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PETSTAR: Adding Value to the Chain of Recycling While Improving the Scavengers’ Working Conditions

With about 85,000 tons of waste generated every day, Mexico is the 10th largest garbage producer in the world. At the same time, tens of thousands of scavengers, including children, are making a living by collecting saleable items from open-air dumps in very poor, informal conditions.

Strategic partnerships improve child health in Mali

Pésinet, devised in 2002 by Brussels-based Afrique Initiatives, is an early warning method for monitoring the health conditions of children from low-income families. Its concept is simple: mothers subscribe to Pésinet’s services for a nominal fee, and in return a local Pésinet representative weighs...

Vodafone and Safaricom Kenya: Extending the Range and Reliability of Financial Services to the Poor in Rural Kenya

Kenya has fewer than 2 million bank accounts serving 32 million people. To bridge the gap, Safaricom Kenya, one of two mobile service providers in Kenya, developed a technological solution in partnership with Vodafone. The result was MPESA, an electronic money transfer product to make financial...

Integrated Tamale Fruit Company: Organic Mangoes Improving Livelihoods for the Poor in Ghana

The Integrated Tamale Fruit Company—operating in the Savelugu-Nanton District in Ghana’s Northern Region, an area of widespread poverty—cultivates certified organic mangos for local and export markets. To boost its power in the export market with higher production volumes, the company established a...

A to Z Textile Mills: A Public Private Partnership Providing Long-Lasting Anti-Malaria Bed Nets to the Poor in Tanzania

Malaria, transmitted through mosquito bites, kills a million people worldwide each year. In 2004, A to Z Textile Mills of Tanzania became the sole African producer of long-lasting insecticide treated bed nets, able to kill mosquitoes on contact for five years without retreatment and resistant to...

Partnerships bring fuel services to northern Mozambique medical clinics

In a country with 500 doctors for almost 20 million people, initiatives that can expand the reach of health services to rural people are in critical demand but in short supply. In northern Mozambique, the big challenge for health clinics is the lack of reliable fuel to light medical operations and...

UNILAB supports Governments campaign to make medicine accessible to the poor

The market price of medicines in the Philippines is among the highest in the world—40%–70% more than in neighbouring countries, according to the Philippine Department of Health. Some drugs cost 10 times more in the Philippines than in neighbouring countries.

Sustainable Cashew Production in Guinea

Guinea grows about 5,000 tons of raw cashew nuts a year. Meanwhile, its much smaller neighbour Guinea-Bissau, with similar soil and climate, produces 80,000 tons. Encouraged by the growing consumer demand for cashews, Guinea has begun to focus on expanding cashew production—a good candidate for...

Rajawali’s Express Taxi: Working with Taxi Drivers as Business Partners in Indonesia

The 1997 Asian financial crisis created a job vacuum in Indonesia, with companies forced to lay off 1.4 million workers. A decade later, unemployment rates continue to rise and poverty defines the context for Indonesia’s economy, social relations and security. Express Taxi, a subsidiary of the...

Smart Communications: Low-cost Money Transfers for Overseas Filipino Workers

A leading wireless telephone services provider in the Philippines, Smart Communications, Inc. recognized that at least 8 million Filipinos work and live abroad—about a quarter of the domestic labour force. In 2005, Filipino workers overseas sent $10.7 billion in remittances, with at least as much...

Central Asia, Kyrgyzstan - Creating Value for All: Community-Based Tourism

Tourism is a rapidly growing industry throughout the world. It can contribute to poverty alleviation through creating new jobs and providing entrepreneurial opportunities for people from a variety of backgrounds, skills and experiences. Community-based tourism - a type of tourism that is owned and...

Construmex: Facilitating Remote Housing Investments for US-based Mexican Migrants

Construmex, an initiative of Mexican construction and building giant CEMEX, was launched after the company’s success with Patrimonio Hoy, a socially minded business initiative targeted at low-income consumers. Since its inception in 2001, Construmex has helped more than 14,000 Mexican migrants in...

Edison International contributes to Asian Tsunami disaster relief

It is not often that the world’s collective sense of solidarity and compassion is captured by a single event. The earthquake-spawned tsunami that ravaged so many countries in southern Asia and eastern Africa in December 2004 was one such event. Proving once again how committed they are to making a...

LUSH lends its support to National Refugee Week 2009

Shoppers at cosmetics store LUSH have passed on their messages of support onto people seeking asylum and refugees as the high street chain marked national Refugee Week 2009. LUSH, which teamed up with Refugee Action for the second time to mark the annual celebrations, donated bars of LUSH soap. The...

Delta Partners and Ericsson support mobile application that reconnects refugees with loved ones

In support of the hundreds of thousands of refugees who have fled from conflict and disaster areas, Refugees United with Ericsson and Refugees United, in partnership with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and mobile operator MTN in Uganda, have launched the first project to...

KPMG, partnering with the Refugee Council, helps refugees through its mentoring programme

Since 2005, KPMG has partnered with the Refugee Council UK to help refugees with experience working in the finance industry in their countries of origin overcome barriers to employment in the UK. It does this through a mentorship program which partners KPMG volunteers with refugees to guide them...

ITT partners with Mercy Corps to provide emergency relief

ITT Corporation announced a strategic partnership with Mercy Corps as part of its corporate philanthropy program, ITT Watermark. The partnership includes a three-year, $1 million commitment to help provide safe water during emergencies created by natural catastrophes such as floods, droughts and...

Verizon Foundation partners with World Vision and Food for the Poor to assist relief efforts in Haiti

The Verizon Foundation has awarded an additional $100,000 in grants to Food For The Poor and World Vision to assist ongoing relief efforts in Haiti in response to a cholera outbreak and in the aftermath of Hurricane Tomas and the 7.0 earthquake that hit the island earlier this year. Grants will...

Air Miles and Etihad Airways raises 11.4 million air miles for Medecins Sans Frontieres

Air Miles, the Middle East's leading multi-participant loyalty programme, has partnered with its UAE cardholders to raise a whopping 11.4 million Air Miles for Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), an international medical and humanitarian aid organisation.

IKEA Foundation provides a $3.8million grant to Refugees United

Refugees United, a non-profit that has developed the world’s first online, mobile phone-enabled tracing service to help reconnect individuals separated by war or natural disaster, announced today it had received a $3.8 million grant from IKEA Foundation. The two year partnership will enable...