When I threw down the 200 bidis — hand-rolled Indian cigarettes — they gasped. “Every time you sit in front of your open flame cooking stove,” I motioned to them, “it’s like you are smoking 200 bidis.” They were all shocked; the audience of 40 women and children fell silent.

In Zambia, raising cattle is a risky business. A whole range of diseases attacks the country’s herds with depressing regularity, killing hundreds, if not thousands of cows with each outbreak. The cost of disease weighs most heavily on the rural poor — a large percentage of rural households depend on cattle to a certain extent, to ensure their livelihoods. Here, as in many parts of Africa, cattle are a traditional store of value, a kind of bank account on hooves.

“Thank You!” a villager exclaims to the Andrew Lees Trust (ALT) team. He points over to his concrete house, “I built that from money I earned growing tomatoes! ALT Projet Radio taught me how to grow tomatoes!” The ALT team had never before met this man, but their encounter was a powerful reminder of the linkages between education, information, and empowerment that their radio network reinforces.

Spearheading the revolution of providing quality healthcare to the needy, Aravind Eye Hospital (AEH), Madurai, has won as many accolades from management gurus for its effective business model, as from its millions of patients. And why not? From a 11-bed Hospital in Madurai to the largest provider of eye care services in the world, Aravind has come a long way indeed.

Kishore Biyani, whose Future Group changed the country's retail landscape through unconventional ways, is taking a step further by exploring possibilities of tapping the potential of urban slums.

On the heels of setting up neighbourhood new format stores named KB's Fair Price shops, the group is toying with the idea of taking retailing to the bottom of the pyramid in urban areas -- the slums.

IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, will invest in VenturEast Proactive Fund in India, which will support early-stage businesses that are building globally competitive technologies as well as mature sector businesses that will use technology to build leadership. An important approach of the fund will be to back businesses that help address the digital divide, helping technology reach more people at the “bottom of the pyramid” as well as serving the needs of small and medium enterprises.

Like so many others who found their fortune with Microsoft, Peter Bladin left the company and embarked on a second career to try to make the world a better place.

A surge in investment in solar power is bringing down costs of the alternative energy source, but affordability problems still dog hopes for the 1.6 billion people worldwide without electricity.

The sun supplies only a tiny fraction -- less than one tenth of 1 percent -- of mankind's energy needs. But its supporters believe a solar era may be dawning, boosted by western funding to combat oil "addiction" and climate change.

Governments from Japan to Germany and the United States are helping the public wean themselves off fossil fuels.

Latin America’s poorest women once had few options for bettering their circumstances, but an organization called Pro Mujer has opened up a new world of opportunity by providing small loans and other services.

Naseema, 36, fled to Kabul with her family in 1999 after the Taliban set fire to their village in northern Afghanistan. Like many residents of the mountainous country's northern regions, Naseema's family built a one-room shack in Kabul's mountains, where thousands of the city's poor live in illegal tenements.