While some of the world's most powerful people are chilling on ranches in Texas, former President Bill Clinton is changing the world, a few million dollars at a time.
From Sept. 15 to 17, President Clinton hosted the star-studded inaugural meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative, a project of the William J. Clinton Foundation.
His mission: to put the people most savvy about global problems and how to solve them in the same room as those most willing and able to foot the bill. The outcome? According to The Associated Press, over $1.25 billion in pledges towards constructive action within the next year.
"I thought maybe we could have a meeting where we could bring the government people together with the private sector, with the non-governmental organizations and the advocates. We could all be in one room. We could talk about these things for a couple days and actually get people to promise to do things," Clinton told Larry King. "You've got to come to our meeting and literally fill out a card and say "This is what I'm going to do in the next year."
I was immediately reminded of the harsh dichotomy between wealth and poverty that I witnessed while studying abroad at the University of Ghana. In Accra, a growing metropolis rich with business opportunity, five-star hotels occupy the same streets where men and women peddle goods to make it through the day. Outside expensive foreign-owned restaurants are children begging for food. When I asked a friend why more Ghanaians don't start their own businesses, he explained that there is simply no capital. Without a system of low-interest credit like the one we take for granted in the U.S., starting a business is virtually impossible. As a result, foreign investors take advantage of the Ghanaian market without improving the lives of those who live there.
This is the sort of problem that the Clinton Global Initiative can solve. "We know how to provide micro-credit loans and financing for entrepreneurs in poor areas," said Clinton.
This nouveaux charity focuses on investment, rather than donation. The CGI aims to plant seeds that will yield solutions in the four main sectors of world-wide adversity. With pragmatic steps, the initiative plans to reduce the amount of poverty in the world, use religion as means to spread peace, slow down the devastating effects of global warming and increase the accountability of governments.
Part of the beauty of Clinton's initiative is its all-inclusiveness. No partisanship here. One of his primary sponsors is Tom Golisano, a conservative from upstate New York. Among many others, participants included Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corporation (which runs Fox News), Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Brad Pitt, P. Diddy, Oprah Winfrey, Jeffrey Immelt, chief executive of General Electric, Tony Blair, Kofi Annan, Ted Turner, Shimon Peres, and Olusegun Obasanjo, the President of Nigeria. Talk about a diverse crowd. And at $15,000 a ticket, you can be sure that those who attended meant business. In fact, former President Clinton plans to hold the attendees fully responsible for their pledges. Only those whose projects reach fruition in a year are invited back to the follow-up conference in the fall of 2006.
In an interview with U.S. News and World Report, Clinton described the type of tangible change that he expects as a result of the initiative. "Murdoch could say he's going to take one African country and fund a malaria prevention effort there. Another executive might say, 'Figure out what the gap is between the number of people in a particular country being served with AIDS medicine and the number of people that need it and I'll make up the difference.' That's the kind of thing I want to have happen."
And don't we all? The current state of affairs in the world should serve as a constant reminder that the status quo is insufficient. Half of the world's six billion people live on less than $2 each day. It's time we stop turning a blind eye and spread the love.
Former President Clinton has provided a medium for wealthy people to make tangible change. Not bad for a guy in retirement. Will the endeavor succeed? One year's time will tell. Of one thing we can be certain. If given the opportunity, our former President will make one hell of a First Man. Titilola Bakare is a senior English major from Harrisburg, Pa. Notes from the Underground appears on Thursdays.
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