News
U.S. Group Reaches Deal to Provide Laptops to All Libyan Schoolchildren 
By John Markoff, The New York Times, October 11, 2006
The government of Libya reached an agreement on Tuesday with One Laptop Per Child, a nonprofit United States group developing an inexpensive, educational laptop computer, with the goal of supplying machines to all 1.2 million Libyan schoolchildren by June 2008.
>> More Details | created on: 10/13/2006
Gates Foundation Awards $1.5 Million to Grameen Foundation
Grameen Foundation USA, August 29, 2006
Grameen Foundation, a leading global microfinance organization, today announced it has received a $1.5 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to support its work worldwide. The three-year grant will support Grameen Foundation’s strategic plan to reach five million additional new families, ensure that 50 percent of them permanently escape poverty within five years of becoming a microfinance client, and champion innovations that transform the microfinance industry. The unrestricted grant is GF’s third largest grant in support of this five-year plan launched in 2004.
>> More Details | created on: 09/08/2006
Group Pressures U.S. to Help End Global Poverty
By Evelyn Iritani, Los Angeles Times, June 15, 2006
SEATTLE — Alarmed by America's sagging image and the growing disparity in global wealth, a group of prominent Seattle business leaders is trying to educate, cajole and, if necessary, shame America into helping the poorest of the world's poor.
>> More Details | created on: 06/27/2006
Acumen Fund Initiative Will Develop 'Entrepreneurial Bench' in Fight against Global Poverty
Yahoo News, May 24, 2006
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 24, 2006--Acumen Fund, a leading innovator in the creation of sustainable, scalable solutions addressing poverty in the developing world, announced the inaugural class of Acumen Fund Fellows today in New York City. After an intensive three-month selection process that spanned the globe and drew hundreds of applicants from over fifty countries, Acumen Fund has chosen eight extraordinary individuals to be part of the first cohort of the groundbreaking Acumen Fund Fellows Program. The fellowship includes eight weeks of rigorous training, a nine-month field assignment with an Acumen investment, and another month spent debriefing at Acumen Fund headquarters in New York City.
>> More Details | created on: 05/31/2006
A Moneymaking Water Pump
By Ross Perlin, Time Magazine, May 21, 2006
To Martin Fisher, 48, and Nick Moon, 51, a simple pump could be the solution to poverty for millions of Africans. They're the co-founders of KickStart, a San Francisco--based nonprofit that encourages rural entrepreneurship by providing tools that Africa's poor can afford. Since the group was founded in Nairobi in 1991 under the name ApproTEC, it has developed a machine to make building blocks, a press that extracts cooking oil from seeds, a hay baler and a series of hand-operated micro-irrigation pumps. Their latest, the MoneyMaker Hip Pump, retails in Africa for $34.
>> More Details | created on: 05/23/2006
ICICI Bank Targets 250 MFI's
By Sunita Jyoti, The Financial Express, April 14, 2006
Besides retail, ICICI Bank, the second-largest commercial bank, has aggressively doubled its rural microfinance and agri-business
loan portfolio over a period of nine months. The outstanding in group's total rural microfinance and agri-business portfolio has increased to Rs 10,000 crore compared to Rs 5,200 crore last year.
>> More Details | created on: 04/17/2006
Six Trends Will Drive Sustainable Development, According to PricewaterhouseCoopers
PricewaterhouseCoopers, April 10, 2006
Sustainable development will steadily advance over the next 10 years, with six major trends influencing industry world-wide, according to a new PricewaterhouseCoopers' report, "Corporate Responsibility: Strategy, Management and Value." The challenge of creating strategies that meet immediate needs without sacrificing the needs of future generations will be driven by the growing influence of: global market forces; revisions in corporate governance; high speed innovation; large scale globalisation; evolving societal requirements and communication, the report says.
>> More Details | created on: 04/11/2006
ICRISAT to collaborate with CII and Coca Cola Foundation on watershed development
Moneycontrol.com, April 3, 2006
ICRISAT & Coca-Cola Foundation Collaboration for Backward Areas Development through Strategic Intervention in Watershed Development The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the Coca-Cola Foundation will collaborate for sustainable and equitable management of Rural Water Resources Infrastructure and other Natural Resources Management (NRM).
>> More Details | created on: 04/07/2006
Sales Effort Gives India's Rural Poor an Opportunity
By John Lancaster, Washington Post, April 2, 2006
This article discusses a Hindustan Lever initiative that enlists about 20,000 poor and mostly illiterate women to sell products.
>> More Details | created on: 04/07/2006
Nonprofits Pursue Private Investors
By Clay Holtzman , Puget Sound Business Journal, April 2, 2006
Redmond-based Unitus Inc. recently completed a $9 million initial close on a $20 million private equity fund meant to buy stock in its microfinance partners. The new money will provide additional resources for the nonprofit's eight microfinance partners, which are located abroad and backed by Unitus-facilitated grants and loans.
