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Can Social Enterprise Help 700 Million Who Lack Access to Clean Water?
The problem of global water access is as intransigent as they come. Some 768 million people – more than the population of Europe – still lack access to clean water. Likewise, this year’s Millennium Development Goal target of halving the number of people without sanitation will be missed by 8% – that’s half a billion people.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Health Care
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Traditional Divisions Between NGOs, Charities, and Businesses Are Blurring With New Collaborative Projects on Water
The problem of global water access is as intransigent as they come. Some 768 million people – more than the population of Europe – still lack access to clean water. Likewise, this year’s Millennium Development Goal target of halving the number of people without sanitation will be missed by 8% – that’s half a billion people.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Health Care
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Medical Researchers Challenged to Create an Affordable Dialysis Machine to Treat People in Remote Communities
Three leading health organisations have set medical researchers a challenge to make an affordable dialysis machine capable of using non-purified water as new figures show more people will experience terminal kidney failure.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Education, Health Care
- Tags
- research
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Lending to Poor Farmers: Seeding the Market
“Coffee is our gateway drug,” jokes Willy Foote, founder of Root Capital. “Then we move on to harder stuff, like cocoa, cashews, quinoa and sorghum.” That is how the firm got started in 1999, after Mr Foote quit his job as a Wall Street analyst, lending $73,000 to a coffee (and cardamom) co-operative in Guatemala. It has since expanded to 25 countries in Latin America and Africa, and in December set up shop in Indonesia, with a loan of $550,000 to an organic coffee co-operative.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Tags
- lending
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Toilet Could Turn Urine Into Electricity at Refugee Camps
An innovative urinal could turn pee into a source of electricity. Driven to find a way to protect women and girls in refugee camps who are often assaulted when they go to the bathroom at night, researchers at the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol) have devised a urinal that lights up when a person uses it.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Energy, Health Care
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Phone Camera Checks Water for Arsenic
UK scientists have developed a mobile phone-based system to help people avoid drinking water contaminated with arsenic.1 The phone’s camera measures quantum dot fluorescence in response to arsenic, achieving a limit of detection as low as 5µM.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Health Care, Technology
- Region
- Europe & Eurasia
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Grameen Launches Media Project for Ghana Smallholders
A new initiative has been launched to increase food security for small holder farmers in five regions in Ghana. The initiative - ICT Challenge – is a partnership between the Grameen Foundation, Farm Radio International and Digital Green.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Health Care, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- nutrition
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Remittances to Developing Nations to Hit $500 Billion in 2015 – U.N. Official
An estimated 230 million migrants will send $500 billion in remittances to developing countries in 2015, a flow of capital expected to do more to reduce poverty than all development aid combined, a senior official of the U.N. agricultural bank said.
- Categories
- Agriculture
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