International Aid - Grant Montgomery

Gates donates 750 M dollars to fight AIDS TB and malaria

2012-01-26T13:11:00.000-05:00

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will inject $750 million into the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates announced at the World Economic Forum.

The donation comes in the form of a promissory note, not as cash, which the Gates Foundation said "gives the Global Fund the flexibility and authority to distribute funds efficiently based on immediate needs."

"By supporting the Global Fund, we can help to change the fortunes of the poorest countries in the world," Gates said in a statement. "I can't think of more important work."

At a news conference at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Gates said the funds could be used immediately to "saves lives, whether it is bed nets (to protect against mosquitoes carrying malaria) or TB (tuberculosis) treatment, those are two diseases that don't get perhaps the visibility of the work done in HIV but they are every bit as important."

The investment comes on top of $650 million the Gates Foundation has already contributed since the Global Fund was launched 10 years ago.

Each of the next billion will be children

2011-12-21T18:38:00.000-05:00

No milestone from this past year sticks out more than the news of the world's population crossing the seven billion mark.

Demographers estimate we will hit eight billion sometime in the next twelve years. No one can say exactly when or where we will cross that threshold but one thing is guaranteed: each of those next billion will be children.

While there are many things to consider about our readiness for population growth and sustainability, I also keep this question in view: What are the odds that each of those children can reach the potential they came into the world with?

Nearly half the world exists on $2 a day or less -- and half of the world's children live in poverty. In the least developed countries, about 30% of children under the age of 14 work. As a result, these children become extremely vulnerable to exploitation and human trafficking. Nearly 1 million children are trafficked and enslaved each year.

So what of the next billion? Will they learn or labor? Will they be free or enslaved? Will they know trauma or recovery? Will they be shown pathways to thrive or will they be stuck, as economist Paul Collier describes as the "bottom billion"?

If you believe all lives are of equal value, writing off a generation is simply unconscionable. Their future and ours have never before been so globally and inextricably tangled. Economic and political stability, global workforce and markets, the well being of civil society -- we'll rise or fall together.

[Excerpt of article by Kristin Lindsey, CEO of The Global Fund for Children]

Insights on how large the largest Foundation is

2011-12-14T14:59:00.001-05:00

Describing the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as the world’s largest foundation is accurate but a substantial understatement.

Its annual giving is more than six times larger than its closest ‘peer’.

There are fewer than 100 US foundations that give more than $50 million annually. The Gates Foundation gives $50 million per week.

But it’s not just the amount of giving that distinguishes the foundation. As Ed Skloot puts it, the foundation "differs from the institutional norm in almost every way: in size, ambition, high-level connections, proactivity, long-term commitment, operational engagement, and public leadership".

The Gates Foundation is treading new ground, changing expectations and the policy environment of philanthropy by its very existence.

--Tim Ogden, writing in Alliance

Africa Philanthropy

2011-12-05T12:37:00.002-05:00

While Africans in general are an extremely charitable lot, Africa’s 40 richest people have yet to make a mark in global philanthropy, though are making notable efforts in their home countries. Among the more significant givers among Africa’s 40 richest:

Strive Masiyiwa, Zimbabwean - The Zimbabwean telecoms tycoon and founder of Econet Wireless is one of Africa’s biggest givers. In 1996 Strive and his wife, Tsitsi Masiyiwa founded the Capernaum Trust, a Zimbabwe-registered Christian charity that supports over 28,000 orphaned Zimbabwean children. The organization provides bursary awards, scholarships, food packs and medical assistance to the children. The charity also funds the construction of libraries and other resource centers where beneficiaries can access educational materials.

Theophilus Danjuma, Nigerian - Nigeria’s former defense minister is the founder and chairman of South Atlantic Petroleum, one of the country’s leading oil exploration companies. Last year he endowed his T.Y.Daniuma Foundation with $100 million - the largest in Nigerian philanthropic history. The foundation makes grants to Nigerian-based non-governmental organizations that promote causes in education, free healthcare, policy advocacy and poverty alleviation.

