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Pot-in-pot Enterprise: Fridge for the Poor

In 2000, Mohammed Bah Abba was awarded the Rolex Award for Enterprise for his innovative Pot-in-Pot system to provide affordable, electricity free, refrigeration in arid Nigeria.

Reuters Market Light: Creating Efficient Markets

Reuters Market Light (RML), a business incubated by Thomson Reuters, is a pioneering mobile phone-based agri information service provider. The service is designed to provide farmers with personalised timely and actionable agricultural information from pre-sowing to post-harvest stages through SMS...

Saraman builds earthquake- proof houses in Iran

Saraman, a start-up company in Isfahan, central Iran, is an example of addressing housing and construction challenges in a profitable way. The company designs, fabricates and erects affordable, earthquake-proof pre-fabricated steel structures for houses, schools and hospitals.

Vitmark includes the poor in its value chain.

Vitmark, a leading beverages producer in Ukraine, includes the poor at various points of its value chain: as suppliers of locally grown quality produce, as employees, and as low-income consumers through the offering of low-price juices.

SELCO makes solar-lighting accessible to poor families in India

SELCO India is a Bangalore‐based social enterprise that makes solar lighting technology accessible to economically impoverished people in India.

Mobile Telesystems (MTS) helps to improve health in Belarus

MobileTeleSystems (MTS), the largest cell phone provider in Belarus, provides telecommunication services to hospitals, while also improving the health care of the poor.

A Little World: Facilitating Safe and Efficient M-Banking in Rural India

A Little World (ALW)is an Indian company facilitating safe and efficient mobile-banking in rural India by offering a secure, low‐cost technology driven delivery platform for financial services through special mobile phones.

Cafédirect: A Fairtrade Pioneer

Cafédirect is one of Fairtrade’s longest standing partners and licensees. Founded in 1989 in response to the collapse of international coffee prices, cafédirect even preceded the FAIRTRADE Mark in the UK, which was introduced three years later.

Partners create 'fair-trade tourism' packages in South Africa

South African Tourism is teaming with independent, nonprofit NGO Fair Trade in Tourism South Africa to develop fair-trade tourism packages with outbound tour operators in leading source markets and step up a decade-old effort to promote the country as one of the world’s leading fair-trade tourism...

Women artisans given business opportunities in Rwanda

Indego Africa is an NGO and a fair-trade online retailer. The organisation partners with small Rwandan "cooperatives", women artisan owned and operated producers of traditional baskets, bags, and other local products, and connects them to the growing global market for African inspired handicrafts,...

KPMG supports Fairtrade Africa

BRIGHT is KPMG Europe’s first skills-based pro-bono project that supports the Millennium Development Goals. The global financial services group aims to support capacity building in the core areas of finance, risk management, operational excellence, human resources, IT and marketing. During 2011,...

HSBC and Bandhan help family to purchase rickshaws

Shukla's husband was a rickshaw puller. He rented a rickshaw for 25 to 30 rupees per day and earned around 2,200 rupees per month. After learning about microfinance loans provided by Bandhan, a microfinance institution, Shukla approached them for a loan of 5,000 rupees which she received.

USAID helps to develop rural microfinance organisations in Mexico

USAID, through a university partnership between Ohio State University and Colegio de Postgraduados en Ciencias Agrícolas, is working to facilitate the development and growth of microfinance institutions serving rural areas in Mexico.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation makes financial services accessible to the poor

The Financial Services for the Poor initiative created by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation provides poor people with reliable access to a range of safe, affordable financial tools and services intended to help them build better, healthier lives.

Santander Microcrédito (Banco Real ABN AMRO) works with Accion to support small businesses in Brazil

Santander Microcrédito, an initiative by Banco Real ABN AMRO, offers small loans to growing businesses that lack access to conventional forms of credit.

Citi Microfinance: Expanding Access to Financial Services

The global financial services company, Citi, has a 40-year history of philanthropic and technical support in microfinance.

Societe Generale: Microfinance helps to grow local economies

Societe Generale focuses its microfinance activities in those countries in which the Group provides universal banking products and services.

Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) in Nepal lends directly to small farmers

Standard Chartered started developing a formal microfinance programme in 2004, and is now active in Nepal, India, Pakistan, Ghana and Bangladesh.

Zanzibar takes part in the United Nations’ Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) program

Zanzibar takes part in the United Nations’ Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) program, which will pay poor tropical countries to protect their forest as a way of reducing carbon emissions and curbing climate change.

Banks team up with Endeavour to provide training for SMEs in Brazil

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) is teaming up with Banco Itaú and Endeavour Brazil to provide training for small and medium-sized companies in Brazil that are interested in developing high-quality products and services to the neediest population in the country, in the so-called base of...