Neighbors again
It’s back to the future in Ukraine as MEDA helps farmers till ancestral Mennonite soil Fred Wall has spent a lifetime in farming, business and development. A graduate engineer, he worked for 10 years promoting agricultural and industrial development in Manitoba before owning his own plastics company and joining the MEDA board. Since selling his business in 2002 he has worked with MEDA’s microfinance initiatives in Nicaragua and with its affiliate, MicroVest. Last fall he went on MEDA’s agricultural development mission to Ukraine to explore microfinance and investment possibilities. The following report introduces the background and challenges of MEDA’s emerging new work there.
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Better than golf
Bernie Poetker got the best vacation of all when he put the clubs aside and went to Paraguay to help keep small farmers on their land
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Common ground
Years of straddling the dual worlds of for-profit and not-for-profit organizations shows similarities on both sides, including a tendency to stereotype the other.
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More than an ATM machine
Can we see entrepreneurs as God’s gift to the church?
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How the potato changed my life
When twin disasters wiped out the rice crop, Bangladesh needed a new “famine food” that would grow quickly. Now, in the International Year of the Potato, a former development worker looks back on the adventures that followed.
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Wireless in Africa
Handheld gizmos – new tools in the campaign against poverty in developing countries
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Table manners for a hungry planet
More and more food is going into gas tanks and for pricier diets in emerging nations. What’s on the menu for the poor?
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Microfinance, then and now
A banker’s-eye view of a dazzling movement. It’s not plain vanilla anymore.
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Return of the native
The Soviets took his father and evicted his family, but when a window opened Harry Giesbrecht returned to do business. Now nearly 80, he still keeps up a feverish pace to help repair and restore his homeland.
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Update from the Gulf
In the enduring carnage of Katrina, MEDA’s legacy is rebuilding hope one business at a time
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Performance review
How “Christian” is your business? A seasoned marketplace scholar suggests 10 things to check
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Trickle-down profits
Farmers know drip irrigation works, yet some can’t afford to invest. That’s about to change in Zambia and Ethiopia.
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The return of Don Rogelio
A “missionary kid” goes back to Colombia to retrace his past and track the legacy of his early work with MEDA
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MEDA convention 2007
A quick study in leadership
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You can bank on this driver
When you deal with people’s money you get close to their heart and soul
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