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In exchange for taking small actions that might break the cycle of poverty--like going to school--mPowering's users earn points that can be exchanged for important goods. The company was founded by veterans of Apple and Salesforce.com

By Michael Hirtzer CHICAGO (Reuters) - Drought worsened in the Midwest during the last week as record-high temperatures stressed the developing corn and soybean crops, while cotton and pastures eroded amid a historic drought in the southern Plains.

In many developing countries, teenage girls' days are filled with hard labor as they enter into an adulthood of second-class citizenship. Now, a study finds, climate change threatens to make girls' lives even harder. The report from the nonprofit Plan U.K., as well as the U.K.

In places where there is no grid, houses can be dark.

Looking to start a benefit corporation, a nonprofit, or a for-profit company with a social purpose? Those whove done it say social entrepreneurism takes grit, resolve, and imagination. Fred Keller, founder and CEO of West Michigan plastics manufacturer Cascade Engineering, keeps a card in his pocket with a set of reminders from John Wesley, 18th century Methodist theologian, on conducting a good life

Investing in sectors that most business people find too risky, this firm is finding that the returns from helping small businesses in the developing world can be more than simply charity. Small money, big change

Now panels can be made lightweight, cheaply, and cleanly.

Biofuels are taking off, but if they keep being made from corn, the world will go hungry. The oceans, full of fast-growing kelp, are the next frontier of plant-based fuel.

A new campaign to install toilets in the developing world rests not on aid, but on using marketing to convince villagers that bad sanitation is a problem they need to work together to fix.

By connecting conservation with wealth, Blue Ventures has found a way to convince fishing communities in the developing world that saving fish doesn't mean starvation--it means getting rich. There are not, in fact, always more fish in the sea. That we have overfished our oceans to near the point of no return has been rehashed over and over now for years.

Many people already use their smart

SightLife, a Seattle-based nonprofit eye bank that extracts corneas from organ donors and distributes them to transplant centers around the world, is one of the largest such facilities in the U.S., with 96 employees and more than $14 million in annual revenue. It supplies nearly 5,000 corneas for transplant a year. But it wasn't always that way

Ethonomic Indicator of the Day: 26% -- the amount of global CO2 emissions that come from the production of traded goods and services.

Using little more than Jell-O, aluminum foil, milk protein, and a 12-cent LED, University of Texas scientists have hacked together a super-cheap, fast-acting detector for pancreatitis.

Chances are, you've at least heard of Kiva , the microfinancing nonprofit that allows users to give bite-sized loans to entrepreneurs in poverty-stricken regions. Because people like to feel good by offering cash to worthy causes (or so we've heard), Kiva has done exceptionally well, funding $200 million worth of microloans since its launch in 2004. And as of today, you can specifically fund what are, in our opinion, the smartest entrepreneurs--the ones who realize that efficiency is the key to becoming self-sufficient.