Now everyone, most especially private individuals without access to banking services, can open an account and have a simple and safe method of payment… Lemon Way solutions already enable millions of users to do their shopping (food, taxis etc) and transfer money to their friends and families…

At Mobile World Congress 2012, Amdocs, a leading provider of customer experience systems, today announced the launch of Amdocs Mobile Payments. The new solution is a cloud-based gateway, enabling mobile operators to quickly, securely and cost-effectively scale their mobile payments business for both prepaid and postpaid customers to open new revenue streams. Mobile payments that are charged via the carrier offer consumers the convenience of charging purchases directly to their mobile phone bill, prepaid balance or mobile wallet.

Scientists say a new study shows that Africa sits on a vast reservoir of groundwater that could provide a reliable source of water for drinking and agriculture. Scientists say an estimated 300 million people in Africa do not have access to safe drinking water and with climate change making rainfall less predictable, their plight is even more precarious. So research into a vast reservoir of groundwater beneath the continent is meaningful.

Government has set aside a basket fund of about Rwf400 million to cater for scientific innovations, especially in the areas of Information Communication Technology (ICT), Agriculture and Manufacturing. The fund, known as Rwanda Innovation Endowment Fund (RIEF), was initiated by the Ministry of Education in partnership with the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) sub regional office under the One UN Rwanda. It will support projects that promote innovations in science, technology and research which could transform the social and economic development of the country.

World Bicycle Relief, a not for profit organization created by bike industry leader SRAM Corporation to aid victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami in Sri Lanka recently distributed its 100,000th bicycle to people living in extreme poverty in sub-Saharan Africa.

Social enterpreneurship grows in area where neither innovation nor social and environmental problems are in short supply

Famine is not simply caused by a lack of food in the global supply. We must -- and can -- do better.

From changes to the curriculum to getting Transitional University status or by making the financial case for energy savings, we share the best bits from some experts' sustainability live chat

Amid growing concerns about drought crises in some small island States of the Pacific, the United Nations today called for comprehensive risk reduction steps to be put in place to protect vulnerable populations living in delicate ecosystems.

While interning in Africa in 2005, Elizabeth Scharpf was appalled to find that women were missing work and school because they couldn’t afford pads to wear during their periods. “I felt like it was an obstacle for women and girls — to their freedom” and one that shouldn’t exist, she said.

Economic analysis is about understanding the workings of the economic system. Many elegant economic theories exist to analyse wealth-creating productive activities. Conventional economic theory focuses on a one-dimensional world.

The honeymoon with microfinance is over. Since the idea of lending or giving very small sums of money to poor people was introduced to the world by the pioneering Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, the approach has been taken up by many non-governmental organizations, donor agencies and the United Nations as an essential part of their poverty-reduction efforts. Microfinance has provided countless people with access to financial services.

Dr. Sabine O'Hara, Owner and Principal of Global Ecology LLC, has been recognized by Cambridge Who's Who for showing dedication, leadership and excellence in international business education and sustainable development. Dr. O'Hara is principal of Global Ecology LLC, and managing director and vice president of Professors Beyond Borders. Global Ecology positions higher education institutions and private, public and non-profit sector organizations for success by providing educational tools and planning and assessment services for negotiating a complex world and marketplace.

A revolutionary new communication app has been launched for the iPhone and Android platforms, which automatically shares photos, videos and text with anyone in the vicinity who also has the application. The app, called Color, has been created by Bill Nguyen, who sold his cloud based music locker Lala.com to Apple for $80 million. The app works by using a mix of GPS location data and ambient sensors to assess proximity of other users, who will be able to see any text, videos or photos taken via Color. The application comes with absolutely no privacy settings, so all the photos shared are publicly available to every member within the range. There is also no need to 'friend' anyone, though a blocking option is available.

The Sun is reporting that animal behavior experts have kindly handed out iPads to Gorillas. Amazingly not a SINGLE one of the five tablets which download apps has been broken since being given out at Port Lympne wild animal park three weeks ago.

The Ethisphere Institute, a New York City think tank, has just announced its fifth annual list of the World's Most Ethical Companies. The selection, open to every company in every industry around the globe, gives its winners an opportunity to trumpet their do-gooding ways. It is not a ranking, so they are all equally winners.

