Related Research Articles
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), a merging of the William H. Gates Foundation and the Gates Learning Foundation, is an American private foundation founded by Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates. Based in Seattle, Washington, it was launched in 2000 and is reported as of 2020 to be the second largest charitable foundation in the world, holding $49.8 billion in assets. On his 43rd birthday, Bill Gates gave the foundation $1 billion. The primary stated goals of the foundation are to enhance healthcare and reduce extreme poverty across the world, and to expand educational opportunities and access to information technology in the U.S. Key individuals of the foundation include Bill Gates, Melinda French Gates, Warren Buffett, chief executive officer Mark Suzman, and Michael Larson.
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) is an executive agency of the Department of Health and Social Care in the United Kingdom which is responsible for ensuring that medicines and medical devices work and are acceptably safe.
Acumen is a nonprofit impact investment fund focused on investing in social enterprises that serve low-income individuals in United States. Acumen was founded in April 2001 by Jacqueline Novogratz. It aims to demonstrate that small amounts of philanthropic capital, combined with business acumen can result in thriving enterprises that serve vast numbers of the poor. Over the years, Acumen has invested $115 million in 113 companies and has had a successful track record in sourcing and executing investment opportunities in the clean energy, health care and agriculture sectors.
Freedom from Hunger is an international development organization working in nineteen different countries. Rather than provide food aid, Freedom from Hunger focuses on providing small loans and business education to poor women. It is a nonprofit, nongovernmental, nonsectarian organization classified by the IRS as a 501(c)(3) charity. It was evaluated in 2011 by GiveWell who found their programs had little to no lasting impact.
Social finance is a category of financial services which aims to leverage private capital to address challenges in areas of social and environmental need. Having gained popularity in the aftermath of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, it is notable for its public benefit focus. Mechanisms of creating shared social value are not new, however, social finance is conceptually unique as an approach to solving social problems while simultaneously creating economic value. Unlike philanthropy, which has a similar mission-motive, social finance secures its own sustainability by being profitable for investors. Capital providers lend to social enterprises who in turn, by investing borrowed funds in socially beneficial initiatives, deliver investors measurable social returns in addition to traditional financial returns on their investment.
Jonathan Morduch is a professor of public policy and economics at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University. He is a development economist most well known for his significant academic contributions to assessing the impact of microfinance since the early years of the movement. He has written extensively on poverty and financial institutions in developing countries and on tensions between achieving social impacts and meeting financial goals in microfinance.
Financial inclusion is defined as the availability and equality of opportunities to access financial services. It refers to a process by which individuals and businesses can access appropriate, affordable, and timely financial products and services. These include banking, loan, equity, and insurance products. Financial inclusion efforts typically target those who are unbanked and underbanked, and directs sustainable financial services to them. Financial inclusion is understood to go beyond merely opening a bank account. It is possible for banked individuals to be excluded from financial services. Having more inclusive financial systems has been linked to stronger and more sustainable economic growth and development and thus achieving financial inclusion has become a priority for many countries across the globe.
M-Pesa is a mobile phone-based money transfer service, payments and micro-financing service, launched in 2007 by Vodafone and Safaricom, the largest mobile network operator in Kenya. It has since expanded to Tanzania, Mozambique, DRC, Lesotho, Ghana, Egypt, Afghanistan, and South Africa. Meanwhile, services in India, Romania, and Albania have been terminated amid low market uptake. M-Pesa allows users to deposit, withdraw, transfer money, pay for goods and services, access credit and savings, all with a mobile device.
Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) is an American non-profit research and policy organization founded in 2002 by economist Dean Karlan. Since its foundation, IPA has worked with over 400 leading academics to conduct over 600 evaluations in 51 countries. The organization also manages the Progress out of Poverty Index.
The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) is a global research center working to reduce poverty by ensuring that policy is informed by scientific evidence. J-PAL conducts randomized impact evaluations to answer critical questions in the fight against poverty, and builds partnerships with governments, NGOs, donors, and others to generate new research, share knowledge, and scale up effective programs.
Andrew Zerzan is a former World Bank official and working group secretary for the United Nations Counter Terrorism Implementation Task Force. He is Director of Education at the British Council. Andrew is a frequent speaker on economic development and financial crimes issues and a source in anti-money laundering literature. In 2014 he was commended for his work building a worldwide risk management programme at the City of London's Risk Management Awards.
