Amplifying Local Voices
GlobalGiving’s storytelling project turns anecdotes into useful data.
Poverty
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Improving Sales Offers for Improved Stoves
A unique sales strategy puts more environmentally friendly cookstoves into the hands of more cooks.
A New Business Model for Women in the West Bank
Fidaa El Tunky has created the first grassroots venture capital project for rural women in the whole of the Arab region.
Dr. Madhav Chavan
An interview with Dr. Madhav Chavan, CEO of Pratham, a nonprofit that provides quality education to underprivileged children of India.
“Poor Economics” Needs a Theory
To understand poverty, we need a more complex epistemology that allows for the interdependencies which correlation often implies.
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Design Thinking for Social Innovation
By working closely with the clients and consumers, design thinking allows high-impact solutions to social problems to bubble up from below rather than being imposed from the top.
The Problem With Fair Trade Coffee
Fair Trade-certified coffee is growing in sales, but strict certification requirements are resulting in uneven economic advantages for coffee growers and lower quality coffee for consumers.
Microfinance Misses Its Mark
Despite the hoopla over microfinance, it doesn't cure poverty. But stable jobs do. If societies are serious about helping the poorest of the poor, they should stop investing in microfinance and start supporting large, labor-intensive industries.
In Microfinance, Clients Must Come First
Few microfinance institutions articulate what, exactly, their ultimate goals are and how to achieve them. If the goal of microfinance is to alleviate poverty, the authors say, then MFIs should focus on helping their clients build successful enterprises, rather than on making more and bigger loans.
Romanticizing the Poor
Market solutions to poverty, which include services and products targeting consumers at the “bottom of the pyramid,” portray poor people as creative entrepreneurs and discerning consumers. Yet this rosy view of poverty-stricken people is not only wrong, but also harmful.