Aliko Dangote, Nigerian - Africa’s wealthiest man recently embraced philanthropy. Over the last one year the Nigerian-born commodities tycoon has given $15 million to a Nigerian SME fund which grants low-interest loans to small businesses. In May, his Dangote foundation partnered with the World Economic Forum to establish a fellowship program aimed at grooming young leaders from Africa. Dangote donated $2 million to the programme. He has also recently given away millions to healthcare and educational causes as well as to communities that have been afflicted by natural disasters.

Nicky Oppenheimer, South African - South Africa’s richest man is custodian of the legacy of his fathers, Ernest and Harry Oppenheimer. He currently oversees the operations of the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust, a charity his father, Harry, founded in 1958. The foundation gives away over $6million annually in scholarships and bursaries to select South African students at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Oppenheimer is also an avid financial supporter of environmental conservation causes.

Raymond Ackerman, South African - Acherman is the founder of the Pick N Pay Group, one of South Africa’s largest supermarket chains with some 870 stores spread across the country. He gives back through The Ackerman Family Educational Trust, which provides scholarships and bursaries for about 60 South African students every year. The trust, which is managed by his wife, Wendy, also helps the mentally and physically disabled.

Hakeem Belo-Osagie, Nigerian - The reclusive Nigerian-born Harvard-trained Petroleum economist is the chairman and largest individual shareholder of the Nigerian operations of UAE Telecoms company, Etisalat. Belo-Osagie has given away millions to educational institutions such as the African Leadership Academy and Kings College Lagos. He also funds a scholarship program for select African students at Oxford University.

The Sawiris family, Egyptian- In 2001 Onsi Sawiris, the patriarch of the Sawiris family business dynasty of Egypt founded the Sawiris Foundation for Social Development, a charity which provides micro credit to Egyptian entrepreneurs and grants scholarships to outstanding Egyptian students in tertiary institutions. The foundation also funds an annual prize for the best of Egyptian literature.

[Forbes]

Online giving has gone mainstream over 10 years

2011-11-29T13:47:00.009-05:00

In 2001, only 4 percent of donors had given online. This year, about 65 percent have given to charity through the Internet.

In 2001, the average donation through the site was $226. But this year the average gift is $73, a change that Network for Good interprets as a sign that online giving has “gone mainstream.”

Just a couple of the comparisons made in a new graphic from Network for Good, a fund-raising and volunteerism Web site that celebrates its 10th anniversary this month.

Super Committee failure could hurt US Nonprofits

2011-11-23T18:46:00.001-05:00

Nonprofits could soon face significant cuts in government aid in the wake of Monday’s announcement of an impasse among members of a Congressional committee seeking to close the mounting federal deficit.

The spending curbs will probably affect many federal programs that provide money to nonprofits, says Michael Reinemer, a member of the Healthcare at Home Initiative, a coalition of charities, foundations, associations, and companies that advocate for the disabled.

“We’ve been cut down to the bone,” Mr. Reinemer says of charities that provide home health care. “Given past history, we suspect that we will be a target.”

Meanwhile, many nonprofit leaders are also worried that Congress will continue to debate limits on charity tax breaks for the wealthy.

[The Chronicle of Philanthropy]

Development and Philanthropy in the 21st century

2011-11-15T12:58:00.001-05:00

A summit on ‘The Future of Philanthropy and Development in the Pursuit of Well-Being’ is underway. The first day opened with a keynote panel discussion involving Jay Naidoo, global chair of GAIN (Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition), civil society activist, and former businessman, government minister and trade unionist from South Africa, and Marco Mira D’Ercole from the OECD Statistics Directorate.

