Social Innovations
Do Companies that Engage in BoP Markets Outperform the Market?
A new index is creating a benchmark for comparing large-scale companies serving the markets for the very poorest.
Tag: Poverty
Understanding why people are poor and innovative ways to alleviate poverty
Social Innovations
Reimagining Microfinance
Critics of microfinance institutions (MFIs) ask them to choose between helping the poor or making money for investors, but this is a false choice. MFIs can have their impact and profit, too, says the author, the CEO of the Grameen Foundation. He sketches a new vision of microfinance as a platform, not a product; one that relies on high volumes, not high margins, and that uses limits on private benefit, holistic performance standards, and third-party certification to help MFIs meet both their bottom lines.
Nonprofits
Review: Out of Poverty
Polak offers entrepreneurial solutions to poverty in Asia and Africa.
Social Innovations
Review: Creating a World Without Poverty
Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohammad Yunus aims for a more just society for all.
Global Issues
Don’t Save; Be Saved
Conservative Protestants are poorer partly because of their religion.
Nonprofits
A New Way to Respond to Natural Disasters
Better practices in disaster relief involve market-orientated nonprofit organizations, or social-mission-orientated, for-profit companies, playing a more prominent role.
Nonprofits
Micro-Innovation: Bringing Billions into the Conversation
How do you assess the ability and willingness of the poor to pay for products and services that do not already exist, and how do you convince companies to take a risk on such a vast and fragmented market?
Technology & Design
The BOP Beckons
Why grassroots design will determine the winners in developing markets.
Podcast
Economic Development
Natalie Portman - Eradicating Poverty Through Microfinance
One of the biggest problems that low-income people around the world face is the lack of access to capital that might otherwise help them rise out of poverty. Invited to Stanford, actress Natalie Portman turns the spotlight on her work to promote FINCA's International Village Banking Campaign, aiming to bring financial services to one million of the world's lowest-income families through 100,000 Village Banks by 2010.