>> More Details | created on: 04/07/2006
Building Wealth by the Penny
By John Lancaster, Washington Post, March 14, 2006
With its open sewers and mud-walled homes, this impoverished farming village of 2,200 in southern India did not look like fertile territory for an entrepreneur. But Srilatha Kadem was undeterred. Oblivious to the midday heat, she marched briskly along the unpaved streets, her cloth bag filled with soaps and shampoos and her heart with vaulting ambition.
>> More Details | created on: 03/14/2006
Grameen teams up with Groupe Danone to set up food plant 
By Reaz Ahmad, The Daily Star, March 13, 2006
Microcredit guru Prof Muhammad Yunus launches a joint venture food enterprise in collaboration with one of the world's major food producers -- Groupe Danone.
>> More Details | created on: 03/22/2006
Give Africans the Blackberry -- and they will do the Job
By Dan Latendre, The Record, March 11, 2006
What do computers, cellphones and BlackBerrys have to do with eradicating extreme poverty in Africa? Quite a bit as it turns out.
>> More Details | created on: 03/17/2006
Keya Sarkar: Micro finance awards tell a story
By Keya Sarkar, Business Standard, February 28, 2006
India is taking small steps as a nation to address the lack of access to financial instruments of nearly 600 million people, but also the mainstream financial sector has suddenly discovered a new asset class.
>> More Details | created on: 02/28/2006
The tin-can antenna: A boon for third world
By Elisabetta Povoledo , International Herald Tribune, February 28, 2006
A physics research institute here is using a low-cost but effective tool to bolster communications in developing countries: the tin-can antenna.
>> More Details | created on: 02/28/2006
New infoDev Report on m-Commerce
By InfoDev, February 24, 2006
The proliferation of mobile communications in developing countries has the potential to bring a wide range of financial services to an entirely new customer base. This report explores the use of mobile phones to expand financial services in the Philippines.
>> More Details | created on: 02/28/2006
The Birth of Philanthrocapitalism
By The Economist, February 23, 2006
RELATIVE to the corporate environment, we are in the 1870s. But philanthropy will increasingly come to resemble the capitalist economy, predicts Uday Khemka, a young Indian philanthropist and a director of the SUN Group investment company owned by his family.
>> More Details | created on: 02/28/2006
The Business of Giving
By The Economist, February 23, 2006
Philanthropy is flourishing as the number of super-rich people keeps growing. But the new donors are becoming much more businesslike about the way their money is used, says Matthew Bishop.
>> More Details | created on: 02/28/2006
MTN's CSR Initiative Wins GSM Association Award
Africa News, February 17, 2006
>> More Details | created on: 02/17/2006
The Profit of Creativity
Global Envision, February 11, 2006
Thousands of rural innovations exist in rural India, and if nurtured and enabled as microenterprises, they can contribute in a significant way to the reduction of poverty.
>> More Details | created on: 03/01/2006
Google's Big BOP Bet? Bringing Wi-Fi to Africa
By John Paul, World Resources Institute, February 9, 2006
Google
announced this week that it has selected Abuja, Nigeria as one of about seven African cities the company will fully connect with a wireless network.
>> More Details | created on: 02/17/2006
All They Need is a Fair Chance to Compete
By Heather Stewart , The Observer, January 22, 2006
Hilary Benn tells Heather Stewart that, far from being the enemy, the global private sector is the one certain way that poverty can be made history.
>> More Details | created on: 01/23/2006
Putting Paid to Poverty
By Al Hammond & Bill Kramer, January 17, 2006
"Putting Paid to Poverty" provides a hopeful scenario for the development of the 'base of the pyramid' over the next ten years.
>> More Details | created on: 02/17/2006
A New Way to Do Well by Doing Good
By Rachel Emma Silverman, Wall Street Journal, January 5, 2006
Making tiny loans to poor entrepreneurs in developing countries has long been a popular charitable cause, but it is now gaining traction as an investment.
>> More Details | created on: 02/07/2006
OSS CEO Announces Global Campaign to Deliver Intelligence to the Poor, Lifting the Bottom of the Pyramid - the Poor - With Information
Yahoo Finance, December 14, 2005
>> More Details | created on: 01/04/2006
A Proposition to Eradicate Poverty
By Jesse Moore, November 11, 2005
This article takes an in depth look at the pros and cons of eradicating poverty through profit. The author notes we need to rebuke the idea that we are playing a zero-sum game and embrace the possibility that growth and poverty reduction, done right, are mutually reinforcing pursuits.
>> More Details | created on: 12/21/2005
Founder of Ebay sets up Dollars 100m microfinance aid fund
Financial Express, November 4, 2005
The Dollars 100m (Euros 84m, Pounds 56m) fund, which will be run for profit by endowment managers at Tufts University in the US, marks a growing trend among a new generation of philanthropic entrepreneurs and technology billionaires to seek market-based solutions to global poverty rather than rely solely on traditional charities.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
For the Poor, Help from MBAs
By Francesca DiMeglio , Business Week Online, August 1, 2005
This article discusses how many MBAs are bringing microfinancing, business development—and eventually a consumer economy—to many impoverished Third World areas.
