NextBillion.net - Development Through Enterprise - International Agency Funded

Digital Divide Data

Lauren Abendschein — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 17:11:33 -0500

Managing Organization: Digital Divide Data

Activity URL:

www.digitaldividedata.com

Activity Description: In developing countries like Cambodia and Laos, low levels of education and poverty reinforce each other. Young adults are often forced to forgo education and take unskilled low-wage jobs. The situation is even more difficult when compounded by a physical disability, deceased or missing parents, or when young women are subjected to the horrors of the sex trade. Digital Divide Data is connecting the power of education and training programs with real job opportunities for disadvantaged individuals.

BancoSol

Ethan Arpi — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 14:36:35 -0400

Managing Organization: BancoSol

Activity URL:

www.bancosol.com.bo

Activity Description:

BancoSol, the world's first private commercial bank to focus exclusively on microfinance, is located in La Paz and has 35 branches throughout Boliva. Using small loans, which average about $2,100, the bank works to meet the needs of Bolivia's microentrepreneurs and small business owners. Half of the bank's clients are women. The New York Times includes some information about BancoSol in this article, Fighting Poverty With $2-a-Day Jobs.

Foundation of Occupational Development

Ethan Arpi — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 12:13:41 -0400

Managing Organization: Foundation of Occupational Development

Activity URL:

http://foodindia.org.in/index.html

Activity Description:

Based in Madras, India, the Foundation of Occupational Development, or FOOD, is a non-profit organization that works to implement sustainable development projects that often involve ITC.

In a recent project, FOOD provided cellular technology and marketing information so that urban women could receive higher payments for their domestically produced goods. FOOD in partnership with infoDev established a closed group communication network for community based women organizations to promote inter-city direct sales of products made by artisans and skilled workers. This is accomplished by providing the community based organizations (CBOs) with communications links by way of cellular phones to enable them to network for marketing their products. Existing CBOs are organized in such a way that products made by CBOs in one city will be sent to a CBO in another city for marketing in their area.

Education and fuel efficient cook stoves in Morocco

_Alex Bloom — Thu, 25 May 2006 12:28:44 -0400

Managing Organization: Near East Foundation

Activity URL:

http://www.neareast.org/main/news/article.aspx?id=511

Activity Description:

In 1997, the NEF began working with 7 villages in Northern Morocco to promote female education and leadership by organizing local literacy initiatives and associating groups of rural women leaders.

The program has since expanded to 15 villages, and in collaboration with the U.S. State Department's Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI), NEF seeks to establish income-generating projects with one or more parent-teacher associations (PTAs) within these communities.

CROMABUL crop prices and ICT skills

_Alex Bloom — Mon, 22 May 2006 11:52:07 -0400

Managing Organization: Crop Marketing Bureau of Tanzania

Activity URL:

http://www.cromabul.com

Activity Description:

In 2001 the CROMABU project (www.cromabul.com) was designed to gather and disseminate relevant information regarding crop prices in local and international markets in English and Kiswahili to help empower micro and small enterprises. Youth, particularly ex-students from primary and secondary schools, are the key channel of communication between the CROMABU and the targeted small-scale farmers in Magu; they are employed as agents and use bicycles to collect and distribute all relevant documents to the villages.

LifeStraw water purifier

_Alex Bloom — Mon, 15 May 2006 15:08:21 -0400

Managing Organization: Vestergaard Frandsen Group

Activity URL:

http://www.lifestraw.com

Activity Description:

The Vestergaard-Frandsen group designs disease control textiles and distributes them profitably on a mass scale. One of their products, the LifeStraw, is a drinking straw with seven types of filters. It purifies up to 185 gallons of water, offering protection from waterborne diseases of major public concerns such as typhoid, cholera, dysentery and diarrhea. As a personal mobile water purification tool, LifeStraw is designed to turn surface water into drinking water.

East Delta Newlands Agricultural Services Project, Egypt

_Alex Bloom — Mon, 01 May 2006 16:26:34 -0400

Managing Organization: International Fund for Agricultural Development

Activity URL:

http://www.ifad.org/english/operations/pn/egy/i440eg/index.htm

Activity Description:

This seven-year project is being implemented in the recently reclaimed desert lands between the Suez Canal and the Nile Delta that are irrigated by the Al Salam Canal. The main objective is to support the settlement and agricultural production of about 26,000 families. Project initiatives include: building tertiary irrigation and drainage systems; providing safe drinking water to needy communities; supporting credit banks in extending their operations to the area; and establishing community organizations that can participate in management of the irrigation system.

Life Wrap for post-partum women

_Alex Bloom — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 16:09:55 -0500

Managing Organization: Women's Global Health Imperative

Activity URL:

http://www.wghi.org/research/nasg.htm

Activity Description: Maternal mortality is responsible for over 500,000 deaths globally every year. Obstetric hemorrhage contributes to the greatest proportion of maternal deaths and, in developing regions of the world, women die because there are often long delays between the occurrence of hemorrhage and treatment.

Funded by a MacArthur Foundation grant, the Women's Global Health Imperative is studying whether the "Life Wrap," a simple neoprene and Velcro device (much like the bottom half of a wet suit), may fill this deadly time delay.

Approtech Asia

_Alex Bloom — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 17:55:10 -0500

Managing Organization: Approtech Asia

Activity URL:

http://approtech.org/

Activity Description: The Asian Alliance of Appropriate Technology Practitioners Inc., (APPROTECH ASIA) was established in 1981, to increase the access of the poor to technologies and processes appropriate to their increasing needs and expanding capacities. Its primary role is to facilitate the sharing of appropriate technologies and cooperation among its member and partner-organizations.

Approtech Asia has on-going initiatives on improved cookstove, gasifier, energy-efficient kitchen, clean indoor air, gender-energy-water-poverty, micro-small-medium entrepreneurs (MSMEs) and energy, biofuels and women and rural industry, water-sanitation-hygiene-energy and poverty, green health, community-managed production and processing of herbal medicine, among others.

Solar Ovens Sterilize Hospital Waste

Courtland Walker — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 11:52:35 -0500

Managing Organization: Universidad Nacional Heredia, Costa Rica

Activity URL:

http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/OPPORTUNITIES/GRANTS/DEVMARKETPLACE/0,,contentMDK:20504756~menuPK:1519354~pagePK:180691

Activity Description: In partnership with the Hospital San Vicente de Paul, the Universidad Nacional of Costa Rica is introducing a solar oven as an environmentally-sound and cost-effective method of sterilizing hazardous hospital biological waste.