impact investment

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Value Chains

Cutting the strings: Why some aid orgs want to give money away

Poor people are poor because they don’t have money. A new charity sees a simple solution: give money to those who need it most. Despite some controversy, the program has started to turn heads, largely because it might just work.

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Global Ideas News Brief: Measuring shared value + Cash transfers

Staff picks! What we're reading this week: Corporate leaders struggle to implement shared value, two views on cash transfers to the poor, and how to donate.

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Value Chains

Can we shop to end poverty?

The digital world makes it easier for us to do good through everyday actions, but often these acts feed our egos more than they feed the poor.

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Financial Inclusion

Map of financial services becomes weapon in battle to end poverty in Africa

A new interactive map helps organizations concentrate their fight against poverty in Africa

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Global Ideas News Brief: Climate refugees + The business of aid

Climate change pushes refugees into circumstances without protection or refugee status, economic value and social value are not necessarily mutually exclusive and coups beget coups. Staff picks: what we're reading this week.

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Youth Skills

A new way to finance education: Pay what you earn

Would you sell a stake in your future for a college degree? Oregon just joined a number of private companies making the idea a reality, and the solution could mean more underprivileged youth get the education they need to get ahead.

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Value Chains

How big money is fighting HIV and malaria in Uganda

Impact investors wondering where the big money is should look no farther than Quality Chemical Industries, whose multi-million dollar headquarters produces low-cost antiretroviral drugs while spurring local manufacturing.

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Sustainable Energy

Solar provides a roadmap for financing alternative energies. Will microfinance bite?

Solar was once the wild west of alternative energy. Today, microfinance banks see it as a solid investment, even for poor clients, and bio-gas may follow its footsteps.

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Social Enterprise

Move over, angel investors, crowdfunding is changing the rules of the game

As banks rein in lending options for entrepreneurs, crowdfunding’s popularity is off the charts and continuing to rise.

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Sustainable Energy

Doing good with green: How d.light is making solar work

An American solar company is showing the world how to get electricity to poor families cleanly and efficiently, and how to make money at the same time.

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Social Enterprise

Tech startup finds the ticket to growth with old ideas

A brand-new Mexican tech startup is making its products affordable using a centuries-old financing trick that lets startups and their customers shift their risk toward third-party investors.

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Social Enterprise

Quotable: Ebay founder on impact investing

Global capitalism has left billions of people behind. But the founder of ebay says we need to apply the power of that same market to help solve stubborn economic and social challenges.

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Value Chains

Why don't more NGOs use the ‘making markets work for the poor’ approach? 5 questions for Emma Proud

"Direct delivery" development is simple. Livestock are sick; let’s distribute vaccinations. People need more food; let's train farmers.

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Social Enterprise

5 Questions: Making markets work for the poor in rural Georgia

In the Samstkhe-Javakheti region of Georgia, Mercy Corps is taking a different approach to improving the livelihoods of small-scale farmers: not through charity, but through market-based interventions.

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Youth Skills

Tailored skills training needed as global youth unemployment rates rise

Preparing youth for jobs will look different in Sweden than in Swaziland. But with almost 73 million youth unemployed around the globe, strategies to reverse the trend are in demand everywhere.