Dean S. Karlan is an American development economist. He is Professor of Economics and Finance at Northwestern University where, alongside Christopher Udry, he co-founded and co-directs the Global Poverty Research Lab at Kellogg School of Management. He is a Research Fellow and member of the Executive Committee of the board of directors at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Karlan is also the president and founder of Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), a New Haven, Connecticut, based research outfit dedicated to creating and evaluating solutions to social and international development problems. Along with economists Jonathan Morduch and Sendhil Mullainathan, Karlan served as director of the Financial Access Initiative (FAI), a consortium of researchers focused on substantially expanding access to quality financial services for low-income individuals. He is also a co-founder of stickK.com and co-founder of ImpactMatters.
Jonathan Zinman is a professor of economics at Dartmouth College and a research affiliate at the New Haven-based research outfit Innovations for Poverty Action and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology-based Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab. Formerly an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Zinman is currently a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and Fellow at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Center for Financial Research. Zinman is also a member of the Behavioral Finance Forum and a Research Advisory Board member of stickK, a web-based start-up that enables users to make commitment contracts in order to reach their personal goals.
The Reagan-Udall Foundation for the Food and Drug Administration is a private nonprofit (501c3) organization, created to support the mission of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to help equip FDA staff with the highest caliber, regulatory science and technology in order to enhance the safety and effectiveness of FDA regulated products. Although it was mandated by Congress in the Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act of 2007 to help support and promote FDA's regulatory science priorities, it is independent of the agency, with its own Board of Directors, staff and research agenda. The Reagan-Udall Foundation creates public-private partnerships to advance research in regulatory science, enhance medical decision making, and promote innovation. It also advances regulatory science through fellowships and other training programs, both for private scientists and for FDA staff.
The Regional Strategic Analysis and Knowledge Support System (ReSAKSS) was established in 2006 and compiles and analyzes information to help design and evaluate rural development strategies and monitor the progress of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP). CAADP is a program of the African Union and the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), which aims to increase the share of national budgets allocated to agriculture.
The Maya Declaration is a global initiative for responsible and sustainable financial inclusion that aims to reduce poverty and ensure financial stability for the benefit of all. It is the first global and measurable set of financial inclusion commitments by developing and emerging economies.
The Global Policy Forum (GPF) is organized by the Alliance for Financial Inclusion, or AFI, as the keystone event for its membership and financial inclusion policymakers worldwide. Each year, it is co-hosted by a different member institution in a different region of the world. AFI has roughly 100 member institutions from nearly 90 countries, making the AFI GPF the most important and comprehensive forum for regulatory institutions with an interest in promoting financial inclusion policy. The AFI GPF is focused on developing and improving national financial inclusion strategies and policies and is used as a platform for senior financial regulators to exchange ideas as well as engage in peer-to-peer learning activities.
The impact of microcredit is a subject of much controversy. Proponents state that it reduces poverty through higher employment and higher incomes. This is expected to lead to improved nutrition and improved education of the borrowers' children. Some argue that microcredit empowers women. In the US and Canada, it is argued that microcredit helps recipients to graduate from welfare programs. Critics say that microcredit has not increased incomes, but has driven poor households into a debt trap, in some cases even leading to suicide. They add that the money from loans is often used for durable consumer goods or consumption instead of being used for productive investments, that it fails to empower women, and that it has not improved health or education.
The Alliance for Financial Inclusion, or AFI, is a policy leadership alliance owned and led by member central banks and financial regulatory institutions with the common objective of advancing financial inclusion at the country, regional and international levels. Its members include roughly 100 institutions comprising central banks, financial regulatory institutions, and financial inclusion policymakers from nearly 90 developing and emerging economies.
The BOMA Project is a U.S. nonprofit organization and Kenyan NGO that works to provide poor women living in the arid and semi-arid lands of Northern Kenya with the educational, financial, and technological resources to lift themselves out of poverty. Its mission is to “empower women in the drylands of Africa to establish sustainable livelihoods, build resilient families, graduate from extreme poverty and catalyze change in their rural communities.”
References
- ↑ "Expanding Banking Access to the Poor: New Gates Foundation Initiative Based at Wagner". NYU Wagner News and Events. May 2, 2007.
- ↑ "Financial Access Initiative Vision". Financial Access Initiative. Retrieved September 5, 2013.
- ↑ "Microfinance". Archived from the original on 2015-02-21. Retrieved 2014-09-04.
- ↑ "Research overview". www.financialaccess.org. Archived from the original on April 17, 2008.
- ↑ "FAI:-Supporters". Financial Access Initiative. Archived from the original on November 1, 2013. Retrieved September 5, 2013.