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How Citi helps leverage expertise to benefit the "next billion."

July 21, 2011
Scott Anderson, Managing editor, NextBillion.net

At NextBillion, we are focused broadly on development through enterprise, and specifically on ways to help the "next billion" people rise into the middle class from the base of the economic pyramid. NextBillion.net launched in 2005 as an initiative of the World Resources Institute (WRI) and it has evolved into a blog, newsroom, research tool and career center for business leaders, social entrepreneurs, NGOs, policy makers and academics working to open opportunities for the world's approximately 4 billion low-income producers and consumers.

Vital funding from the Citi Foundation will help NextBillion turn long-held aspirational goals into operational ones, facilitating a redesign of NextBillion's front page, as well as those of our sister sites NextBillion Brasil and NextBillion Espanol. It will also help develop an improved mobile presence--something we know is of importance to our expanding smart phone audience. We have a number of other technical plans on the table that this grant will help us deliver, but we'll announce those as the launch grows closer.

The Citi Foundation has a long history of working with partners to develop and scale ideas that expand economic opportunities for the poor around the world, including playing a leading role in field of micro finance, as we have noted in NextBillion blog coverage. It has also been an important supporter of our parent organization WRI's New Ventures initiative, which is focused on finding business solutions to challenges of sustainable development.

At NextBillion, we are proud to play a role in connecting so many people to the conversation around development and financial inclusion, and Citi's support is a major force in helping us expand it. We welcome the expertise that the Citi Foundation brings to NextBillion as well as its continuing long-term strategic assistance of New Ventures and WRI.

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