Naidoo stressed the urgency of the moment. Globally, we are reaching ‘a tipping point’ with a multi-dimensional crisis that combines financial instability with food insecurity, an ecological emergency, rampant urbanization, growing inequality and pervasive poverty. As philanthropy and development players, we need to turn our attention from the ‘supply side to the demand side’, resourcing and facilitating citizen activism for ‘well-being’ and people’s organizations that can claim rights, press for social justice and reclaim human dignity. Currently, we have ‘an army of philanthropists’ (and development bureaucrats) who see development as a linear, ‘sausage-machine’ process, and who have fallen a bit too much in love with the siren call of philanthro-capitalism.

D’Ercole spoke about OECD efforts to move beyond measurement of only economic indicators of human progress. Innovative tools like the OECD Better Life Index are making it possible to gauge human well-being around issues of identity, connections with others, community, capabilities, culture, gender and non-financial forms of inequality. Such innovations open up possibilities to shift the development paradigm, bringing ‘well-being’ to the center of our work in place of narrow, economistic objectives and measures.

In another session Caroline Anstey, a managing director at the World Bank, fresh from the G20 meeting, said that the old balance of world political and economic power is definitely over, and a new development paradigm beyond the worn out ‘aid system’ is needed. We must recognize that private financial flows that can be tapped for development (like remittances from overseas workers) now exceed the total of official aid disbursements.

Former minister of finance in Egypt Samir Radwan cited the example of the ‘Arab Spring’, which shows that economic growth is not enough – the protestors in Egypt were clearly articulating a vision of ‘well-being’ that consists of ‘dignity, freedom and social justice’. The key triggers for uprisings in the Arab countries have been increasingly inequality, lack of jobs, and the lack of job prospects for young people in particular.

[Alliance Magazine]

Bill Gates’ G20 ideas to help the world’s poor

2011-11-03T12:42:00.000-04:00

Excerpts of a Washington Post article by Bill Gates:

Fifty years ago, almost 20 million children under the age of 5 died every year. In 2010, the figure was down to 7.6 million. This 60 percent decline in childhood deaths — reflecting advances in agriculture, education, health and sanitation — is compelling evidence of the increasing justice in our world. But the global economic crisis is putting the long-term trend of progress at risk.

I am giving a report Thursday to the heads of the Group of 20 governments, including President Obama, suggesting creative ways for the world to continue investing in development despite fiscal constraints. I hope three key ideas become part of congressional deliberations over the coming weeks.

First, programs funded by U.S. generosity have been a core component of this 50-year project of raising living standards around the world. When the private sector doesn’t have incentive, and poor governments don’t have the money, smart aid pays for breakthrough solutions. Thirty-six cents worth of measles vaccine protects a child for a lifetime.

Second, development isn’t just good for people in poor countries; it’s good for all of us. It used to be that the world was, roughly speaking, one-third rich and two-thirds poor. Now, the number of dynamic, healthy, highly educated countries is much higher, which is a recipe for prosperity. Imagine the world economy without Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, South Korea, Mexico or Turkey. If countries that are currently poor can feed, educate and employ their people, then over time they will contribute to the world economy. On the supply side, they’ll increase the production of key commodities such as food, keeping prices lower. On the demand side, as their citizens are more productive, they’ll become important markets for trade.

Third, the United States is not doing development alone. We spend about 1 percent of our total budget on aid, as do dozens of donor countries.

In my report to the G-20, I’ll make half a dozen recommendations for mobilizing tens of billions of dollars annually from private sources. The African diaspora is sitting on $50 billion in savings that could fund development in their home countries if it were captured through diaspora bonds. If the transaction costs on remittances worldwide were cut from an average of 10 percent to an average of 5 percent, it would unlock $15 billion a year in poor countries. In addition, there are trillions of dollars in sovereign wealth funds, and a portion could be reserved for key infrastructure projects in poor countries.

If we do it right, we can keep shrinking the number of countries where aid is needed to zero.

