Jacqueline Novogratz is pioneering new ways of tackling poverty. In her view, traditional charity rarely delivers lasting results. Her solution, outlined here through a series of revealing personal stories, is "patient capital": support for "bottom of the pyramid" businesses which the commercial market alone couldn't provide. The result: sustainable jobs, goods, services -- and dignity -- for the world's poorest.
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So, you may or may not recall that last week, Matt Nisbet posted about a study purporting to show that religious people were more generous in their charitable giving than atheists. One of his commenters opted to go for the "sour grapes" response, claiming that religious charities were all stupid,…
Fair working standards for construction workers and financial profit for developers aren't incompatible, according to a new report from Texas' Workers Defense Project. In fact, consumers are actually willing to pay more to live in places built on principles of safety, economic justice and dignity.…
Over at Framing Science, Matthew Nisbet notes a survey about poverty which finds, among other things, that atheists are less likely to take part in anti-poverty efforts. There are a number of good reasons to be skeptical of this survey, which I'll mention at the end of this post, but Nisbet seems…
Another list of books for your reading and collection development pleasure.
Abelard to Apple: The Fate of American Colleges and Universities by Richard A. DeMillo
When academics get together to talk about the future, they talk mainly to each other, but the American system of higher education has…
Kiva. Micro-lending to some of the poorest third-world entrepreneurs at the very bottom of the "pyramid." Here's our portfolio of loans, all made within the last couple of weeks. Kiva has had such good response that they've limited it to $25/lender to accommodate all those who want to loan -- social investing can work.
Make that $25/lender/recipient.
Hm. The comment to which the "25/lender/recipient" edit above was applicable isn't there. I'll repeat it, in case I screwed something up.
Kiva. Micro-lending to some of the poorest third-world entrepreneurs at the very bottom of the "pyramid." Here's our portfolio of loans, all made within the last couple of weeks. Kiva has had such good response that they've limited it to $25/lender to accommodate all those who want to loan -- social investing can work.
Of course microfinance is not a new idea, Muhammed Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for creating it in Bangladesh in the early 1970's. It is a great idea, but is inherently limited by the size of businesses that can be created in these countries. The virtue of these small businesses is that they are too small to by stymied by the rampant corruption and lack of governmental and legal infrastructure within these countries. The problem is not everyone can be an entrepeneur and the employment opportunities for those who are not are going to be limited until larger enterprises can be created.