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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.

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Showing 137 results

FES Sponsored Lecture at SCA EXPO "Gender Equity in 2024: Women in the Global Coffee Value Chain"

Author(s):

Roberta Lauretti-Bernhard
FES Vice President Roberta Lauretti-Bernhard participated in the the Specialty Coffee Association EXPO (SCA) in Chicago April 10 -14. FES & Joe Coffee Company  co-hosted a lecture on "Gender Equity in 2024: Women in the Global Coffee Value Chain". The event was developed by Roberta, Amaris Gutierrez-Ray from Joe Coffee and Karen Cebreros, founder of Elan Organic Coffee and co-founder of the Int’l Women in Coffee Alliance (IWCA).

The “Domino Effect” of Disbursing a Single Microloan

Author(s):

ACDI VOCA
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.

Bridging the Financing Gap for Women-Led Enterprises in Sri Lanka

Author(s):

USAID CATALYZE Mobilizing Private Capital for Development
In Sri Lanka, micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) face an estimated $17 billion financing gap. Women-led enterprises comprise a significant proportion of this financing need and face greater barriers in accessing finance.

Value Creation for Low-Income Homebuilders

Author(s):

Aleksandros Spaho
In the second blog in the series, the authors focus on the importance of using a retail distribution market systems lens to gain insights into the business realities of selling construction products and services to low-income customer segments. For example, low-income customers buy in smaller lots and often have important considerations related to decision-making, coping strategies, and trust that require specific business strategies and tactics. The blog examines a few examples from TCIS’s work in relation to how they applied systemic thinking related to retail distribution to improve housing outcomes for incremental builders.

Supporting youth livelihoods in Honduras: Advancing technology for well-being

Author(s):

Corus International
With more than half of Hondurans younger than 25 and the majority of the population living below the poverty line, young people need access to employment opportunities. Yet, too many Honduran young women and men face dismal economic prospects with 27 percent of youth not in education, employment or training. Compounded by the impacts of climate change and food insecurity, those who cannot find jobs are at risk of falling further into poverty or migrating elsewhere in search of opportunities.

The Role of Business-Led Food Safety in Sustainable Food Systems

Author(s):

Food Enterprise Solutions (FES)
The Linkage Between Food Safety and Sustainability Food loss and waste pose a major threat to both global food system security and sustainability. Postharvest loss is both nutrient and resource loss. When food is wasted, so are the resources required to produce it, namely land, water, and energy. In Africa, with the world’s highest rates of hunger and malnutrition, about a third of all food produced is lost before it ever reaches consumers.

WOCCU Economic Inclusion Project Introduces ‘The Practical Guide for the Financial Inclusion of the Refugee and Migrant Population’

Author(s):

Greg Neumann
The USAID/World Council of Credit Unions’ (WOCCU) Economic Inclusion Project in March introduced to more than 100 representatives of Peru’s financial sector a formal guide that will help them identify the types of assistance refugee and migrant populations need to access formal financial services, and the best practices to help facilitate their financial inclusion.

Women Entrepreneurs Weather COVID -19 Years after the Project Closed

This blog was authored by Tess Bayombong, Maria Adelma Montejo, Emily Janoch, Caitlin Shannon, and Tzusuan Peng. Women entrepreneurs who talk about success in their businesses in the Philippines have fascinating contributions to what success means. Cecile Corio describes an arc of resilience and equality: “I think of ways to recover (my business). Don’t lose trust in yourself. I started from nothing; I can prove that I can lead a better life. … My husband and I have a good give-and-take relationship.”

Strengthening Financial Autonomy for Women in Brazilian Fishing Villages

Author(s):

Wendy Putnam
USAID’s Amazon Vision is focused on fostering an environmentally friendly economy so that forest-dependent communities can develop their local economies in a sustainable way. Fishing is an important livelihood for Indigenous and other communities living along the Juruá River in Brazil. Both women and men in these riverine fishing communities play essential roles in the fishing industry: while men fish for pirarucu—the world’s largest-scaled freshwater fish—women process, clean, and sanitize the fish. 

Minimizing Risk While Growing Small Businesses in Peruvian Amazonia

Author(s):

USAID CATALYZE Mobilizing Private Capital for Development
USAID CATALYZE Peru increases small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and producer associations’ access to finance through an innovative Pay for Results (P4R) program, which helps financial institutions (FI) minimize their risk in lending while growing their portfolios in underserved regions in the Amazon. CATALYZE Peru has signed P4R agreements with 10 FIs, which have committed to mobilize USD24.1 million to the Amazonia region.

Farmer Cooperatives in the Philippines Boast Key Advantage: Knowing the Local Context

Author(s):

ACDI VOCA
In the way that cooperatives form when people with common interests come together, apex organizations form when several of those cooperatives organize to achieve common goals. Farming cooperatives have the unique advantage of being engrained in the local context and knowledgeable about their sector. Their value is providing farmers with advantages that make them more profitable than they would be outside of the group. Apex organizations take that farmer support a step further by strengthening the cooperative groups on a larger scale. 

Are We Too Focused on Access to Credit? Agent Banks Boost Resiliency During COVID-19 Pandemic

Author(s):

ACDI VOCA
In early 2020, the Feed the Future Bangladesh Rice and Diversified Crops Activity, funded by USAID and implemented by ACDI/VOCA, began an assessment to understand how the Activity could increase financial access for agricultural small- and medium-sized enterprises (agri-SMEs) in Bangladesh during COVID-19. The assessment originally focused on opportunities for the Activity to increase financial access through agent banks during the pandemic.

5 Myths about Youth and Employment

Author(s):

Lutheran World Relief
Over 67 million youth are unemployed globally and the majority live in rural areas with limited economic opportunities. The fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic has overwhelmingly impacted youth whose employment fell by more than twice that of adults in 2020.