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In: Stories

Čistoća: the First System of Selective Waste Disposal in Montenegro

In order to maintain their town’s popularity as a tourist destination, the municipal officials of Herceg Novi realized that they needed to preserve natural resources by reducing waste and promoting recycling. As a result, the municipality decided to re-organize Čistoća, the public waste management...

In: Resources

Meeting the Challenge of Expanding Inclusive Business

Most people interested in inclusive business have heard the success stories: Coca-Cola has generated $550 million in additional revenues by integrating local entrepreneurs into their beverage distribution chain in markets across Africa. Vodafone – one of the world’s largest telecommunications firm...

In: Stories

Measuring the impact of Nestlé’s innovative distribution model for nutritional food in Peru

In the context of the WBCSD-SNV Alliance for Inclusive Business, SNV has helped Nestlé Peru develop a new distribution model aimed at reaching new markets while providing a livelihood for women entrepreneurs and improving the health and wellbeing of families in urban areas in Lima.

In: Stories

Linking Traditional Banking with Modern Finance: Barclays Microbanking - Susu Collectors Initiative

Susu collection, practiced for more three centuries in Africa, is an informal arrangement for mobilizing savings deposits from clients. Operators collect a predetermined installment of money from their client, daily or weekly. With about 4,000 active Susu collectors in Ghana and each serving...

In: Stories

Sanofi-aventis and WHO partner to fight sleeping sickness in Africa

Sanofi-aventis, the largest pharmaceutical company in Europe and the fourth-largest in the world, began a partnership with the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2001 to fight sleeping sickness and other neglected diseases affecting the world’s poorest people.

In: Stories

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,...

In: Stories

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...

In: Stories

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.

In: Stories

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...

In: Stories

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...

In: Stories

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...

In: Stories

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...

In: Stories

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...

In: Stories

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...

In: Stories

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...

In: Resources

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.

In: Resources

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...

In: Resources

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...

In: Resources

Business Models that Make a Difference

This is a publication produced by IFC (the International Finance Corporation) arguing that inclusive business models are good for business.

In: News

Restaurants Help Romanian Orphans

After the execution in 1989 of the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu and the corresponding fall of the communist government, the world’s press got its first look at the horrendous conditions that Romanian orphans had been living in. Lack of basic care and attention left many of the children...