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At the World Economic Forum in Davos recently, a diminutive figure in a brightly coloured suit could be seen stalking the hallowed halls of business and finance, casting fear into the most imposing of corporate leaders, albeit with easy smiles and endless diplomatic charm.

Barbara Stocking, the first female director of Oxfam, is on a mission to persuade business to assist in the charity's goal of improving the lives of the poor. "People want to see me for one of two reasons: they fear what Oxfam might do to them if they don't [or], in the best case, they realise we have mutual interests on development and poverty and can really work together," she says.

Ms Stocking believes that the private sector's ultimate object of making money is aligned with improving the lives of people in poverty, and she says that there is a "major opportunity" for wealth creation. "Poor people are in trade. They are not in employment in big services, [but they] are selling their own produce. Once you understand that, you start seeing how the private sector can engage with poor people."

For too long, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) did not talk to business, she says. Now, the charity is making an effort to speak the language of business. Ms Stocking, a former NHS official, says that she has learnt the meaning of "patient capital".

She sees a big change away from the notion of corporate social responsibility, which she says is often treated as an add-on. Instead, companies are addressing how to carry out their core business in emerging markets. "It is fine and terrific building schools or putting in a health centre. But people have moved on," she says

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Local handmade paper and products marketer and sales agent Phumani Paper is actively involved in assisting community-based enterprises to diversify their income base by introducing innovative products. One of these products is the ecofuel briquette.

University of Johannesburg (UJ) associate professor in the Faculty of Art Design and Architecture Kim Berman explains that the fuel briquette is a round disc made of slightly decomposed and compressed plant matter, with a hole in the centre to allow the flame to breathe and burn.

"The technology of recycling agricultural waste in Phumani Paper craft enterprises around the country provides a synergy in that the waste materials from the handmade papermaking process, including the use of waste plant and paper fibre, used water and rotting or leftover paper pulp, can all be recycled to manufacture fuel briquettes. "These briquettes can be used as an alter- native energy source (for cooking and heating) and contribute to environmental conservation," she says.

She explains that, as an alternative source of energy, the ecofuel briquette has several additional benefits in the South African context: it is a cheap and efficient source of energy and can assist in job creation; it can preserve indigenous biodiversity through the use of invasive plant species (as raw material); it can boost the local economy; and it is lightweight and can, therefore, be carried over long distances.

The research process of the ecofuel brick project consists of a network of collaborators from different disciplines, based at UJ. The aim is to develop an economically viable and marketable new product to introduce into some of the Phumani Paper enterprises, she adds.

Phumani Paper was originally set up in 2000 as a government-funded poverty alleviation project of the former Technikon Witwatersrand (now UJ) to establish a new cultural industry in handmade paper production in South Africa. It is registered as an independent Section 21 nonprofit company and has developed small business enterprises in handmade papermaking and craft production across the country.

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Three days a month, Annalita is too embarrassed to go to school.

The Rwandan teen, like millions of her peers worldwide, is menstruating. Her family can't afford sanitary pads, so Annalita makes do with what few materials she can find including rags, bark and mud.

But these makeshift pads are usually ineffective. Rather than focusing on her studies, Annalita spends her day anxious about a potential accident in front of her classmates.

She also worries about embarrassment in her community. Menstruation carries a stigma of uncleanliness. Considering she can't openly wash and dry her rags, walking home in soiled clothing would bring her further shame.

"If you have pads when you are travelling it would be easy," said Annalita at a meeting run by community health workers. There in the crowded, dirt-floored room it had taken some time for her to start talking. Soon though, everyone became eager to discuss the dilemma. "That would help you to continue with your daily programs and let you go where you wanted to go and do what you wanted to do."

Menstruation is rarely viewed as a pressing issue in developing nations. But, as community health workers encourage girls like Annalita to talk, they uncover a staggering problem. Every year, women and girls miss on average 50 days of work or school because they can't afford effective sanitary pads.

For Annalita, this could amount to 5 years of lost potential as she hides due to shame.

But, Elizabeth Scharpf wants Annalita to be free of embarrassment every day of the month.

"I think you have to understand what resonates with each group of people," says the founder of Sustainable Health Enterprises, a social enterprise focusing on market-based approaches to development. "For example, when we talk to the Rwandan Minister of Finance, we talk about the economic consequences of girls not going to school. We talk about the future of the country."

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Narayan Ramachandran, Ex-Country Head and Managing Director of Morgan Stanley India has decided to focus on financial inclusion of the urban poor. He has been now appointed as the Director on the board of Janalakshmi Financial Services run by Ramesh Ramanathan, who is the Chairman of the organisation.

Here is a verbatim transcript of an exclusive interview with Narayan Ramachandran and Ramesh Ramanathan on CNBC-TV18. Also watch the accompanying video.

Q: How does it feel to be the Director on board of Janalakshmi Financial Services?

Ramachandran: I wanted to be associated with this organisation. It's almost as if I designed what I wanted to do. It's bang in the space of where I wanted to be, which is opening out financial access to sections of the population that probably easily defined as underserved but not just in credit, which is what's happening now but also beyond that.

