Thoughts from the Last Mile
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An update on the baseline evaluation experience:
In the previous post, Nick shared the exciting news that data from health centers in Mozambique is now available for us to see. Living in an environment where information is easily available at our fingertips, we often take the availability of data like this for granted. In reality, obtaining data from a place where information [...]
The Importance of Evaluation: Part 1
Last night my husband and I watched as Olympic speed skater Shani Davis won the gold. Unfortunately for us, we didn’t experience the thrill of surprise in his victory because NBC airs the program hours after it happens and we had read the news earlier in the day. My husband informed me that many frustrated [...]
Social Media and NGOs: Thoughts from the Blogosphere
Previously, VillageReach held a discussion on the strategic balance between emotional donation appeals versus more systematic explanations of our work. NGOs such as Kiva have utilized the advent of the growing social media and net space to reach a wider audience through the vehicle of a recipient to lender connection. Are there unintended consequences that [...]
The Life You Can Save
Peter Singer’s new book, The Life You Can Save, has sparked a growing debate amongst VillageReach staff. In his chapter, Why Don’t We Give More, he writes about the power of an identifiable victim — as opposed to group or mass need. He describes Paul Slovic’s research that identifies two distinct ways that we process [...]
Arriving at the Last Mile in India’s City Slums …
With our focus on last-mile healthcare access for remote rural populations, it may sound like a contradiction to address the pressing challenge of improving access for urban populations. But in 2010 that’s exactly what we’ll be doing. In August and September we were in India to look at locations for a new vaccines distribution program, [...]
Global Health Supply Chain Summit
This week VillageReach President, Allen Wilcox, will be speaking at the 2nd Annual Global Health Supply Chain Summit. The theme of this years conference is “Bringing Government, NGOs, and Academia Together: What can be learned from the for-profit world?” We are excited to be included in this conference again this year- the theme alone could [...]
VR News Round-up
We’re happy to say it’s been a busy month of September here at VR. While we haven’t had much time to write- others are writing about us! Over at the Discovery Channel, they cheekily suggest we should get involved in the US healthcare debate (thanks, but no thanks), while the author at the Scientific American [...]
VillageReach Announces Landmark Investment!
As the Social Capital Market Conference (SoCap) begins today in San Francisco, VillageReach is very excited to announce that Oasis Fund, a European investment fund, has committed a $1.375 million investment in VidaGas, the propane energy company owned by VillageReach and the Mozambique Foundation for Community Development (FDC). SoCap is full of social entrepreneurs, investors [...]
VillageReach’s Craig Nakagawa Featured Speaker at SoCap2009
On Wednesday, September 2nd, our CFO and Social Business Director, Craig Nakagawa, will present VidaGas: Anatomy of a Social Investment, a presentation featuring VillageReach’s social business VidaGas. At their first annual conference last year, SoCap sold out before the conference even began. This conference is a continuing testament to the excitement surrounding everything social entrepreneur-related. [...]
How to Make Your Contribution Count: Thoughts from GiveWell
Over at the GiveWell blog, they’ve been asking some difficult but incredibly important questions about international aid projects. Back in July, they explored the goal of sustainability. Like GiveWell, we’ve noticed that sustainability is more and more often included as a requirement from funders yet it often remains vaguely defined and difficult to quantify. VillageReach decided [...]