Poverty Solutions, Global Development

This post is part of a blogging series by economics students at the Presidio Graduate School’s MBA program. You can follow along here. By: Jenny Hoang The May 2011 Forbes Magazine cover story is titled, Megacities: The World’s Greatest Opportunity. The article, part of The Global 2000 special report that showcases the world’s biggest companies, [...]

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The American Security Project ASP, a non-profit, bipartisan public policy and research organization, has recently issued a series of 50 reports entitled Pay Now or Pay Later: A State by State Assessment of the Impact of Climate Change. The series turns the classic argument that it costs too much to do anything to prevent or [...]

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This post is part of a blogging series by economics students at the Presidio Graduate School’s MBA program. You can follow along here. By: Jonathan Gibson Sustainability is all about fundamentals; it’s about fairness, equality, responsibility, and paying as we go.  Underlying these fundamentals is the supply and demand of resources.  With fixed world resources, [...]

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On July 29th through August 1st this summer, Newark, New Jersey’s Lincoln Park will host its 5th Annual Music Festival.  And despite the impressive lineup (featuring the likes of Carrie Jackson, Adegoke Steve Colson, Lance Williams and True Worship, Keith Bailey & A.N.T, Danny Krivit, Kenny Bobien, Loleatta Holloway, and DJs Immortal Technique and 9th [...]

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For many years I have been loosely involved, through holiday volunteer days and sporadic donations, with a local nonprofit that serves the homeless and those at risk for becoming homeless. My connection with the organization has deepened however, since I started volunteering with the organization’s Development and Fundraising teams on a regular basis. I have [...]

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This post is part of a blogging series by marketing students at the Presidio Graduate School’s MBA program. You can follow along here. By Briana Krompier “A simple question to ask is, ‘How has the world of a child changed in the last 150 years?’ And the answer is, ‘It’s hard to imagine any way [...]

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Today, poverty is an epidemic. A startling portion of the world’s population dies from preventable diseases, our environmental resources are being depleted at unprecedented rates, and things we take for granted in first world countries — clean water, sufficient food, an opportunity for education — are impossible dreams elsewhere. We know these are issues, but [...]

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By: Maia Hirschbein There are people and families behind every product that we buy. As the local food movement grows in popularity and strength, so has the demand for a way to connect to the people and communities behind products that come from other parts of the world. The Hoop Fund, a crowd-funding platform that [...]

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This post is part of a blogging series by marketing students at the Presidio Graduate School’s MBA program. You can follow along here. By Jennifer Elks For many foodies, there’s something very appealing about homegrown produce, being able to pull your delicious rewards from the ground after patiently tending them for weeks or months. And [...]

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Coca-Cola and SABMiller, partnering with Oxfam, recently released a report that measures two countries’ poverty footprint. The report covers wages throughout their entire value chain.

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By Ned Breslin Millions of dollars are wasted every year on thousands of water projects around the world that break, become abandoned and prove to be unsustainable. And, every day women and children in developing countries are cruelly reminded of the short-lived hope of clean water when they pass by broken hand pumps or capped [...]

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The past few weeks I have been openly critical of Earth Hour (from WWF) and even 350.org because I believe they could do so much more to mobilize the world to really move the lever on climate change.  I personally believe that in order to change our trajectory on this planet, we need to make [...]

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I received an invitation last week from Marilyn Weiner, the co-producer of the PBS series Journey to Planet Earth (and several other series that she co-produced with her husband Hal), to attend the premiere screening of the film, Plan B: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, based on the book Plan B 4.0 by Lester Brown, author [...]

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The number of women within lending institution’s higher management has decreased over the past eight years, while the number of women receiving micro loans has skyrocketed globally. Women’s World Banking (WWB) believes that the decreasing number of women in leadership roles within financial institutions has severe consequences. The major concern is the importance of the [...]

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I was fortunate to be able to speak with Snehal Desai this week as part of our series on our Future of Drinking Water series. Snehal, or Sne as he is commonly known, is the Global Marketing Director for Dow Water and Process Solutions. We talked about the role of industry in the overall water [...]