>> More Details | created on: 01/05/2006
Calling an End to Poverty: Mobile Phones and Development
By The Economist, July 7, 2005
Discusses how mobile phone firms have found a way to help the poor help themselves.
>> More Details | created on: 11/23/2005
What it's Like to Live on $1 a Day
The Christian Science Monitor, July 6, 2005
Discusses the day to day reality of living in poverty in Malawi.
>> More Details | created on: 11/23/2005
Pennies from the poor add up to fortune
By David Ignatius, The Korea Herald, July 1, 2005
>> More Details | created on: 01/03/2006
Trickle-Up Economics
By David Armstrong & Naazneen Karmali, Forbes.com, June 20, 2005
How low-tech, low-cost designs are helping the poorest farmers on Earth grow their way out of poverty.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Selling to the Poor: There is a Surprisingly Lucrative Market in Targeting Low-Income Consumers
By Kay Johnson & Xa Nhon, Time Magazine, April 25, 2005
Identifies the lucrative market in targeting low income consumers.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
MIT Team Seeks to Seed Developing World with $100 Laptops
By Mark Jewell, The Detroit News, April 4, 2005
Addresses MIT's efforts to bridge the digital divide by bringing laptops to children in the developing world.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Senegalese Villagers are Learning to Use their Natural & Cultural Heritage to Make a Living
World Business Council for Sustainable Development, January 1, 2005
It is in partnership with the Nicolas Hulot Foundation (NHF), and the Ademe, the French agency for the environment and energy efficiency, that EDF has begun to engage in projects where local communities in developing countries take responsibility for the protection of their natural and cultural heritage, and turn it into an opportunity for growth.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
PEOPLink and CatGen: Empowering a Global Network of Artisans
By Nia Ujamaa, Digital Divide Network, December 1, 2004
Discusses the success of PEOPLink and CatGen in empowering a global network of local artisans.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
The Global Compact: A Business Perspective
International Chamber of Commerce, July 1, 2004
A look at the Global Compact as businesses begins to take more of a role in International Development.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Deutsche Bank: microcredit development fund
Deutsche Bank Microcredit Fund, May 1, 2004
The Deutsche Bank Microcredit Fund was conceived as a vehicle to combine the interest, abilities, reach, and resources of Deutsche Bank and its Private Bank clients to support the long-term sustainability of microcredit institutions.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Local Entrepreneurial Skills & Sustainability in Rwanda's Community Internet Centers
DOT-COMments e-newsletter, 2004
Addresses how local entrepreneurial skills are leading to sustainable growth in Rwanda’s Community Internet Centers.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Global Community Investment
Business for Social Responsibility, December 1, 2003
As companies expand their operations globally, deriving ever-larger shares of their revenues and profits from international operations, they are finding business value from expanding their community involvement activities internationally as well.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Sonae: Delta Cafés socially responsible coffee
World Business Council on Sustainble Development, September 26, 2003
Delta has since successfully developed a “socially responsible” coffee brand, Delta Timor, creating competitive communities at the beginning of the supply chain, in the plantations of East Timor, and establishing a “solidarity market” for the brand among Portuguese consumers.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
The Corporate Key: Using Big Business to Fight Global Poverty
By George C. Lodge, Foreign Affairs, July 1, 2002
The authors analyze a new approach to global development addressing a global corporate alliance that brings business know-how and profit motive into play.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Shanty Town Seamstresses Fuel the Fashion Industry
By Shannon Walbran, Changemakers.net, June 1, 2002
The article addresses the success of the Coopa-Roca sewing cooperative in bringing many women out of poverty.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Balancing Sustainability with Service to the Poorest of the Poor
By Sharda Naidoo, Changemakers.net, May 1, 2002
Discusses Small Enterprise Foundation (SEF) in South Africa which is one of the world's most financially successful and efficient microfinance programs, having reached a level of sustainability critical to the viability of microfinance lending.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Beating Doubts, Droughts & Debt: Re-shaping the Economic Landscape
By Shannon Walbran, Changemakers.net, May 1, 2002
Discusses the success of Orgape in alleviating poverty by providing financial services to low income people in Brazil.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Let's Focus on the Digital Dividend
By C.K. Prahalad, European Business Forum, 2002
Disucusses the idea that in the new economy, where access to knowledge is critical for economic success, the increasing importance of the internet will further accentuate the differences between the rich and the poor.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Information Communications Technology for Development
UNDP Evaluation Office, September 1, 2001
Addresses Information Communication technology as a key player in development.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Information and Communication Technologies and Poverty
By Charles Kenny, World Bank, July 1, 2001
This article address the importance of "Digitally enabled Development" as one of the keys to third world development.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Strategic Innovation: Hindustan Lever Ltd
By Rekha Balu, Fast Company, June 1, 2001
Highlights Hindustan Lever's success through soap marketing and distribution at the BOP.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Revolution in a Coffee Cup: Waking the Sleeping Consumer Giant
By Kris Herbst, Changemakers.net, April 1, 2001
Dicusses how Trans-fair USA has worked with the Coffee Industry to help developing country coffee producers to build self-reliance, dignity, and control over their communities, while promoting sustainable production.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Bottom Up, Digitally Enabled Development, A Vision
By Allen Hammond & Elizabeth Jenkins, iMP Magazine, February 1, 2001
The authors address the importance of "Digitally enabled Development" as one of the keys to third world development.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Improving Health, Fighting Poverty: The Role of Information and Communication Technology (ICT)
The Exchange, 2001
Addresses the power of technology in alleviating poverty but the risk of marginalizing the poor through this process.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Academic Research
Is Private Education Good for the Poor?
