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Danone Poland: Affordable Milk Porridge for Low-Income Families
In 2006 Danone Poland launched a breakfast product which has a high nutritional value for children and is affordable for low-income consumers. A milk porridge product based on semolina and milk. Milk Start is enriched with vitamins and minerals. To make the initiative financially sustainable,...
Amanco: Providing Irrigation Systems to the Rural Poor
For decades, small farmers in Latin America have faced a grim outlook: low productivity and inefficiency. That was the background for the decision of Amanco, a subsidiary of the conglomerate GrupoNueva, to develop a hybrid value chain model for serving low-income markets. As part of that plan, the...
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...
Supply Chain Sustainability - A Practical Guide for Continuous Improvement for Small and Medium Enterprises
This two-page guide offers baseline definitions and practical steps that SMEs can take toward effective management of the social, environmental and economic impacts of supply chains. More information can be found on the website of the United Nations Global Impact Office. The organisation offers...
Venture capital for low-income markets in Latin America and the Caribbean
Investing in housing, healthcare, education, basic utilities and nutrition can not only fulfill a social mission, but can also be a profitable business venture.
The Brokering Guidebook - a guide to navigating effective sustainable development partnerships
The Brokering Guidebook, produced by IBLF in collaboration with Rio Tinto, UNDP and the UN System Staff College, illuminates the critical role played by brokers in a cross-sector partnership, and outlines the many tasks that a broker may have to carry out during the life of a partnership.
Opportunities for the Majority: Bank initiative that promotes and finances private sector business models
The Opportunities for the Majority (OMJ) Initiative promotes and finances market-based, sustainable business models that engage private sector companies, local governments and communities in the development and delivery of quality products and services for the majority of the population of Latin...
A discussion paper on social intrapreneurship
This paper produced by the Doughty Centre at the Cranfield University examines the potential value of social intrapreneurship, and provisionally defines a social intrapreneur as "a person within a large corporation who takes direct initiative for innovation which addresses social or environmental...
Scaling Up Inclusive Business: Advancing the Knowledge and Action Agenda
This is a report produced for the International Finance Corporation. It is based on 14 IFC client case studies and draws on other research undertaken by IFC and the CSR Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School on inclusive business, including recent research supported by the Bill & Melinda...