The World's largest fund-raiser

2011-11-01T13:35:00.000-04:00

Warren Buffett has carried his philanthropy to a new extreme and, in the process, sparked a revolution in the world of giving. Through his launch of the Giving Pledge in June 2010, a joint venture with his partner-in-patronage Bill Gates, Buffett has unlocked billions of dollars for philanthropic causes.

The Pledge itself is radical in its simplicity. Its signers have to be billionaires. And they have to promise to give at least half of their fortune to charity during their lifetimes.

So far, 69 billionaires have signed the pledge, representing more than $150 billion in philanthropy. That number is "far more" than he and Gates expected, Buffett says. The signers are wildly diverse in their politics and causes—ranging from fighting cancer and funding Jewish schools to housing orphans in Africa and helping farmers in Appalachia.

Still, they are united in their mission: to inspire the world's wealthy to give a larger percentage of their wealth to charity. It is the world's largest fund-raiser.

"What I'm hoping is that young people 20, 30, 50 years from now might be influenced," Buffett says. "The hope is that our larger population ends up giving a larger proportion of their income to fund philanthropy."

[Read full WSJ article]

Gates pitches a Financial Transactions Tax to raise revenue to solve social problems

2011-10-27T17:59:00.002-04:00

Bill Gates is proposing to the G20 nations the concept of a financial transactions tax as a way to raise revenue and discourage financial speculation.

The proceeds from a FTT could be used to help the disadvantaged. This isn’t just an errant, off-the-cuff musing of the Microsoft founder, but the result of a study by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation commissioned by the G20 nations to examine ways of helping poor nations address an estimated $80-$100 billion funding gap they face in tackling climate change.

Gates thinks conditions are ripe for a financial transactions tax to work and that it will generate “huge” revenues to devote to solving social problems. Gates deserves credit as a philanthropist looking at the sources and structure of public-sector revenue generation.

Critics will undoubtedly associate him with Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, both of whom also support the Tobin Tax, though it would be hard to imagine that one of the richest people ever is actually a closet socialist.

The as-yet unreleased report apparently concludes that “even a small tax of 10 basis points (0.10 percent) on equities and two basis points (0.02 percent) on bonds would raise about $48 billion among the G20 member states, or $9 billion if adopted only by larger European countries.”

Unfortunately, it appears that within the G20, only France and Germany support the idea.

-Rick Cohen

The Dalai Lama on Charitable Giving and Happiness

2011-10-15T14:40:00.000-04:00

Giving is good for you, and scientists at Stanford University are finding out why. Following a discussion with the Dalai Lama, scientists at Stanford from fields as diverse as neuroscience, psychology and medical science were inspired to explore the neural underpinnings of compassion and altruism – some of the ancient practices of Buddhism.

The result was the creation of The Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education in 2009. The Center uses state-of-the-art science to explore ways compassion can be cultivated in individuals, as well as society.

They believe that health, well-being and even happiness, are related to leading a giving life, characterized by charitable thoughts and actions. A team led by noted Stanford psychologist and neuroscientist Brian Knutson, PhD, is using brain scans to identify regions in the brain associated with compassion.

But, even as scientists locate those compassionate areas of the brain, can we learn to develop them and become more giving and therefore lead richer, more meaningful lives? That’s another question the Center hopes to answer. Donors tell us it “just feels good to give.” Charitable giving does feel great. Now science is exploring what we already know instinctively. If you want to feel good, help someone else.

The Dalai Lama put it more eloquently: “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion.
If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”

Debbie Starke

Why invest in education and microfinance for women?

2011-10-13T18:13:00.009-04:00

Worldwide, 1.4 billion of the ultrapoor survive on less than $1.25/day. More and more, to change this sad situation, the popular strategy is investing in education and microfinance for women.

This interview with Zainab Salbi (Women for Women International), Cheryl Wudunn (Half the Sky), and Nicholas Kristof (New York Times) really sums it up.

Foreign Aid Set to Take a Hit in US Budget Crisis

2011-10-07T23:53:00.000-04:00

America’s budget crisis at home is forcing the first significant cuts in overseas aid in nearly two decades, reflecting the country’s diminishing ability to influence the world.