By James Tooley, Working Paper from University of Newcastle Upon Tyne (England), June 25, 2005
Private education is often assumed to be concerned only with serving the elite or middle classes, not the poor. And unregistered or unrecognised private schools are thought to be of the lowest.
>> More Details | created on: 11/23/2005
Dynamic Transformations for Base-of-the-Pyramid Market Clusters.
By Eric J Arnould & Jakki J. Mohr, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, June 1, 2005
>> More Details | created on: 01/03/2006
At the Bottom of the Pyramid: Responsible Design for Responsible Business
By Nirmal Sethia, Design Managment Review, June 1, 2005
In this article, Nirmal Sethia, a professor of management and director of the Center for Business and Design in the College of Business Administration at California State Polytechnic University, in Pomona, calls our attention to what he calls "a pressing business responsibility that is a significant new business opportunity." The opportunity he refers to is what he calls "the Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP)-almost four billion people, or nearly two-thirds of humanity, who live at the bottom of the economic pyramid, with a vast majority of them struggling to survive on less than two dollars a day."
>> More Details | created on: 03/20/2006
India's Economic Agenda: An Interview with Manmohan Singh
By Rajat K. Gupta, McKinsey Quarterly, 2005 (Subscription Required)
In an interview, India's prime minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, discusses his country’s prospects and challenges, saying that the ultimate goal is to wipe out poverty, ignorance, and disease.
To him this can be accomplished by increasing foreign direct investment, particularly in infrastructure and by opening up the retail sector.
>> More Details | created on: 03/20/2006
Lessons from the Field: An Overview of the Current Uses of Information and Communication Technologies for Development
By John Paul & Robert Katz, WRI Paper, November, 2004
An overview of the digital divide that effects many in the developing world and highlights many of the projects that are attempting to use information and communication technologies (ICT) to bridge this divide
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Housing the Urban Poor
By Asad Azfar & Aun Rahman, Acumen Fund , April, 2004
THe article discusses the negative aspects of living in urban slums and how a public private partnership between Saiban, a housing development nonprofit, and the Pakistani government is positively tackling this issue. Their scheme is based on theit ability to create affordable housing supply.
>> More Details | created on: 03/06/2006
Factors Influencing Women Entrepreneurs of NGOs in India
By Femida Handy & Meenaz Kassam, Nonprofit Management and Leadership, July 7, 2003 (Vol. 13, Issue 2)
This article examines women entrepreneurs in the nonprofit sector in India to determine which factors influence such self-selection.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
How Corporations and Environmental Groups Cooperate: Assessing Cross Sector Alliances and Collaborations
By Dennis A. Rondinelli & Ted London, Academy of Management Executive, 2003 (Vol. 17 No. 1, 2003)
Gives a set of strategic criteria for executives who are interested in participating in more intensive cross-sector collaborations on environmental issues with their nonprofit counterparts
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
The Great Leap: Driving Innovation from the Base of the Pyramid
By Hart, Stu & Christensen, Clayton, MIT Sloan Management Review, September, 2002 (Fall 2002)
The authors illustrate their point of how and when BOP can be successful with examples of companies that are already profitably disrupting such industries as telecommunications, consumer electronics and energy production.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid
By C.K. Prahalad & Stuart L. Hart, Strategy+Business, January, 2002 (Issue 26, First Quarter 2002)
Dispells some of the assumptions regarding selling to the poor and discusses how companies can both maximize their profits and help the poor
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
A Point of Light in Mumbai
By Rukmini Banerji & Madhav Chavan, et al, McKinsey Quarterly, 2001 (Subscription Required )
By developing a low-cost distribution channel, an Indian nonprofit organization can deliver child education and nutrition programs for just a few dollars a child per year.
>> More Details | created on: 03/20/2006
India as a Source of Innovations
By C.K. Prahalad, 2000
Analyzes and the old mindset of the poor as an intractable problem and shows how currently there has been a shift in this mindset to one of the poor as an active market and the Bottom of the Pyramid as a source of innovation for this market.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Cases
Thamel.com: Diaspora-enabled Development (Nepal)
By John Paul, World Resources Institute, December, 2005
Thamel.com is a Nepal-based marketing and development company that has tapped the resources of the diaspora to create new opportunities for Nepalese workers, generate cultural value, and help move local businesses in a new direction. The company’s unique combination of e-commerce, remittance, and business development services demonstrate how combining the power of IT and diasporas can create opportunities at the base of the pyramid.
