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Doing business with the poor

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Business and the millennium development goals: a framework for action

This report provides a framework for action on how companies and business coalitions can work with the UN system, governments, and civil society organisations to help achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), aimed at making globalisation a more positive force for more of the world's people.

Accelerating Progress towards the MDGs; Delivering Results: Moving towards Scale

Accelerating Progress towards the MDGS and Delivering Results: Moving towards Scale is a report on an inclusive business dialogue held on September 21st 2010 during the UN Summit on the MDGs.

Microfinance and Poverty Alleviation: United Nations Collaboration with Chinese Experiments

Author: Susan H. Holcombe Xu Xianmei Date:1996-10

Doing business with the poor - a field guide

The Guide explores the way in which several leading companies, including Shell, Coca Cola and Procter and Gamble, are developing inclusive business models designed to assist them to create new revenue streams while serving the needs of the poor through sound commercial operations. The companies are...

Linking Business with Pro-Poor Development

Linking Business with Pro-Poor Development explores two key questions, How can business be pro-poor? and How can such partnerships be made sustainable? The document showcases how an innovative private-community partnership transformed the livelihoods of highly vulnerable families in far flung...

Inclusive Business: Profitable business for successful development

Inclusive Business: Profitable business for successful development, a paper published by The Alliance for Inclusive Business and the WBCSD, defines Inclusive Business as one that seeks to contribute to poverty alleviation by including lower-income communities within its value chain while not losing...

Business and Poverty: Opening markets to the poor

Business and Poverty: Opening markets to the Poor, an issue of Development Outreach published by the World Bank Institute, discusses how companies can operate profitably in emerging market economies, while enhancing the well-being of the poor by nurturing them as producers and consumers. The...

The Hard Work of Measuring Social Impact

Professor Alnoor Ebrahim of Harvard Business School explains how he thinks non-profit managers should respond to increasing demands from donors to measure social performance. The concepts he examines in a recent article include: * Rather than simply complying with the demands of the most...

Nonprofit Networking: The New Way to Grow

How can a nonprofit increase its social impact? Many would say it needs to grow big to be strong. Instead, says Harvard Business School professor Jane Wei-Skillern, the answer could be in the power of strategic networks.

New guidelines to help investors measure success of microfinance institutions

According to this news article, socially responsible investors are choosing to invest in microfinance to help alleviate poverty. By means of often very small loans, financial services, and technology, microfinance helps the poor, often women, to start self-sustaining businesses in order to escape...

Citi Dhaka arranges loan for NGO micro-finance institution

In July 2009, Citi Dhaka helped arrange a syndicated loan (subscribed by a group of local banks) for $21.7 million for BURO, a not-for-profit that is one of the fastest growing microfinance institutions in Bangladesh. BURO Bangladesh is a specialized micro-finance institution that provides high...

Business for Development: Business solutions in support of the Millennium Development Goals

Business for Development: Business solutions in support of the Millennium Development Goals, a report by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, stresses the key role that business plays in creating opportunities for empowerment and development. It provides a host of examples of...

Business group supports sustainability via the market economy

Business group supports sustainability via the market economy, a report issued by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, shows how open, transparent markets can drive sustainability. The report also makes the business case for implementing sustainable practices and outlines seven...

Making Agricultural Trade Reform Work for the Poor

Making Agricultural Trade Reform Work for the Poor, a position paper of the International Food&Agricultural Trade Policy Council (IPC), brings together what is known about the link between agricultural trade reform and poverty alleviation, and about how developing countries can successfully...

Solar power's role in rural India

Selco is a social enterprise which has provided solar-powered lighting and water heating for half a million people in the states of Karnataka and Gujarat since it began in 1995. It provides lighting for businesses too and even rents solar lights to street hawkers.

Polycentric Innovation: A New Mandate for Multinationals

What do John Deere, Cisco, and Obopay have in common? All three companies form a new breed of enlightened Western firms that have embraced "polycentric innovation." Polycentric innovation is an emerging business practice that consists of networking international talent, capital, and ideas to meet...

Tata launches low-cost water filter

India's giant Tata Group on Monday unveiled a new low-cost water purifier, hoping to do for health what it did for motoring and provide affordable, safe drinking water for millions and cut disease.

Make a difference this Fairtrade Fortnight with Starbucks

In November 2008, Starbucks announced that 100% of the espresso coffee sold – both wholebean and espresso-based beverages – in Starbucks stores in the UK and Ireland will become both Starbucks™ Shared Planet™ and Fairtrade Certified by the end of 2009.

Say goodbye to kerosene lamps, here's Kiran!

D.Light Design makes affordable solar lighting solutions to serve the bottom-of-the-pyramid households in India and other markets across the globe. The initial research and early prototyping of what became D.light products, began in 2006.

A Fresh Start: Asian villages carve out a new life

In 2004, the Wildlife Conservation Society, which credits itself with having saved the American bison a century ago, set up the Tmatboey Ibis Ecotourism Project to lure bird-watchers. During the most recent peak season, November 2008 to May 2009, services provided to bird-watching visitors brought...