Crowd Funding The Next Big Social Innovation?

Crowd funding [Photo Credit – Rocao Lara on Flickr]

One of the more recent developments in supporting new innovations in global poverty has been the rise of crowd funding platforms. More and more people are becoming change makers by having more access to the resources they need and this is unique because even more individuals are getting the opportunity to support their fellow innovators.

Jeff McIntire-Strasburg from Sustainablog recently posted about 2 new technologies (Mwezi Light & SunWater) that are aiming to alleviate poverty through their simple, yet ingenious innovations. And they’re using online crowd funding to support it.

Updates on M-Pesa and Why Replicating Successful Models Is No Easy Task

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An earlier blog post on this site explored the rise of mobile payments and specifically looked at M-Pesa, Kenya’s highly successful mobile payment system that has surpassed expectations dramatically and been a huge success.

That post also touched on the problem that most other countries have not been able to replicate the service with anywhere near the same level of success as M-Pesa. The Brookings Institution, an independent non-profit research organization, recently released the above video describing the M-Pesa model in conjunction with a detailed report on the 2012 Brookings Blum Roundtable that can be accessed here.

The report outlines three reasons that came up during the roundtable that might help explain the challenges of replication.