Both the Republican-controlled House and the Democrat-controlled Senate have proposed slashing financing for aid agencies at a time of desperate humanitarian crises and uncertain political developments. The proposals have raised the specter of deep cuts in food and medicine for Africa, in relief for disaster-affected places like Pakistan and Japan, in political and economic assistance for the new democracies of the Middle East, and even for the Peace Corps. It would also cut American contributions to international organizations like the United Nations and its Human Rights Council, the World Bank and the World Health Organization.

Representative Kay Granger, chairwoman of the House appropriations subcommittee overseeing foreign affairs, said lawmakers needed to prioritize spending according to American national security interests. The Republicans attachs conditions on aid to Pakistan, Egypt and the Palestinians, suspending the latter entirely if the Palestinians succeed in winning recognition of statehood at the United Nations. However, one of the largest portions of foreign aid — more than $3 billion for Israel — is left untouched in both the House and Senate versions.

Given the relatively small foreign aid budget — it accounts for 1 percent of federal spending over all — the effect of the cuts could be disproportional.

John Norris, a former official at the State Department and the Agency for International Development, or U.S.A.I.D., said that the country could “be much more selective” in delivering aid “without doing much harm to the national interest. …The budget impact is negligible. The impact around the world is enormous,” he said in a telephone interview from Nairobi, Kenya, where he was overseeing relief to the famine in the Horn of Africa.

[The New York Times]

Soros commits millions to African village project

2011-10-04T20:06:00.002-04:00

George Soros has pledged $27.4 million to aid development in targeted villages across rural Africa.

Soros also pledged up to $20 million in loans to support business projects within those villages over the next five years.

Soros says that some of the board members of the Open Society Foundations opposed his giving any donations to the project when it was first launched five years ago, considering it risky. But he said he gave money anyway, "because it was my money" and the idea seemed "worth a shot." His $50 million pledge in 2006 was distributed over the next five years.

A report on the project's first five years, released Monday, shows that the proportion of households in the targeted villages with access to improved drinking water soared to 68 percent from 17 percent, and students benefiting from school meal programs grew to 75 percent from 25 percent. Average maize yields more than tripled during the same period.

The Millennium Villages project aims to help 500,000 people in 10 countries across Africa to reach U.N. development goals and offer a model for the remainder of the continent. It is directed by Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University's Earth Institute, and operates closely with U.N. agencies.

Digital philanthropy comes of age

2011-10-01T23:56:00.004-04:00

The recent Social Good Summit mounted by Mashable, 92nd Street Y and the United Nations Foundation with support from Swedish mobile phone giant Ericsson was a chance for the most innovative technologists, influential minds and passionate activists to come together with one shared goal: to unlock the potential of new media and technology to make the world a better place.

Consider, for example, the legacy "Save the Children" campaigns, which connected donors with impoverished children through personal letters. The first wave of digital updates included initiatives like Kiva, which pioneered online crowd-sourced micro-finance.

charity:water's Scott Harrison gave an Ignite-style introduction whereby the recipients, many of them in sub-Saharan Africa, receive wells yielding clean water, while donors receive a first-hand view of the wells their donations are digging -- thanks to an unusually well-conceived back-end as a platform and an inspired use of Google Earth as the telescope.

Howard W. Buffett (Warren's 27-year-old grandson) used his platform at the summit to announce his aunt Doris Buffett's new program to promote university-level "non-profit studies" through her Learning by Giving Foundation. "Innovation has no power without implementation," he warned.

In the tech world, there is constant pressure for ideas that reach maturity to continue to evolve (along with the veiled threat that the failure to do so will be punished). The push to innovate has touched every sector of society, including formerly reticent circles such as diplomacy. One U.S. government representative was Dr. Raj Shah, a former Gates Foundation officer who was appointed the head of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) last year. Shah announced the creation of a new initiative called FWD (for "Famine, War and Drought Relief"), which seeks to attract emergency donations for the massive catastrophe currently unfolding in the Horn of Africa. The new FWD site borrows an SMS-based mobile giving platform (#777444).

