few simple materials, a community can map boundaries and see how they fit within the larger city. Photo courtesy "Design With the Other 90%: CITIES"

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Portland hosts the West Coast Premier of "Design With the Other 90%: CITIES"

Of the world’s 7 billion people, 1 billion now live in urban slums.

SWEETLab director Evan Thomas shows an example of the remote sensors developed in his lab. Photo: Evan Thomas/Portland State University

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How a Portland lab uses remote sensors to measure how aid projects work

Sensors on latrines, cook stoves and water filters help monitor aid projects, and a carbon credit financing scheme generates revenue to scale-up of future projects.

A child squeezes the last bit of Medika Mamba ("Peanut Butter Medicine") out of its wrapper. Photo: <a href="http://mfkhaiti.org/">Meds and Food for Kids.</a>

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'The only sustainable way to improve poverty is to educate and employ': 8 questions for Patricia Wolff

Over 23 years volunteering in Haiti, Dr. Patricia Wolff has seen the hemisphere's poorest country at its most hopeful and in its deepest despair.

Drawing from Indonesia's rich cultural heritage, HONF marries art and technology in search of development solutions <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kkseema/1378851855/ ">Seema Krishnakumar</a>

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Applied art: How a few of Indonesia's creative pros are helping fix poverty

Who said art wasn’t an exact science? In Indonesia, an artists' collaborative is driving innovative technological solutions to some of the most difficult issues facing developing nations.

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.

With new data transmitters, African hand pumps can keep the water flowing. photo: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/worldbank/2944066423/sizes/o/in/photostream/">World Bank Photo Collection (Flickr)</a>

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Another job for Africa's mobile phones: Fixing water pumps

First money, then medicine, now water: What problems can’t the mobile phone solve?

The Lake Tanganyika Floating Health Clinic is a plan to deliver medical services by water to reach populations that would otherwise be restricted by their landscape. Photo courtesy LTFHC.

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Floating clinics, rolling medics: In Africa, the hospital goes to you

For those who live in some of the most challenging landscapes in rural Africa, two innovative models are expanding the distribution of health care to ensure consistent aid—a boat and a truck.