Artwork stating 'Education Destroys Barriers', 'We Demand Treatment', and 'I Need A Chance'

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  • Twenty Buses a Day: The High Stakes Race to Create a Global Cholera Early Warning System

    Though individual treatments are cheap, cholera is costing the third world countless lives. Using modern technology, researchers work to exterminate it and other curable diseases.

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  • An ointment could save up to half a million newborns a year­ – and it costs 20 cents

    Studies show that a single application of the antiseptic chlorhexidine, an affordable medicine, can reduce the risk of death among newborns by about 25 percent. In Nepal, where 20,000 newborns die every year, the medicine has revolutionary potential.

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  • Tiny Houses: A Big Idea to End Homelessness

    While billions of taxpayer dollars are allocated each year to support shelters and social service initiatives, homelessness remains a persistent problem in the U.S. - in 2013, an estimated 610,000 people slept without shelter every night. All over the country, people are building "tiny homes" to give to the homeless, providing them with shelter, a bathroom, and a kitchen for less then the cost of a shelter.

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  • A Nonprofit Lender Revives the Hopes of Subprime Borrowers

    Many subprime borrowers in the United States are financially unable to buy a home themselves. An unconventional lender is trying to make it easier for low-income people to buy houses despite the tighter requirements that other lenders adopted after the mortgage bust.

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  • Preparing for Disaster by Betting Against It

    In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, necessity has bred an interesting kind of financial invention for the New York MTA: the world’s first “catastrophe” bond - a reinsurance for the insurer - designed to protect public transportation infrastructure, specifically against storm surge. These bonds privatize risk for public gain, creating a kind of tool that may protect economic development against all kinds of natural and man-made disasters around the world.

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  • These Toy Cars Help Kids With Disabilities Get Moving

    A Delaware professor began retrofitting toy cars for young children with disabilities and founded Go Baby Go. For children too young to use wheelchairs there are few solutions for mobility. Go Baby Go provides a fun mobility option for only about $200. So far, about 100 children have adapted toy cars.

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  • Improving Economic Diversity at the Better Colleges

    Students with low-income that attend public schools can find themselves locked in a system that prevents them from getting into the best colleges, from being unable to afford tuition, to not having the ambition, to not knowing a school that would welcome them. Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, PA targets high-performing low-income students. The college provides outreach to high school students in poor communities, financial aid to low-income families, summer workshops, and on-site advising and academic support.

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  • Refurbished Wind Turbines to Power the Developing World at a Profit

    The commercially-based Wind for Prosperity initiative may have devised a solution to meet growing demands for electricity in developing economies, where fossil fuels are expensive, difficult to access, and take a toll on environmental and human health. The venture works to refurbish wind turbines from Europe and re-deploy them in the developing world, providing clean and affordable power where it’s needed most.

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  • Playing With Toys and Saving Lives

    Many different people are inventing health devices for resource-poor settings, but some organizations - like M.I.T.’s Little Devices group - are empowering developing communities and increasing access to healthcare by building medical devices that nurses and doctors in very poor settings can adapt themselves — or kits for making their own, often harvesting parts from toys to cleverly rig up medical equipment. It’s part of a major idea shift, one that’s transforming the design of foreign aid.

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  • Playing the Odds on Saving

    Lotteries aren’t usually considered part of the solution to a savings crisis experienced across America, particularly by the nation's poor, but with more hopefuls purchasing lottery tickets than setting aside rainy day funds, one organization, Doorways to Dreams, is working to change federal and state laws to allow banks to offer prize-linked savings. In Michigan, the programs have seen some success.

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