The new era of connectivity is creating new forms of transparency, in which the various parties to altruism can now encounter each other online, for a compelling new conversation.

--Anne Nelson, Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs

Water and Scott Harrison

2011-09-26T19:24:00.002-04:00

Scott Harrison was a New York nightclub promoter who lived to flaunt his Rolex, his super-model girlfriends, and his ability to get liquor companies to pay him $2,000 a month to drink their brands in public. Harrison woke up one day and “realized I was the most morally, spiritually, and emotionally bankrupt person I knew.” He signed on with a not-for profit and while working in Africa, he became acutely aware of the devastating impact the lack of clean drinking water had on communities. “I learned that a billion people in the world didn’t have what I took for granted every day of my life,” he said. “And it’s entirely solvable problem.”

He decided to take a three-pronged approach with charity: water.

He pledged to find a way to put 100 percent of donations into water projects, such as digging wells in impoverished villages.

He’d provide proof of where donations were going by sending donors pictures and showing them the projects using Google Earth.

He’d create an “epic brand” to differentiate charity: water and to gain support from the media and high profile donors.

Harrison’s asks individual donors to “give up” their birthdays by asking their friends and social media contacts to donate a dollar amount equivalent to the age to charity: water. So far, 9,500 people have done just that, including several celebs. The charity has raised $43 million to finance 4,200 water projects, serving two million people in 19 countries.

Donna Fenn, Inc

A Return on Social Investment

2011-09-06T12:15:00.001-04:00

For decades, nonprofits looked to donors – private foundations, individual philanthropists, governments – for most of their expenses. Some suggest that some nonprofits are stuck on “the philanthropy dole.”

An Aspen leadership fellow observed, “There’s been literally trillions and trillions of dollars given through nonprofits, with limited results.” As a businessman turning toward social change ventures, that nonprofit model baffles him. “If you give me money, I produce results,” he said of his primary field. “If I don’t produce results, I don’t get more money.”

Enter the world of social-impact investing, or socially responsible investing. In this world, investors are willing to trade some – or perhaps all – of their possible return on investment (ROI) for achieving some social change, or “social return.”

But that begs another question: What’s the ideal 'Return on Investment' on charity?

And how do you measure it? Donors have become increasingly demanding of data to help evaluate how well donor dollars are being used. As one guy in the trenches observed, “Anecdotes are not going to cut it anymore.”

At the same time, not every change can be turned into a number, much less a return on investment. One woman who runs a nonprofit abroad asked, “How do we get measure right? Our ‘profit’ is, we’re changing lives somehow.”

Making that change happen, she insists, requires that “the helper” – donor or investor – “needs to listen to the doer.”

[Christian Science Monitor]

Social entrepreneurship instead of foreign aid

2011-08-25T12:24:00.001-04:00

Foreign aid as a development tool has been tried and found wanting. Decades of handouts from developed countries to developing countries have done little more than promote corruption among developing country leaders and continue a cycle of dependency.

Social entrepreneurship is a growing phenomenon among business-minded people who want to make a difference for those in poverty. Social entrepreneurship is different from current corporate social responsibility efforts, which involve projects such as building a well while in the process of building a factory in Africa.

For social entrepreneurs, the social good is the end goal rather than an afterthought. Take Nokero as an example. Short for “No Kerosene,” the company was started by inventor Steve Katsaros, who developed a solar-powered light bulb that could provide light for those without access to electricity. Rather than continually looking for grants to produce the bulbs and then handing them out to people who may not recognize their value or may not be the most in need, Katsaros made the bulbs cheaply enough that he can sell them in the developing world. By selling the bulbs, Katsaros can also stay in business as long as people want his bulbs, rather than becoming unable to provide when the grants dry up.