Q: You have some ambitious plans for Janalakshmi. Can you outline some of those for us?

Ramanathan: There is a lot of experimentation going on, on how do we do justice to the issues of financial inclusion, but harnessing market forces while you are keeping the social agenda intact. It's a difficult kind of a line to walk across. So, one ambition for Janalakshmi is that we have created a unique two tier structure. We have a not for profit holding company in which all the promoter stake is kept but we have an operating company in which there is no confusion, it's a market driven organization, its going to raise money from investors, its going to hire good people and reward them well. We want to make this two tier structure work, which is the concept of a social business doing just as both legs of the stool.

We are very ambitious for what we think needs to be done for financial inclusion. We have certain focus which is urban poor, the urban underserved as Narayan would like to call it. It's a huge issue and it's not unfortunately on the radar screen of most people. It's one of those creeping issues that it is only growing because India has already 300 million people in urban India. It's going to be 600 million people, 40% of whom do not even have any access to financial services. So we hope that we can play a big role in addressing that issue.

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The classic way for a country to work its way out of poverty is to build a textiles industry. And if you're a developing country today looking to get into the textiles business -- making pants, shirts, that kind of thing -- you have to have a trade deal with the U.S.

Adam Davidson and Chana Joffe-Walt have been reporting recently on the effort by Haitian businesspeople to land a better trade deal with the U.S. (They did a podcast on the subject last week, and they have a story airing today on All Things Considered.)

To understand just how important trade deals are, I wanted to see the cost of some basic article of clothing -- a pair of jeans, say -- made in different countries. I tracked down Kristie Tippner, a retail strategist at Kurt Salmon Associates, a company that helps retailers figure out this sort of thing.

She put together the table below. It breaks down all the costs of making, shipping and importing jeans from different countries to the U.S. (These are basic jeans that would retail for about $20 to $40.)

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Incubated by Microsoft, Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC), and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) for the past five years as Telecentre.org, the new Telecentre.org Foundation will be launched on March 3 as an independent NGO. "With 200 organizational partners in 70 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Europe, we are facilitating the telecommunications movement in remote rural communities around the world," according to Basheerhamad Shadrach, Ph.D. in a private interview with me yesterday. Shadrach, Senior Program Officer at the organization, will become the CEO of the new Telecentre.org Foundation on Wednesday.

Here's the model: Telecentres are set up in remote rural areas, where people from the community come to be trained by telecentre managers to use information and communication technologies (ICTs)-computers, for the most part-to gain valuable information, such as new and better practices for farming and agriculture, thereby increasing their incomes. Additionally, people use the internet to communicate with doctors for diagnoses of glaucoma, cataracts, malaria, AIDS/HIV, tuberculosis, and other medical matters. Based on the patients' needs, arrangements are made via nearby clinics or hospitals for medications, surgery, and so on. The costs of the medical care are actually covered by various charities and global inter-development aid organizations.

There's more: Telecentre managers, called "rural knowledge workers" are trained at theTelecentre.org Academy, which is hosted in 14 universities around the world. The curriculum is already translated into 20 languages, and also localized and adapted based on community needs. The telecentre managers not only staff the telecentres to promote skills development among community members, but the managers themselves gain opportunities to further advance themselves by moving on beyond their telecentre management certificates, to diplomas, and then to MBAs in social entrepreneurship.

Akhtar Badshah, Ph.D., Senior Director, Microsoft Global Community Affairs, explained to me why this NGO enterprise is the ideal partnership for Microsoft. "Through this corporate-NGO-government partnership, we ensure that every individual in the world who wants to can learn basic information technology skills to achieve economic and/or social empowerment." Badshah says that he has "travelled around the world, meeting with people who use telecentres in remote locations. One community of families I met live in caves in Inner Mongolia; they used the internet to learn how to apply the use of terraces, greenhouse farming, and drip irrigation to grow a greater variety of plants and crops, thereby increasing their incomes, and making it possible for their children to go to school (rather than having to farm)." Badshah adds that the telecentres are available to all people including children, women, seniors, and people who are disabled.

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Microfinance is in the news, again for the wrong reasons. Five years ago, it was tension over multiple lending and coercive recovery in Andhra Pradesh. Now it is Muslim community leaders in a couple of districts in Karnataka issuing a fiat to their members to renege on microfinance institution (MFI) loan repayments as they do not approve of such borrowings. What's worse, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has issued a severe warning to MFIs against wrong practices. RBI's main concern, reports indicate, is benami lending, re-lending to cover up bad loans and poor governance.

But these are not the ultimate concerns. If this was all then the large number of unhealthy and unprofessional MFIs would wither away, ending the sector's exponential growth. The bigger problem, say insiders, lies not with failures but successes. The original founders of the industry are increasingly exiting in favour of private equity (PE) funds, enabling some founders to encash at $100 million or more and thereby establishing MFI valuations at even half a billion dollars! The PE funds are seeking at least 20 per cent return on equity. If anybody dreamed of microfinance becoming mainstream and getting global funding then this is it.