>> More Details | created on: 03/15/2006
Social Entrepreneurship: Creating New Business Models to Serve the Poor
By Christian Seelos & Johanna Mair, Harvard Business School, May 15, 2005
The term "social entrepreneurship" refers to the rapidly growing number of organizations that have created models for efficiently catering to basic human needs that existing markets and institutions have failed to satisfy. Social entrepreneurship combines the resourcefulness of traditional entrepreneurship with a mission to change society. Because it contributes directly to internationally recognized sustainable development goals, social entrepreneurship may also encourage established corporations to take on greater social responsibility.
>> More Details | created on: 04/03/2006
Share MicroFin Limited: India's Largest Microfinance Organization
By R. Meenakshisundaram & R. Fernando, ICFAI Centre for Management Research, March 1, 2005
Within just over a decade, SHARE Microfin Limited (SML) grew from a small society into India’s largest microfinance organisation. During the initial years, the organisation had to face many challenges with regard to customer acceptance, fund mobilisation, government regulation and operational issues. However the organisation had adapted the Grameen model to the local conditions and had even transformed its constitution from that of a society to a public limited company so as to attract funds from private sector banks. The organisation sustained its growth momentum over the years, through innovative fund mobilisation efforts using partnership models with private sector banks and structured deals like securitisation.
>> More Details | created on: 04/18/2006
Access to Electricity program eases poverty: ABB
World Business Council for Sustainable Development, March 1, 2005
ABB’s Access to Electricity program is designed to promote sustainable economic, environmental and social development in poor communities and is yielding its first concrete results in a remote village in southern Tanzania.
>> More Details | created on: 11/23/2005
Empowering supply chains: Anglo American’s Mondi Recycling
World Business Council for Sustainable Development, February 25, 2005
Mondi Recycling, the biggest paper recycler in South Africa, feels it has the ability to create employment and sustain livelihoods in its operational areas.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Serving the Poor: Do Embedded Ties Matter?
By Pablo Sánchez, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez & Joan Enric Ricart , IESE Business School, January 1, 2005
In the past, the 4.6 billion people living in poverty were considered anything but a market. Recently, however, several authors have suggested that by stimulating commerce and development in low-income segments, multinationals could radically improve the lives of billions of people and help create a more stable and inclusive world. In order to succeed at this challenging goal, companies need not only to innovate strategies, business models and products, but also to better understand the market and local customer needs.
>> More Details | created on: 04/18/2006
SELF A
By Patricia H. Werhane & Scott B. Sonenshein, Darden Case No.: UVA-E-0112-SSRN, 2005
This series of cases (see also the B case, UVA-E-0113) describes the choices facing Neville Williams, founder and president of SELF, in his attempt to provide environmentally friendly electricity to rural China. SELF is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to improve the standard of living in developing countries. The A case encourages students to choose among three alternative-energy sources - hydropower, photovoltaics, and clean coal - that are technologically sufficient and environmentally sustainable. Students are not told what the acronym SELF stands for until the end of the A case.
>> More Details | created on: 01/20/2006
SELF B
By Patricia H. Werhane & Scott B. Sonenshein, Darden Case No.: UVA-E-0113-SSRN. , 2005
The main purpose of the B case is to demonstrate that corporate and managerial ideologies play a role in determining how to finance projects. Williams must decide how to fund rural-electrification projects in such developing countries as China. Given SELF's ideology, students must evaluate the alternatives of government subsidies for energy development, partial subsidies, and individual payment plans for energy. See also the A case (UVA-E-0112).
>> More Details | created on: 02/02/2006
Social Entrepreneurs: Correcting Market Failures
By Phillis, James A. & Lyn Denend, Stanford Graduate School of Business, 2005
This case examines the insights, aspirations, and impact of three leading social entrepreneurs, their organizations, and their efforts to correct a diverse array of classical market failures: • David Green, of Project Impact, who developed an innovative approach to manufacturing low-cost, high-quality medical supplies to treat and prevent blindness and deafness in the developing world; • Victoria Hale, of OneWorld Health, who worked to develop new medicines for infectious diseases that killed millions of people in the poorest parts of the world; • Jim Fruchterman, of Benetech, who created technology-based projects that ranged from reading machines for the blind to innovative software to protect information (and the people who collect it) in the human rights field.