Electronic payment provider VeriFone has a front seat for what it calls the “gold rush for NFC” – the race to deliver products and services related to Near Field Communication (NFC) technology.

Do you have women in key positions? If you’re planning on targeting female customers, I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want to have great women on your team. Women are the routers and amplifiers of the social web. And they are the rocket fuel of ecommerce. The ongoing debate about women in tech has been missing a key insight. If you figure out how to harness the power of female customers, you can rock the world.

A day after U.S. assistant secretary of state for south and central Asian affairs Robert Blake appealed to the Bangladeshi government to reconsider its dismissal of 70-year-old microfinance guru Muhammad Yunus from the Grameen Bank, IPS spoke with the president and CEO of Women's World Banking (WWB), currently the most comprehensive network of microfinance institutions (MFIs) in the world. She dismissed the notion, which is swiftly gaining momentum in many quarters, that microcredit is ineffective as a sustainable method of poverty alleviation and must be replaced.

The wisdom in development finance has long been that lending to and saving by poor micro-entrepreneurs and farmers is doomed to failure: costs are too high, the poor are not creditworthy and they are not able to save and insure, and so on. Bold experimentation with new institutions in microfinance, supported by public action, have resulted in a number of success stories and changed this pessimistic assessment during the past fifteen years or so. In this paper, a number of arguments are put forward that call for a continuation of the support towards institutional innovation and bottom-up adaptation of Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) in developing countries. Published in 2001 by Manfred Zeller

The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) will soon launch the £10 million Financial Innovation Challenge Fund as stated by the Deputy Governor of SBP, Yaseen Anwar on Saturday.

Operators of Microfinance Banks (MFBs) in Lagos state have concluded arrangement to establish a trust fund aimed at protecting them from liquidity shocks as well as to also help manage their liquidity position. The Chairman, National Association of Microfinance Banks (NAMB), Lagos State Chapter, Mr. Olufemi Babajide, disclosed this.

The United Nations recently announced a $90 million loan for strengthening access to rural financial services and markets, and promoting private sector development in Tanzania. More than 500,000 vulnerable rural households, including smallholder farmers, livestock keepers, fishers, small-scale rural entrepreneurs, traders and artisans, grass-roots microfinance institutions, processing and marketing groups, poor rural women and rural youth are expected to get benefit from this programme.

7 Women Leaders Speak On The Role Of Microfinance In Women's Entrepreneurship

Recent microfinance crises and debate over the practices of microfinance institutions (MFIs) have made it more apparent than ever that financial performance should not be the only standard by which MFIs should be evaluated. To measure an MFI's overall performance, social performance management -- the process of ensuring that an MFI acts in a socially responsible manner -- has emerged as a critical factor. Thanks to the support of the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation and the Ford Foundation, the Microfinance Information Exchange (MIX), the industry's leading source for financial and social performance data, now offers funders and other stakeholders easy access to social performance information in conjunction with financial performance information. As part of its ongoing mission to enhance transparency in the microfinance industry, MIX has taken major steps both to integrate social performance reporting with standard financial reporting and to enhance data access.

Microfinance has taken a beating lately for shifting far afield from its humanitarian origins, originally funding tiny businesses run by poor women in developing countries to feed their families. It's become a good idea gone bad, a charitable enterprise spoiled as profit surpassed people as the rationale for investment. It sickens the soul. But all is not lost. A new concept in which the interest charged on a microloan isn't a percentage, but rather an improvement to a community, has seen early success in Haiti. Although small in scale, this model might be just the thing to help microfinance rebound as an effective, credible and responsible method of funding small businesses lacking capital that don't qualify for loans from traditional banks. The concept comes from Zafèn, an online microfinance initiative approaching its first anniversary on April 1.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today called for “revolutionary action” to achieve sustainable development, warning that the past century’s heedless consumption of resources is “a global suicide pact” with time running out to ensure an economic model for survival.

Leading aid agency CARE International UK has launched www.lendwithcare.org - an innovative micro-finance website aimed at transforming the way people give. Lendwithcare.org enables people in the UK to invest in entrepreneurs in the developing world. Investors can lend from just £15 directly to a chosen individual to help them start or improve a small business.

