Artwork stating 'Education Destroys Barriers', 'We Demand Treatment', and 'I Need A Chance'

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  • How to Grow a Social Business

    Two columns on microconsignment, a new variation on microcredit that helps poor people living in developing countries - particularly women in rural villages - start small social businesses without taking on debt or requiring previous business skills. The organization, Soluciones Comunitarias, partners with a non-profit and a university student program to manage the supply chain and other components of the business necessary to support the social entrepreneurs in successful micro-ventures.

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  • When Microcredit Won't Do

    Microcredit can get people into debt when used poorly. A company in Guatemala is giving products to poor entrepreneurs on consignment and then charging a commission upon sale and in this way removing the entrepreneurs' risk.

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  • Illuminating Thoughts on Power

    A follow-up article on Husk Power Systems, which has created a scalable system to turn rice husks into electricity that is reliable, eco-friendly and affordable for families in India. The company bases their business model around local involvement, grassroots systems that cater to the immediate community, and continual accountability. This article fills in some information gaps from the initial piece, "Fixes: A Light in India."

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  • To Beat Back Poverty, Pay the Poor

    Two columns on the most important new development program today, in use in at least 40 poor countries: give the poor cash payments, contingent on their use of health clinics and their children’s school attendance. These programs, which started in Mexico and Brazil, help the poor now and try to create a generation with less poverty in the future.

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  • Green Strategies for the Poorest

    The company that manufactures Lifestraw, a water purification device, has found a way to distribute their product to impoverished Kenyan families for free, while still making a profit. In the global carbon credit market, businesses receive carbon credits for projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. These credits can then be sold to companies who need to offset their carbon emissions, allowing green companies to make a profit off of their small ecological footprint.

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  • Clean Water at No Cost? Just Add Carbon Credits

    The company that manufactures Lifestraw, a water purification device, has found a way to distribute their product to impoverished Kenyan families for free, while still making a profit. In the global carbon credit market, businesses receive carbon credits for projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. These credits can then be sold to companies who need to offset their carbon emissions, allowing green companies to make a profit off of their small ecological footprint.

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  • Health Care and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

    In a mountainous region of Lesotho, a man named Tsepo Kotelo visits 20 villages every week on his new motorcycle to provide health care to local villagers. The Elton John AIDS Foundation gifted the motorcycles to Kotelo and his colleagues, allowing them to increase the number of patients they visit by 600 percent. An organization called Riders for Health helps maintain the bikes, ensuring that remote villages will continue to receive medical care.

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  • Harnessing the Wind with Scrap

    A bright young man named William took it upon himself to bring electricity to his small, rural village in Malawi, despite having few resources at his disposal. William invented a windmill using recycled materials, and successfully generated power for his home. His incredible ingenuity attracted international attention, inspiring others as far away as Portsmouth University to design windmills that are financially and physically accessible for the world's rural poor living off the grid.

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  • Social Entrepreneur Peru: Albina Ruiz and the Ciudad Saludable

    Albina Ruiz, founder of the social enterprise Ciudad Saludable, works with people living in areas dominated by the trash dump to create a more formal system of waste removal for their health and the wider city's cleanliness. Workers who collect and recycle the waste are now employed by the city, own a micro-business, and no longer work under a social stigma. At the same time their efforts to clean up the city are working well, and the model is spreading to other Peruvian cities.

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  • Success in the Big Apple: New York City finds path for mentally ill / Housing homeless before treatment bucks conventional wisdom

    In San Francisco, 23 percent of homeless people return to the street after transitional housing programs. A New York program gives the mentally ill and homeless individual apartments alongside average New Yorkers and has had an 84 percent retention rate.

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