>> More Details | created on: 04/03/2006
Natura
By Brazil BCSD, World Business Council for Sustainable Development, 2005
Natura’s Ekos Challenge aims to create a model to allow the sustainable use of natural resources, generating good business opportunity and social development for traditional communities and for Natura and its partners.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Helping small-scale pyrethrum farmers in Kenya: SC Johnson
World Business Council for Sustainable Development, December 15, 2004
A unique partnership between SC Johnson, the Pyrethrum Board of Kenya and ApproTEC is helping Kenyan farmers to improve their livelihoods by efficiently farming pyrethrum, a unique daisy that is the source of a naturally occuring insecticide.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Partnering for mutual success: DaimlerChrysler – POEMAtec Alliance
By Yerina Mugica, World Business Council for Sustainable Development, November 10, 2004
DaimlerChrysler formed an alliance with the Poverty and Environment in Amazonia Research and Development project (POEMA) to reforest previously cleared land to produce continuous yields year-round and process these harvests within the region.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Concrete Innovation with Mi Casa: Holcim Apasco
World Business Council for Sustainable Development, October 12, 2004
Holcim Apasco helps people self-build concrete homes to an acceptable standard and improve the availability of affordable construction materials through its Mi Casa distribution centers.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Project Employability: Lafarge India
World Business Council for Sustainable Development, October 6, 2004
Lafarge is working to alleviate high unemployment in rural areas combined with a lack of skilled and qualified masons in the construction markets through its "Project Employability" program.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
A sustainable livelihoods approach to industry challenges: The South African Sugar Industry
World Business Council for Sustainable Development/ National Business Initiative, October 5, 2004
The South African Sugar Industry is involved in pilot projects using the sustainable livelihoods approach to doing business with these growers.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Enabling Rural India with Information and Communication Technology Initiatives
By Ashok Jhunjhunwala & Sudhalakshmi Narasimhan, Anuradha Ramachandran, International Telecommunications Union, Korea Agency for Digital Opportunity and Promotion, October 1, 2004
Discusses the impact of digital capabilities throughout rural villages in India.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Smart Communications, Inc. , Philippines
By Sharon Smith, World Resources Institute Digital Dividend, September 1, 2004
Discusses how Smart Communications is providing telecommunication services to low-income markets in the Phillipines.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Combating "Hidden Hunger": Procter & Gamble takes up the fight
World Business Council on Sustainable Development, June 11, 2004
Procter and Gamble is taking up the fight against "hidden hunger" with NutriStar, a low cost powdered drink mix containing all the vital micronutrients growing children need.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
The forestry partners program: Aracruz Celulose
World Business Council on Sustainable Development, May 11, 2004
Aracruz's partnerships with local farmers to develop new, sustainable timber plantations that provide alternative planted sources of timber for the company’s pulp mill, and a new source of income for the farmers and local communities.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Sustainable upstream development: BP Trinidad and Tobago
World Business Council on Sustainable Development, April 16, 2004
BP enables capability development among the local supplier community in a way that enhances their ability to support its growth agenda and enlisting the support of other operators, suppliers, state agencies, financial and learning institutions to create maximum socio-economic impact.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Insuring fair prices for farmers in developing countries: Rabobank International
World Business Council on Sustainable Development, April 16, 2004
This partnership between private and public sector organizations explores new market-based approaches for assisting small-scale producers in developing countries to better manage their vulnerability to commodity price fluctuations.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Vodacom: Extending telecom services to South Africa’s poor
World Business Council on Sustainble Development, February 2, 2004
Vodacom has confronted the enormous challenge of providing subsidized public cellular telephones in under-serviced and rural areas by seting up stationary phone shops or kiosks with multiple lines, all connected to Vodacom's existing infrastructure through a wireless link.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Real Microcredito , Brazil
By Frederico Moura & Yerina Mugica, World Business Council for Sustainable Development, 2004
ABN AMRO Real Microcredito is providing self-sustaining micro-finance programs to help Brazil's poor:
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Aravind Eye Care System, India
By C.K Prahalad, University of Michigan Ross School of Business, January 1, 2004
Discusses how a world class clinic in India has brought relatively free eye care treatment to the poor in India.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
CrediAmigo , Brazil
By Yerina Mugica, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School, 2004
Highlights the overwhelming success of CrediAmigo at serving almost 70% of the rural and industrial loans in it region of Brazil.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Solar Energy Distribution in Brazil
By Yerina Mugica, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School, 2004
Approximately 25 million people in Brazil do not have access to electricity. Fabio Rosa, a local social entrepreneur, is aiming to fill this need through innovative distributed solar energy systems.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
eGovernance - Andhra Pradesh, India
By Praveen Suthrum & Jeffrey Phillips, University of Michigan Ross School of Business, December 12, 2003
An e-governance experiment in Andhara Pradesh is using business to deliver government services electronically and is fundamentally altering the relationship between the government and its citizens.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Voxiva
By Cynthia Casas & William LaJoie, University of Michigan Ross School of Business, December 12, 2003
Voxiva is bringing critical healthcare information to rural villages by using the already in place telecommunications systems.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
E+Co's , Nicaragua
By Scott Baron & George Weinmann, University of Michigan Ross School of Business, December 12, 2003
