!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> Streamline Training & Documentation: Jacqueline Novogratz's Ideas for Alleviating Global Poverty

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Jacqueline Novogratz's Ideas for Alleviating Global Poverty

You can get an overview of Jacqueline Novogratz's views concerning alleviating poverty in developing countries by reading a short article about her work that appears in the May 23 issue of The Economist.

Novogratz is the CEO of Acumen Fund, which she founded in 2001. As the website explains,
Acumen Fund is a non-profit global venture fund that uses entrepreneurial approaches to solve the problems of global poverty. We seek to prove that small amounts of philanthropic capital, combined with large doses of business acumen, can build thriving enterprises that serve vast numbers of the poor. Our investments focus on delivering affordable, critical goods and services — like health, water, housing and energy — through innovative, market-oriented approaches.
To hear directly from Novogratz, you can watch the video below, which is the talk she gave at the conclusion of the 2008 Aspen Ideas Festival.



In the video, Novogratz addresses at a general level lessons learned and to do's for those seeking to assist with alleviating global poverty. For more detail about such matters as Acumen's investment principles and performance metrics, you can browse through the Acumen website.

In sum, the Acumen approach is to
use philanthropic capital to make disciplined investments — loans or equity, not grants — that yield both financial and social returns. Any financial returns we receive are recycled into new investments.
You can read more about Jacqueline Novogratz's experiences as a social entrepreneur in her recently published book, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World.

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