Year
2017

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"The report describes the profile of acceleration and incubation programs, highlights accelerators with an impact focus, and compares accelerators in Brazil with the rest of the world. The results show that there may be a mismatch between the sectors that are of most interest to impact-oriented accelerators and to impact investors. Accelerators and investors should also think collaboratively about how to address the challenge of funding for early-stage ventures."

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"The landscape of entrepreneurial support in India is quickly evolving. This report seeks to add clarity to the profile of accelerators and incubators in India - their structure, objectives, goals, funding, and the financial and non-financial support that they offer."

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"Understanding what works to improve youth labour market outcomes is of paramount importance and a development priority for all countries and regions. Youth represent a vast potential for inclusive growth and development. If they are given the opportunity to build appropriate skills and access decent employment, they can help to accelerate progress on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and engage in meaningful work that benefits them, their families and society as a whole. Unfortunately, decent jobs are not a feasible prospect for all young women and men. Today, over 73 million young people are unemployed worldwide. Youth unemployment stands at a much higher level than the average unemployment rate for adults, in some cases over three times as high. Moreover, two out of five young people in the labour force are either working but poor or unemployed. The youth employment challenge is therefore not only about job creation, but also - and especially - about enhancing the quality of jobs for youth."

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"What does it take to scale up the growth of green sectors? This study was initiated to shed light on the common challenges that have limited the scaling of green enterprises and the emergence of competitive green sectors in developing countries. It also aims to uncover and catalog emerging opportunities that offer potential for enabling the scale up of these sectors in ways that might not have been possible in the past due to lack of a technology platform, mature business model, or other emerging opportunity. Finally, the study offers key recommendations for donors, governments, development finance institutions (DFIs), and entrepreneurial supports organizations that support green enterprises and seek to scale green sectors in developing countries.

The study focuses on enterprises operating across five green sectors – climate-smart agriculture, renewable energy, solid waste management, drinking water purification and management, and wastewater management. Within these five sectors, the study takes a deeper dive into seven sub-sectors that provide an interesting mix of business models, some of which are scalable and replicable, offer insights for other subsectors, and highlight innovative responses to the common challenges that green sectors face. These sub-sectors are solar home systems (SHS), mini/micro grids, community water purification, drip irrigation systems, online platforms for waste management, e-waste management, and industrial wastewater management."

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"This report highlights how traditional debt and equity financing structures often fail to adequately meet the needs of early-stage impact enterprises. It examines the pain points for both investors and entrepreneurs around traditional structures and the need for innovative instruments, provides examples of emerging and proven models, from revenue-based mezzanine debt to self-liquidating equity, and offers suggestions for concrete steps to advance the adoption of alternative structures to foster impact enterprises. 16 case studies from throughout Latin America aim to offer an overview of innovations both at the deal level and at the capital aggregation level, where holding companies and open-ended funds have proven to be potentially well suited for this space."

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"Drawing on available academic literature and policy evaluation studies, the report aims to identify the impact of public support through equity instruments on firm performance, and puts forward main lessons on policy design and implementation. It employs a mixed- method approach based on evaluation synthesis (Edler at al. 2008)."

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"This report from Oxfam and Sumerian Partners questions some of the assumptions around impact investment and highlights the experience of enterprises contributing to poverty reduction so that they might be better served by the field. It argues that the sector risks being discredited due to rising, unrealistic expectations about financial returns."

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"The report examines the impact measurement approaches of 13 GIIN members (including development finance institutions (DFIs), fund managers, banks, and foundations) who invest directly into healthcare delivery companies- detailing the metrics, methodologies, and assumptions that are commonly used by these investors, as well as the challenges and limitations they face.

The report aims to bring greater transparency to the diversity and limitations of current impact measurement approaches, facilitate shared learning, and provide a tangible resource for those who are new to the sector or seeking to improve practice."

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"In recent years, investment in the various facets of Morocco's entrepreneurship ecosystem has become the focus of both the public and private sectors. The foundation has been developed, and all the structures necessary for nurturing not only entrepreneurship, but specifically climate entrepreneurship, have reached a 'start-up' stage. Nonetheless, the overall support environment requires more targeted intervention, in particular, favorable policies, resources, and a resilient entrepreneurial-minded culture to inspire future growth.

This report takes a mixed-methods approach to unpacking the climate entrepreneurship sector of the Moroccan economy, and is based on four forms of data collection and analysis undertaken from August-November 2016. By using different data sources, the team was able to triangulate the data and gain higher validity and consistency for the findings and recommendations."

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"Imazon, a Brazilian nonprofit promoting sustainable development of the Amazon, exemplifies how social ventures can stay small to achieve large impact. This case study is relevant for any social enterprise working to have outsized impact by collaborating with partners to change systems. It is also relevant for any enterprise using data to create incentives for change."

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