Discusses the success of Technosol in providing clean and affordable energy to the poor in Nicaragua.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Hindustan Lever Limited , India
By Mindy Murch & Kate Reeder, University of Michigan Ross School of Business, December 12, 2003
Discusses how Hindustan Lever Limited created a unique public private partnership while simultaneously making a public helath issue an integral part of their business.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
ICICI Bank , India
By Todd J. Markson & Michael Hokenson, University of Michigan Ross School of Business, December 12, 2003
Reviews how the ICIC bank experience made customers out of the poor and empowered them at the same time.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Jaipur Foot , India
By Scott Macke, University of Michigan Ross School of Business, December 12, 2003
Jaipur Foot has been able to create a low cost highly durable prosthetic foot that has enabled many of the poor in India to sustain their livlihoods inspite of a handicap.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Suez aims to bring water to all in Brazil
World Business Council on Sustainble Development, December 2, 2003
Suez’s subsidiary Aguas do Amazonas has successfully teamed up with French development NGO ESSOR and Brazilian NGO ADEIS to put in place the “Water for All” pilot project, demonstrating that Suez can serve poor communities and grow its formal customer base at the same time.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Procter & Gamble – PuR Water Purification Sachets
World Business Council on Sustainble Development, October 21, 2003
A complementary approach to providing piped-treated water is through treatment of drinking water directly in people’s homes. This point of use (POU) model has the advantages of cost, immediate availability and ease of distribution to reach rural areas
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
CARE Kenya
By Ewart, Tom and Pratima Bansal, Richard Ivey School of Business, October 13, 2003
On October 14, 2003, George Odo was finally asked the question he most feared: "What will happen to the farmers when CARE leaves?" George was the sector manager for Commercialization of Smallholder Agriculture for CARE Kenya. His vision had seeded the Rural Entrepreneurship and Agribusiness Promotion (REAP) project. By securing export contracts, financing and training farmers, REAP had successfully pulled farmers in Kibwezi, Kenya, over the poverty line. However, CARE financed the projects with grants from Western governments, and George knew that CARE's donors would ultimately withdraw their support. Without the subsidies, the farmers risked returning to their old lives. George had spent many long hours and sleepless nights dwelling on how CARE's involvement in REAP could be commercially viable. George had to identify and implement a business model that was economically sustainable in order to prevent the farmers from falling back into poverty.
>> More Details | created on: 03/31/2006
Afrique Initiatives, Senegal
By Luis Castro & Sharon Smith, World Resources Institute Digital Dividend, August 1, 2003
Analyzes the success two social development organizations in Senegal.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
AKASHGANDA, India
By Ajay Sharma & Akhilesh Yadav, World Resources Institute Digital Dividend, August 1, 2003
This case dicussess the work SKELPL, a small bussiness in India, which has used innovative solutions to automize the milk collection process at local dairy cooperatives.
>> More Details | created on: 04/13/2006
PRODEM FFP's Multilingual Smart ATMs for Microfinance , Bolivia
By Roberto Hernandez, World Resources Institute Digital Dividend, August 1, 2003
Discusses how PRODEM FFP is delivering financial services to rural populations in Bolivia.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
e-Choupal , India
By Kuttayan Annamalai & Sachin Rao, University of Michigan Ross School of Business, August, 2003
Highlights the success of e-Chopals at connecting subsistence farmers with large firms and the global market through internet information centers.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
HealthNet Uganda , Uganda
By Keisha Phipps & Genevieve Sangudi, Steven Woolway, World Resources Institute Digital Dividend, August 1, 2003
Analyzes Healthnet Uganda's evolution from NGO to sustainable enterprise but bringing portable healthcare service to Uganda's rural areas.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Vodacom's Community Cell Phones , South Africa
By Jennifer Reck & Brad Wood, World Resources Institute Digital Dividend, August 1, 2003
Discusses how Vodacom is providing telecommunications to poor communities in South Africa.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Vodafone , Poland
By James Goodman, Digital Europe, April 1, 2003
Addresses the use of mobile phones to create social capital in Poland.
>> More Details | created on: 07/10/2006
Infocentros , El Salvador
By Yacine Khelladi, World Resources Institute Digital Dividend, July 1, 2001
Discusses the El Salvador based Infocentros's model that empowers the poor by giving them access to telecenters in order to gain access to a variety of information and services.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
TARAhaat , India
By Dr. Andrew Lawlor & Vivek Sandell, Caitlin Peterson, World Resources Institute Digital Dividend, July 1, 2001
Discusses TARAhatt how internet portal is providing information and services to many of the rural poor in India.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
ViaSebrae , Brazil
By Jason P. Hekel & Carlos Waack, World Resources Institute Digital Dividend, June 1, 2001
ViaSebrae e-commerce model subsidizes the business to consumer segment with the profits from the businesses to business segment providing the business to consumer segment with e-commerce they could not otherwise afford.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Corpomedina: Social and Economic Development, Venezuela
By Luis Sanz & Lawrence Pratt, World Resources Institute, 2000
As part of its strategy to develop tourism in an economically depressed zone of Venezuela, Corpomedina formed an independent foundation aimed at improving the quality of life for the local population through health, cultural, and educational programs, and through the creation of micro-enterprises.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Rick Surpin, United States
By Penelope Rowlands, David Bollier & Kirk O. Hanson, Business Enterprise Trust, January 1, 1992
A long-time community development worker creates hundreds of jobs for low-income women and minorities by forming a for-profit home health care cooperative, Cooperative Home Care Associates.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Books
In the Public Interest: Health, Education, and Water and Sanitation for All
Oxfam, September 1, 2006
Classrooms with teachers, clinics with nurses, running taps and working toilets: these basic public services are key to ending global poverty, according to a new report from Oxfam and WaterAid. And, the agencies say, only governments are in a position to deliver them on the scale needed to transform the lives of millions living in poverty.