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Yesterday, was World Water Day, the UN’s commemoration of our most precious resource. This year’s focus was on Water for Cities. I spent the day pretty well immersed in the subject (not literally, it was far too chilly here in New York for that), but virtually. I spent several hours transcribing a fascinating interview with [...]

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 The Urban Farming Guys are a group of self-proclaimed “revolutionaries” made up of 20 families who decided to move from suburbia to the inner-city of Kansas City, MO to start a community urban farm and sustainable living experiment.  The families all bought houses within a five block radius of one another, aiming to provide [...]

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As soon as I found out that I would have the opportunity to interview Michael Washburn, the new Sustainability Director of Nestlé Waters, I decided to make that the centerpiece of a new series on The Future of Drinking Water, featuring a number of interviews and guest contributors. Because this issue of clean, safe potable [...]

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The Mulago Foundation approaches funding social enterprise a bit differently than other foundations.  To sum it up in three words, it’s all about impact, impact, and impact.  There are tons of great ideas in the world.  But an idea only has impact when put into action.  The Mulago Foundation investment strategy focuses not on formulating [...]

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The way we do business is going to be changing and some sneak previews of those changes are popping up in some pretty unlikely places. Like Haiti, for example, where humanitarian compassion and high-tech savvy are coming together in an impressive demonstration of what is possible in the absence of a functional business infrastructure as [...]

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By Glen Low A couple weeks ago I was at home on a Saturday morning reading the Wall Street Journal when I began reading the articles Does Helping the Planet Hurt the Poor?, co-authored as counterpoint arguments by Peter Singer and Bjorn Lomborg.  I was excited to see a mainstream business journal tackling the weighty issue of poverty [...]

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While statistics on street children are difficult to verify, according to this UNICEF report, there are an estimated 230,000 in Indonesia alone.  This is mostly the result of lack of free public education for children, so families living below the poverty line cannot afford to send their kids to school and have little choice but [...]

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Given the complex set of interlocking issues and problems that confront our society today, it would be comforting to know that there were groups of very smart people from all disciplines and walks of life getting together somewhere out of the fray, stepping back to try and come up with solutions that can address these [...]

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I got the chance to sit down with Pamela Hawley,  co-founder of VolunteerMatch and founder of UniversalGiving.  Hawley is one of my favorite women in the social enterprise space.  A dynamic and ambitious leader, Hawley also has a side career in improv and acting.  Also, be sure to check out her heartwarming blog. Watch the interview to learn [...]

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By Hajera Blagg Big-name entrepreneurs like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett donate billions of dollars a year to charitable causes. While their contributions are certainly noble, a young budding entrepreneur from humble beginnings in India is bent on changing the world—through rice husks. New York Times blog “Fixes”, which produces a series of articles that [...]

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Oakland resident Tyrone “Baby Champ” Stevenson, inventor of the “scraper bike,” may not have known how big his idea would become when he rolled out his first prototype. Or perhaps he did. His creativity led to a scraper bike movement that is not only gaining momentum in the Bay Area, but is quickly becoming a [...]

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Benedicte de Blavous Moubarak founded 2B Design in 2004, with the idea that she could bring together people who may practice different religions, but were marginalized, often because of disabilities, and could not find gainful work. The result are pieces that reflect Beirut’s glorious past.

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By Jonathan Kalan, Founder of The (BoP) Project. This is the second installment from The (BoP) Project, a journey to discover, document, and share stories of remarkable social entrepreneurs, enterprises and innovations across east Africa. Michael Mwakilasa is not your typical Tanzanian entrepreneur. With a beaming smile, warm handshake, and a half-New-York, half-Tanzanian accented “Hey man!” [...]

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By Gerald McSwiggan and Taryn Bird. McSwiggan is the head of the U.S. Chamber BCLC Disaster Assistance and Recovery Program. Bird is the head of the Global Corporate Citizenship Program. This post originally appeared on the BCLC Blog. What is it about Haiti that keeps philanthropists and investors alike coming back? One year after the devastating earthquake, [...]

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There is one sure thing about people in prison…they have a lot of time on their hands. Unfortunately, in many people’s eyes, the prison system is broken and doesn’t do a good enough job of rehabilitating criminals. There are, however, innovative prison programs where inmates can contribute positively to society. Jole Rider, a UK based [...]

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