NetSuite Inc., the industry’s leading vendor of cloud-based financials / ERP software suites, today announced the latest social enterprises to benefit from a NetSuite.org product donation. NetSuite.org is NetSuite’s unique corporate citizenship program, which enables growing social enterprises to access product donations of NetSuite’s cloud-based business software service that helps deliver increased productivity, reduced operating costs, and improved organizational flexibility.

CERMi’s mission is to promote academic research in order to support the key stakeholders in the microfinance industry: NGOs, cooperatives, donors, investment funds and financial institutions, and to develop suitable frameworks to critically examine existing microfinance practices.

World Council of Credit Unions (WOCCU) is the leading international trade association and development agency for credit unions. WOCCU promotes the sustainable development of credit unions and other financial cooperatives around the world to empower people through access to high quality and affordable financial services. WOCCU advocates on behalf of the global credit union system before international organizations and works with national governments to improve legislation and regulation. Its technical assistance programs introduce new tools and technologies to strengthen credit unions' financial performance and increase their outreach.

While it's sometimes hard to quantify success, one thing is certain – the ripple effect and long-term effects of good development work impact more people for generations to come than any of us will know.

Former US vice-president Al Gore took part in the 2011 Global Urban Development Forum in Beijing. Gore said Thursday China and the United States -- the world's biggest polluters -- should work on designing greener cities as part of their efforts to tackle climate change.

"Harassment of women and domestic violence goes back to centuries. It continues to be in force today in many parts of the world including Sri Lanka. It must be eliminated at all costs" said Child Development and Women Affairs Minister Tissa Karalliyadde addressing the Asian Forum of Parliamentarians on Population and Development (AFPPD) held in Port Macquarie, Australia on the theme 'Prevention of violence against women'.

The Global Alliance for Banking on Values, a network of the world's leading sustainable banks, announces four new members today from South America, North America, and Europe. The banks join nine founding banks committed to building a better financial future in challenging times.

The Golf Environment Organization's GEO Legacy Guidance launched to widespread acclaim following previews at the Asia Pacific Golf Summit in Bangkok and the European Golf Course Owners Association Conference in London.

IBM unveils its fifth annual "Next Five in Five" -- a list of innovations with the potential to change the way people work, live and play over the next five years. The Next Five in Five is based on market and societal trends expected to transform our lives, as well as emerging technologies from IBM's Labs around the world that can make these innovations possible.

The numbers of children experiencing consistent poverty increased last year for the first time since 2006, according to the State of the Nation’s Children report

64.6% of black Americans and 32.7% whites will face poverty, study says

The Board of directors of the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) has approved a Microfinance Risk Participation Programme, marking ADB’s first large scale private sector microfinance initiative.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus is under pressure after critics accused him of misusing development aid. The father of microfinance told SPIEGEL ONLINE the allegations are "a total fabrication."

The Group of 20 Summit scheduled for November in Seoul will provide a forum for a wide range of economic and fiscal issues, ranging from World Bank governance to fossil fuel subsidies.

World Bank President Robert Zoellick is set to launch a new multi-million dollar fund in Mexico on Wednesday to help emerging market countries set up their own carbon markets, the bank said on Tuesday.

Hughes, who left Facebook in 2007 to become the Obama campaign's director of online organizing, soft-launched Jumo last March. Jumo was designed to let users find, follow and support the causes important to them, and with 3,500 organizations on board at launch, would-be philanthropists should be able to find and follow something of interest upon joining.

Since the launch of FITA in January 2010, the Group has rapidly expanded with new Members teaming-up together to generate awareness in Cyprus of female artists, artisans and designers.

Using Skype as a medium, a lecture at the University of California at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business was broadcast to UNC students along with students at other schools. The streamed lecture was part of an ongoing series that allows students to have access to the most prominent minds in microfinance.

Claudia Kennedy, Member of Opportunity's Board of Advisors and First Woman U.S. Army Lieutenant General, Encourages Individuals to Recognize Their Power to Improve People's Lives Around the World.

Claudia McKay and Mark Pickens from CGAP have pulled together a comprehensive global pricing study on banking services targeting poor, unbanked and underbanked people in Africa, Asia and Brazil. The study examines pricing for services targeting unbanked and underbanked poor people in 10 countries. The conclusion: mobile banking and other forms of branchless banking are cheaper than traditional banking, but the gap between the two may not be as wide as some may think.

