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At the nexus of investment and development: lessons from a 60-year experiment in SME impact investing
01.12.2014
Mennonite Economic Development Associates (MEDA) was launched as an investment club in 1953 when a group of North American Mennonite business people joined together to support the development of communities in Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina. With their business background, this group of early ‘impact investors’ determined that they would provide loans to small to medium enterprises (SME) in order to catalyse sustainable economic growth. They offered the loans as high-risk venture capital and mitigated the risks with the provision of business coaching and technical assistance. Since those early days, MEDA and the SME investment fund managers which it has co-founded (Microvest and Sarona Asset Management) have continued to make impactful investments and to work towards a common development goal, ‘to help people help themselves’ (Fretz, 1978 : 19). This paper presents a case study of the 60-year ‘MEDA experiment’, (Fretz, 1978), describes specific activities and innovations, and identifies MEDA's learnings that have emerged from this SME investment experience. -
Editorial
01.09.2012
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Reviews and resources
01.09.2012
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo reviewed by Linda Jones -
Editorial
01.12.2012
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Strengthening women's economic empowerment within the M4P framework
01.12.2012
The purpose of this article is to present the underpinning for a gendered approach to the M4P framework. It draws on a paper that was prepared for the M4P Hub, and presented and discussed at an M4P Hub Conference, an online conference hosted by SDC, and a two-day in-person seminar held by SDC in Bern in May 2012. This paper summarizes the conceptual findings of the published paper, provides field examples, and offers an approach for explicitly incorporating women's economic empowerment in the M4P framework. The paper first unpacks and then lays out common elements of the definition and guiding principles of women's economic empowerment, and assesses how M4P stacks up against these definitions and principles. The paper then explores the opportunities and challenges that are presented by a market-oriented perspective on women's empowerment, drawing on experiences of M4P programmes. -
Editorial: Introducing changes to EDM
01.03.2013
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Reviews
01.03.2015
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Editorial
01.06.2012