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Mapping the Path to Full Financial Inclusion
When attempting to solve a complex development challenge, we often jump from creating ambitious goals to making plans, without first identifying who we need to reach with our goals, where those people reside, and what challenge and opportunities they face. That’s why one of the underappreciated keys to meeting a development goal is to draw a map - and why maps provide the theme for this year's State of the Microcredit Summit Campaign Report: Mapping Pathways out of Poverty.
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- Uncategorized
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Big Data isn’t Enough: We Need an ‘All of the Above’ Strategy to Drive Innovation in Financial Inclusion
Researchers love talking about their data and methods as a “toolbox,” and with the rise of big data, they’ve got a fancy new tool. However, the reason for carrying a toolbox is that there are very few projects where just one tool, no matter how powerful, is sufficient to get the job done. It’s necessary to recognize the weaknesses of big data as well as its strengths, and to think about what other types of data are needed to complement it.
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- Technology
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Evaluation that Creates Value for Participants: A Client-Centric Approach
Too often, the process of collecting data to evaluate impact, regardless of the intent, feels extractive to the research participants. Extractive industries are those that obtain natural resources from the earth without provision for the potential negative consequences of extraction. Similarly, some evaluations extract data from disadvantaged communities without providing any benefit in return. How Root Capital has taken a more client-centric approach.
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- Agriculture, Impact Assessment
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- research
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Consent as Conversation: Lean research in vulnerable settings
Whether research unfolds in Harvard Square or a remote village, in our home communities or in a context with which we are newly familiar, we hope to question our assumptions on agency, power, risk, and vulnerability. In this post, the authors focus on making informed consent a truly meaningful process, particularly when conducting research in vulnerable settings.
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- Education, Impact Assessment
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Google India report: Mobile growth shaping India’s internet usage
Google India has put out a report which captures the incredible pace of Internet growth that India is witnessing.
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- Technology
- Region
- South Asia
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- research
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Microfinance Clients Make Their Voices Heard: New research reveals their thoughts on how they’re treated by providers
The Smart Campaign has released the results from its Client Voices project, a four-country research investigation that directly asked clients about their experiences with financial providers and their thoughts on what constitutes good and bad treatment. The project features research from Georgia, Peru, Benin and Pakistan, based on face-to-face conversations with thousands of lower-income microfinance clients.
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- Uncategorized
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NexThought Monday – Lean Research: Introducing a Movement for Change
When used as a guiding framework, the principles of lean research have the potential to improve the quality and accuracy of the data gathered by social enterprises and other organizations, increase the usefulness of the data and enable the research process to generate benefits for communities, including improved relationships with local stakeholders and greater access to data for decision-making.
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- Impact Assessment
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Viewpoint: Gene Drives Need Global Policing
Medical and biological research is being transformed by a powerful new form of genetic editing, known by the acronym Crispr. Based on a naturally-occurring system in bacteria, Crispr enables scientists to precisely alter the genetic code of any organism they can lay their hands on – humans included.
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- Health Care, Technology
- Region
- Latin America