>> More Details | created on: 09/08/2006
Marrying Jekyll with Hyde? Transnational Enterprises, Pro-Poor Development and Sustainable Ethical Learning
By Linda Mayoux, Discussion Draft, April, 2005
Transnational Enterprises (TNEs) are an important source of direct and indirect employment creation in the global economy. Largely in response to external pressures by NGOs and consumers, there has been a growing number of Guidelines and Codes for Corporate Social Responsibility being adopted by such companies. Now, TNEs are beginning to understand that corporate social and environmental responsibility can also increase their profits and sustainability. This paper focuses on recent innovations which can contribute to a key element in seeking constructive ways forward towards this 'win-win' business case: the building of a participatory ethical learning process which can increase trust, transparency and mutual accountability.
>> More Details | created on: 02/06/2006
Agricultural Investment Sourcebook: Agriculture and Rural Development (Trade and Development)
World Bank, January 1, 2005
Investing to promote agricultural growth and poverty reduction is a central pillar of the World Bank’s current rural strategy, Reaching the Rural Poor (2003). One major thrust of the strategy outlines the priorities and the approaches that the public sector, private sector, and civil society can employ to enhance productivity and competitiveness of the agricultural sector in ways that reduce rural poverty and sustain the natural resource base. These actions involve a rich mixture of science, technology, people, communication, management, learning, research, capacity building, institutional development, and grassroots participation.
>> More Details | created on: 11/30/2005
Raising the Bar: Creating Value with the United Nations Global Compact
By Claude Fussler (editor) & Aron Cramer, et al, Greenleaf Publishing, 2004
Raising the Bar, produced by a unique team of business experts and UN agencies, is designed to fill a critical vide - poches the support of more than 1,000 organisations for the globally recognised Principles of the United Nations Global Compact and the need for this support to be translated into the day-to-day running of business to create value and improve performance.
>> More Details | created on: 11/30/2005
How to Change the World: Social Enrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas
By David Bornstein, Oxford University Press, December 1, 2003
What business entrepreneurs are to the economy, social entrepreneurs are to social change. They are, writes David Bornstein, the driven, creative individuals who question the status quo, exploit new opportunities, refuse to give up--and remake the world for the better.
>> More Details | created on: 11/30/2005
Reaching the Rural Poor: A renewed Strategy for Rural Development
By Csaba Csaki & C. De Haan, The World Bank, 2003
Today the fight against poverty will be won or lost in rural areas, home to about 70% of the world's poor. The likelihood of achieving the Millennium Development Goals without a focus on improving the livelihoods and service accessibility of rural dwellers is low.
>> More Details | created on: 11/30/2005
Building Partnerships: Collaboration Between the UN and Business
The International Business Leaders Forum, June 1, 2002
This book, a joint venture of the UN Global Compact and the UN Department of Public Information in cooperation with The Prince of Wales International Business Leaders Forum (IBLF), provides a comprehensive overview of a very significant, but not widely reported, trend occurring at the United Nations: the opening up of the organization to new types of partnerships with business.
>> View Article | created on: 11/30/2005
Civic Enrepreneurship: A Civil Society Perspective on Sustainable Development
By Tariq Banuri & Adil Najam, Stockhold Environment Institute, 2002
This report gives a fascinating account of opportunities and description of models for understanding and engaging BOP societies. It includes over one hundred successful examples of sustainable development in practice.
>> More Details | created on: 02/06/2006
Development as Freedom
By Amartya Sen, Anchor Books, August 15, 2000
Development as Freedom is a general exposition of the economic ideas and analyses of Amartya Sen, winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economic Science. This brilliant and indispensable treatise compellingly analyzes the nature of contemporary economic development from the perspective of human freedom. Freedom, Sen persuasively argues, is at once the ultimate goal of economic life and the most efficient means of realizing general welfare. It is a good to be enjoyed by the world's entire population. Drawing on moral and political philosophy and technical economic analysis, this work gives the nonspecialist reader powerful access to Sen's paradigm-altering vision and vividly shows how he, in the words of the Nobel Prize committee, has both "restored an ethical dimension to the discussion of economic problems" and "opened up new fields of study for subsequent generations of researchers."
>> More Details | created on: 11/30/2005
Business as Partners in Development: Creating Wealth for Countries, Companies, and Communities
The International Business Leaders Forum, 1996
Published in collaboration with the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme, this publication is aimed at every level of an organisation, and seeks to stimulate consideration of the new way of doing business. In the context of three billion people rapidly taking their place in market economies, the private sector has become the principal motor of development and a growth-test of economic strength.
>> More Details | created on: 11/30/2005