News Archive - Page 358 of 366

Recent Developments, <br /> Key Innovations, and <br /> Insightful Reports

Recent Developments,
Key Innovations, and
Insightful Reports

Your One Stop Platform for Regular Sector Updates

Sector news

Microfinance and Professor Yunus

This post talks about everything that goes to signify microfinance as a hardcore worldwide money-making corporation rather than the philanthropy centred enterprising opportunity that Prof Yunus founded it as in Bangladesh. It includes Prof Yunus’s view of what has gone wrong, and why, and what can be expected in the […]

July 24, 2012

‘Confessions of a microfinance heretic’

This book about the inside mechanisms of the microfinance world is attaining a high level of publicity. It talks about how several MFIs across the world charge as much as 100 per cent interest thereby pushing people helplessly into debt. Without proper guidance, these loans end up financing consumer purchases […]

July 24, 2012

Enhancing the impact of cash transfers

The poorest of the poor are not included in the microfinance industry. For them, even the smallest changes in their lives, like morbidity, or unexpected medical expenses can result into an irreversible push into the depths of poverty. It is in this case that cash transfers for social protection become […]

July 24, 2012

Microfinance Banana Skins 2012

This report by the CGAP ranks the risk perceptions of more than 350 practitioners and close observers of the microfinance sector in 79 countries. It states that the microfinance industry must change and adapt to rapid changes in markets to meet new pressures, particularly those relating to competition, governance, and […]

July 24, 2012

US based Echelon Corporation looking to scale in India

US-headquartered Echelon Corporation is an energy control networking company which offers energy control networking platform that supports multiple applications at the low voltage edge of the grid, such as smart metering, transformer monitoring, street light control, and demand response. It is widely used across the world, helping customers save up […]

July 24, 2012

Barefoot Power raises US$6 million for solar lighting for the poor

The Australian social entrepreneurial and solar lighting group Barefoot Power has announced it has doubled the number of people it has brought affordable lighting to across the. In 2011, it reached 1 million and it has now reached 2 million in 20 countries. The group has recently completed a $5.8 […]

July 24, 2012

Biogas cookstoves elevate life in rural Vietnam

Nordic development organization Norwegian Church Aid and Dutch development organization SNV are developing and promoting biogas systems in the Phong Binh, Vietnam region which has led to the villagers trading in their traditional wood burning stoves for energy-efficient models run on biogas. Read more here and here.

July 24, 2012

Afrigas ‘Easycook’ launched in Sierra Leone

Afrigas, a pioneer in Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) bottling in Sierra Leone has recently launched its ‘Easycook’ stovetop cylinder. This stove is easily available across Freetown at affordable prices, and is a clean alternative to coal and other traditional fuels. Read more here.

July 24, 2012

Solar cookstoves

Here is another alternative to the usual clean cookstoves that have been traditionally campaigned for by development agencies and social enterprises – one that runs on solar energy. The company called S.H.E. (Solar Household Energy Inc.) is a social enterprise dedicated to making solar cookers a viable option in the […]