Some of the best MFIs are hiring top managers, who have seen their prospects dimmed by the global financial crisis, at annual compensations of Rs 8-9 crore. Some of the best professionally-run MFIs are getting ready to come out with public issues, which will allow a partial, highly-profitable exit for the PE funds.

The entry of PE funds into the best and the biggest MFIs brings in resources and professional management practices. This aids growth and a fall in costs, leading to the high rates of return. RBI is upset that the fruits of healthy growth are not being passed on to the borrowers via lower lending rates, which remain in the 26-30 per cent range. If this continues, the central bank threatens, it will stop categorising loans to MFIs as priority-sector lending, thus making it difficult for them to access bank loans at around 12 per cent and onlend.

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While direct sales presents a potential career path for Americans looking for work, most of the growth for companies like Tupperware and Avon is happening abroad-specifically, in emerging markets like Africa and Indonesia. The presence of these companies in poor nations have provided a much-needed chance for women to gain economic independence. It's been a successful partnership on both sides, and the impact of these companies is starting to attract attention. Rick Goings, the CEO ofTupperware, recently returning from the World Economic Forum at Davos, where "more and more people are starting to talk about our kind of business," he says. "Even in Davos, they're talking about the Tupperware effect."

What is the Tupperware effect? It's when direct-sales companies go into developing markets and, in the course of building their business, build up the opportunities for the women that work with them. "We will provide her microfinancing, we will train her, we will provide her with a coach and a mentor," he says, noting that these services are free of charge. Tupperware has also developed specific products specifically for women in developing nations. Because many of the women served by these markets don't have access to electricity, they developed the  Quick Chef, a hand-crank operated food processor. (Goings notes that the Quick Chef is now also a popular seller in European markets.)

By giving women the tools they need to get started, as well as a product line friendly to the needs and resources of women in developing nations, Goings predicts a revolution of sorts. "When she tastes success, she gains confidence. And confidence equals influence. All of the sudden, she starts to change, and that influence spreads to her family, to relatives, to the streets she lives on, and the community she's part of."

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New York, NY (PRWEB) March 2, 2010 -- Acumen Fund, a nonprofit venture firm addressing poverty in South Asia and East Africa, today announced a new investment in Husk Power Systems (HPS), an innovative rural electrification company that will establish decentralized power generation to remote villages in India. The company uses novel biomass gasification technology to convert abundant rice husks into combustible gases, which then drive a generator to produce electricity. Acumen Fund invested US$375,000 in HPS, adding to the US$18 million Acumen Fund has already invested in India since 2001. The new investment continues Acumen's commitment to investing in safe energy alternatives for the poor. 

"As both developed and developing nations search for alternative sources of energy in response to the growing energy crisis, we at Acumen Fund believe that investing in entrepreneurs who provide innovative energy solutions is an increasingly critical part of the solution," said Jacqueline Novogratz, CEO, Acumen Fund. "Companies like Husk Power Systems are working to impact positively not only the environment, but to ensure that someday everyone, including the poorest of the poor in rural India, will have access to clean and affordable electricity." 

Husk plans to set up 50 systems providing electricity to 125 villages by the end of 2010 with a long term vision of deploying 2000 plants reaching 5000 villages and over 20 million individuals, while creating 6000 jobs. HPS tackles the challenges faced by the rural villages in the region by providing clean, safe, and efficient electricity at affordable rates. A plant is installed along with low-voltage insulated wiring to each household, business, or farm, with Husk Power Systems charging subscription fees to each user according to the number and type of the electrical appliances they own.

"We pride ourselves in providing affordable and reliable electricity to rural areas at the lowest installation, distribution cost per watt and having intimate local knowledge and the expertise to manage relationships with each village," said Gyanesh Pandey, Co-Founder and CEO, Husk Power Systems. "Our goal is to have our model help to deliver rural electrification to India's villages and eventually to rural areas around the world."

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A Swedish entrepreneur is trying to market and sell a biodegradable plastic bag that acts as a single-use toilet for urban slums in the developing world.

Once used, the bag can be knotted and buried, and a layer of urea crystals breaks down the waste into fertilizer, killing off disease-producing pathogens found in feces.

The bag, called the Peepoo, is the brainchild of Anders Wilhelmson, an architect and professor in Stockholm.

"Not only is it sanitary," said Mr. Wilhelmson, who has patented the bag, "they can reuse this to grow crops."

In his research, he found that urban slums in Kenya, despite being densely populated, had open spaces where waste could be buried.

He also found that slum dwellers there collected their excrement in a plastic bag and disposed of it by flinging it, calling it a "flyaway toilet" or a "helicopter toilet."

This inspired Mr. Wilhelmson to design the Peepoo, an environmentally friendly alternative that he is confident will turn a profit.

"People will say, 'It's valuable to me, but well priced,' " he said.

He plans to sell it for about 2 or 3 cents - comparable to the cost of an ordinary plastic bag.

In the developing world, an estimated 2.6 billion people, or about 40 percent of the earth's population, do not have access to a toilet, according to United Nations figures.

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