last mile distribution

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Puerto Rico: Still Reeling From Hurricane Maria

Puerto Rico’s 3.4 million residents have continued to struggle as the country’s reconstruction drags on and they wait for basic necessities like homes, electricity and water.

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Value Chains

Agruppa: A Fresh, Healthy, and Affordable Mom-and-Pop Shop Revolution

A Bogota based startup champions regional food security by connecting smallholder farmers with urban mom-and-pop shops.

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Social Enterprise

Healthcare Reaches for the Extra Mile in Liberia

2017 TED Prize goes to an organization that provides healthcare to the unreachable

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Sustainable Energy

Jumpstarting Africa's Economy with Clean Energy

Development banks are tackling poverty and climate change one village at a time

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Financial Inclusion

Collaboration for Better, Faster, Smarter Aid

What if we could get better, faster and smarter about how we respond to communities in crisis?

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Financial Inclusion

The Next Frontier of Financial Services (Part 1)

Microinsurance payouts can mean the difference between falling back into abject poverty and continuing to climb the ladder of prosperity. But the concept hasn't gotten much play in the development world. Is that about to change?

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Value Chains

Getting Myanmar’s farmers in the game

In Myanmar’s fast-changing, volatile economic landscape, farmers must prove themselves vital to the mainstream economy, or else risk being shunted aside.

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Financial Inclusion

How Typhoon Haiyan opens a door to financial inclusion, and long-term recovery

IDEO.org brings its human-centered design approach to the Philippines to help Mercy Corps and BanKO design a new financial product for those hit by the typhoon.

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Value Chains

Solving the world’s water issues: How focusing on profit can help the poor

When leading water technology company Xylem started manufacturing simple pumps for smallholder farmers, it wasn't for charity, the company expected to profit.

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Value Chains

Water partners: Teaming up to solve shortages

Mercy Corps works with a private company, Xylem, to address urgent water needs in some of the toughest places on Earth. Why work with a partner?

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Value Chains

Pomegranates vs Poppies: Building food markets to fight the drug trade

The crops used to produce most of the world's illegal drugs come from a small number of weak states. Can providing impoverished farmers there with alternative crops -- and the markets to sell them in -- undermine the drug trade?

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Value Chains

Zimbabwe case study: Lessons from a buyer's experience of mobile money

Last August, small-scale farmers in rural Zimbabwe were preparing to harvest their crop of chilies just like they do every year. But this harvest would be like none other.

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Social Enterprise

How to build a market for eyeglasses

Nearly 700 million poor people in the world need eyeglasses. Why don't we just give them away? Turn's out that's not a scheme that can be scaled up to reach more than a tiny fraction of the people who need them. Here's a model that can.

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Social Enterprise

Quotable: Designing low-cost products that save lives isn't easy

“We thought if you design a good product, it will scale on its own,” Ms. Donaldson said. “That works in efficient markets, but most developing communities don’t have efficient markets.”

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Financial Inclusion

Interview: How M-Pesa innovates new business models for its base of the pyramid customers

M-Pesa is one of the biggest success stories in the history of serving customers at the bottom of the pyramid. We talk with the head of strategy for financial services about how the company learns about their poorest customers, develops products that meet their needs, and educates about how to use them.