News/Events

NextBillion.net, an initiative of WDI, served as a media partner for two of the year’s most influential and well-attended conferences on the global social investment and microfinance calendar.

NextBillion Managing Editor Scott Anderson and Heather Esper, WDI program manager for Impact Assessment, were among more than 1,800 attendees at the Social Capital Markets Conference (SOCAP14) on Sept. 2-Sept. 5 in San Francisco. Now in its seventh year, SOCAP brings together global innovators, investors, foundations, governments, institutions, and social entrepreneurs.

This year’s theme, “Igniting Vibrant Communities,” emphasized cross-sector collaboration and featured more than 300 speakers – including USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah, Google.org Director Jackie Fuller, and Leila Janah, founder and CEO of Samasource, which employs thousands of impoverished people through digital work. Anderson and Esper provided live coverage of some of SOCAP’s key speakers and panels.

James Militzer, editor of NextBillion Financial Innovation, provided coverage, live Tweets, and video interviews from the Microcredit Summit: Generation Next, in Mérida, Mexico, which took place Sept 3-5.

Organized by the Microcredit Summit Campaign, this year’s summit explored the challenges and opportunities related to the growth and transformation of the sector, with a special focus on innovative practices that promote full financial inclusion. For 17 years, the Microcredit Summits have been encouraging practitioners and other stakeholders to use microfinance as a means of fighting poverty. Speakers include Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Muhammad Yunus, among a number of prominent leaders in microfinance. This year’s summit attract approximately 1,000 attendees.