In addition to stimulating development, social entrepreneurship inherently promotes economic freedom. It recognizes that the poor have the ability to determine their greatest needs, and they deserve the respect and freedom to make their own choices about how to meet those needs. Social entrepreneurs are providing these kinds of opportunities in a cost-effective, sustainable way.

[Excerpt of article by Michelle Kaffenberger]

A small grant can be big

2011-08-23T19:37:00.000-04:00

Representatives from grantmakers across Africa joined together in Nairobi to discuss how small grants can mobilize social change. One of the resounding messages that was repeated throughout the day is that ‘small’ grants are not small at all. In fact, for these grantmakers, most of whom are making grants of around US$5,000, ‘small’ grants for local organizations can have a bigger impact than the huge chunks of cash poured into larger NGOs.

Participants articulated the power of complementing local leadership with broader networks to achieve change at multiple levels – community, nation, region. Many highlighted the incredible successes that local groups were able to achieve; successes that were set in motion by grants of only a few hundred dollars in some cases.

For small, local organizations, small grants can be major stepping stones. They can fund infrastructure and staffing, and build the capacity of local leaders to take their work to the next level. They can enable exchanges among communities facing similar issues and unite diverse constituencies.

Above all, it is not about the money itself. Money does not create change. But comprehensive support and mentorship can. Pouring millions of dollars into a particular problem is no guarantee of its resolution. But if accompanied by careful and thoughtful mentorship and capacity building, a small grant can resonate in a powerful way.

[Excerpt of Global Greengrants Fund article]

Philanthropy and Next Generation Wealth

2011-08-03T12:44:00.002-04:00

In the past if you were to imagine a room filled with around 100 people with a combined net worth of $50 billion, you might imagine a pretty homogeneous group of staid, white-haired older men. Last week's Nexus Global Youth Summit was a rainbow of unique and enthusiastic Gen-X, Gen-Y and even Gen-Z (15-year-olds) passionate social entrepreneurs.

This summit was convened by Jonah Wittkamper, director of Search for Common Ground-US, "We aimed at connecting young, wealth holders with social entrepreneurs. Instead of feeling isolated, today's wealthy youth can be inspired to change the paradigm of wealth away from materialism to philanthropy."

John Kluge, Jr, age 28, conceives a notion that, " a billion person problem requires a billion person solution." He explained to the UN General Assembly (and his peer audience) that "...the new definition of billionaire is someone who is relentlessly taking on billion person problems -- water, sanitation, illiteracy, etc."

Also attending the Nexus Summit were progeny of first generation entrepreneurs whose parents have created and sold firms to large conglomerates and their family has become instantly wealthy by a single event. Theses young people have found their lives dramatically changed, and these wealthy next generation have found a satisfying calling to combine their wealth and the feel good power of socially responsible philanthropy.

--April Rudin, writing in the Huffington Post

Corporate Social Responsibility and Social Justice

2011-08-01T11:57:00.000-04:00

When less than 5 percent of the world’s population live in the United States and consume more than 25 percent of the world’s resources, while roughly half the world is either starving or on the verge of starvation — the only way you can define that system is as a failure.

It’s not a model that we can sell to Africa or Latin America or India. It’s not something we want to pass onto our children. And an awful lot of business people are beginning to understand this. Those young MBA students who are going to be running our companies in the future years are waking up to these facts.

We’re moving into a time when people are really getting the point that we have to be sustainable, that that has to be the driving force. And sustainability includes social justice.

So we can’t be sustainable if people in the world are starving and being exploited. That’s not working. It seeds the roots of turmoil, even terrorism, and it creates tremendous problems for our children. We’re now finally beginning to understand these new facts of life, and our young people are waking up the fastest.

And corporate executives who understand these new trends and steer their companies in directions that recognize that they are not just about making profits regardless of the social and environmental costs will thrive.

[Excerpts of an interview with John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man]