The European Union (EU) wants stronger privacy rules to give Internet users more control over how social-networking sites such as Facebook, or search engines such as Google use their personal information.

Opportunity co-founder and former president of Bristol Myers International Corporation, the late Al Whittaker, encountered poverty as he travelled throughout the world in the 1960’s and 70’s. He asked the people he met: “What do you need?” They replied: "Work. With jobs, we will solve our own problems."

Probanx Information Systems specializes in development of software for the financial institutions, offering multi-currency and multi-lingual banking systems with a large variety of modules, based on the latest technologies. We install and support turn-key international Banking Software and Microfinance Software solutions for retail banks, commercial banks, Internet banks and microfinance banks.

After several years of very high profile attention on mobile money and other branchless banking schemes, we think it’s time to test the hype. Or more accurately, we’ve wanted to for awhile. But acquiring good data is really, really hard. We’ve been unable to say in anything but a fragmented, mostly anecdotal way whether the unbanked really use branchless banking, what they use it for, if it saves them any money, and what more they might want (but aren’t getting yet). Just because we are excited about branchless banking doesn’t mean it is living up to the promises we make on its behalf.

In their book "Sustainable Excellence", Aron Cramer and Zachary Karabell make a compelling case for why a focus on sustainability -- whether it concerns, for example, climate change, energy consumption or labor relations -- is now a form of enlightened self-interest for businesses. For starters, commodity prices have been soaring as investors wake up to a world marked by rapid population growth and overstretched resources.

The Norwegian Microfinance Initiative (NMI), a partnership between the Norwegian public and private sectors that provides assistance for microfinance institutions (MFIs) in developing countries, recently loaned KES 325 million (approximately USD 4.03 million) to Kenya Women Finance Trust – Deposit Taking Microfinance (KWFT- DTM), a microfinance institution based in Nairobi, Kenya, and UGX 1.25 billion (approximately USD 548,000) to the Uganda Finance Trust (UFT), an MFI in Kampala, Uganda, to support microenterprises.

The International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) at Colorado State University provides innovative training in community-based development (online and face-to-face), consultation, evaluation, and project support services for individuals and governmental, international non-governmental, and community-based organizations around the world.

Village Earth's mission is to help reconnect communities to the resources that promote human well-being by enhancing social and political empowerment, community self-reliance and self-determination.

Rural Finance is about providing financial services for people living in rural areas. This Learning Centre aims to assist organisations in developing countries to build their capacity to deliver improved financial services which meet the needs of rural households and businesses.

The three-day Asian Microfinance Forum 2010 wrapped up bringing to a close three full days of conferences, panel sessions and seminars all of which were well attended by almost 500 delegates from 50 countries who were in Colombo for the event as well as many local industrialists, bankers and other interested parties.

Oikocredit, the innovative development financing organisation, has been given an award in recognition of its contribution to socially responsible investing. The award has been made by The Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP).

Three Social Entrepreneurs have been recognized as leading social innovators in Asia during the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2010, Tianjin, People’s Republic of China, 13-15 September.

Suntech Power Holdings, the world's leading producer of crystalline silicon solar panels, has been selected to supply 34.5MW of solar panels for the first phase of the largest solar power plant in Thailand and Southeast Asia. Owned and operated by Bangchak Petroleum, and integrated by Solartron, the planned 44MW (38MW AC output capacity) solar power plant will be located just outside of Bangkok and generate decades of renewable energy for the booming metropolis and surrounding areas.

SKS Microfinance Limited, the largest Micro Finance Institution in India, today announced that its public issue will open on July 28.

A renowned microfinance training centre in Italy will welcome representatives from five Pacific Island countries.

Non-profit industry leaders, telephone carriers and technologists are joining the Innovative Giving Conference entitled ‘Mobile Giving and Communication Demystified’ held September 27th – 28th in Malibu

MobileCause provides simple and powuerful ways to connect with your donors in the most personal way possible - their mobile device. As the leading web service for cause-related mobile communication and fundraising technology, the MobileCause complete mobile donor plan enables your cause to join this exciting new movement in a few easy steps. Let MobileCause mobilize your cause!

Welcome to this blog about Microfinance, Innovations and Sustainable Development