Blog

Browse recent blogs of interest to the Marketlinks community. Use the search box or the filters on the left-hand side to refine the listing of blogs by keyword, topic, and/or region/country.

The “Domino Effect” of Disbursing a Single Microloan

Society Development Committee, or SDC, based in Faridpur, Bangladesh, is a microfinance partner of the Feed the Future Bangladesh Livestock and Nutrition Activity, funded by USAID and implemented by ACDI/VOCA. Through this partnership, thousands of people working in Bangladesh’s livestock sector have benefited from microfinance products.

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Photo by ACDI/VOCA

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Fixing a Market Failure Provides Profits and Empowerment

Author(s):

Emily Janoch,
Akram Ali
A few small changes in the market system—collection points closer to home, machines that provide more transparency, and aligning the needs of buyers and producers—can provide all of these benefits because together they solve the market failure.

WATCH: A Spotlight on Soft Skills

Author(s):

Microlinks Team
In this video, Gary Walker from USAID, Laura Lippman from FHI 360 and Tim Nourse, President of Making Cents, talk about employment challenges facing youth and how implementing soft skills can increase workforce success.

WATCH: A Spotlight on Financial Inclusion

Author(s):

Microlinks Team
Financial inclusion and youth development practitioners are constantly challenged to scale the lessons from their work through policy change. But this often involves multiple levels of government and is not necessarily straightforward.

What We Learned Through ONA... and What We Learned About ONA

Author(s):

Craig Hempfling
The Government of Serbia is growing the MSME sector through public, private, education and civil society actors. USAID/Serbia asked the LEO activity to utilize organizational network analysis (ONA) to explore these networks' effectiveness.

Spotlight on the PSNP 4 Employment Pathway

Author(s):

Tesfaye Tilahun Workineh
Learn how the Government of Ethiopia moved away from annual emergency responses and took decisive action to tackle food insecurity in a systematic manner by launching the Productive Safety Net Program.

Is Ultra Poverty Graduation Working?

Author(s):

Daniel Kessler
To reach scale and achieve the goal of eradication of extreme poverty by 2030, the graduation approach requires collaborative action among NGOs, MFIs and governments implementing safety net programs.

Politics of Evidence: Can I Get a Green Card?

Author(s):

Elizabeth Dunn
Do we have enough evidence to know if market systems approaches work? What kind of evidence is “good enough” and who decides? Read what a lively debate on the “politics of evidence” reveals about evaluation approaches.
Group with comics

Secrets Behind Non-Traditional Training Methods

Author(s):

Margie Brand
Instead of mystifying learning by sharing information that is overly complicated with very little chance of changing and improving behavior, less traditional learning methods demystify concepts and bring on deep-rooted, positive changes in behavior.

Designing for Transformative Change

Author(s):

Jeanne Downing
Explore the implications of agricultural economists’ theories of change for the design of market systems projects.