The Clinton Global Initiative 2012 kicked off Sunday (Sept. 23) with a theme — Designing for Impact. The idea: In an era of value-for-money, donors and development experts are beginning to see opportunities in bringing design principles to development.
World leaders, CEOs, heads of nonprofits, philanthropists, scientists, journalists and innovators came together in New York to address some of the world’s most pressing challenges through design. And on the event’s first day, a number of commitments were made, including a new partnership between Procter & Gamble Co.and singer Smokey Robinson’s nonprofit Smoke Alarm to boost awareness on the need to provide children in poor countries clean drinking water.
The partnership will build on Procter & Gamble’s children’s safe drinking water program, which aims to deliver 2 billion liters of clean drinking water to poor communities by 2020 through the provision of water purification packets. Devex also interviewed a number of personalities at the event, including Health One Global Chairman Stan Shepherd, MBA Women International CEO Gail Romero and Cherie Blair, whose foundation focuses on building the capacity of women entrepreneurs. And there’s more to come on the second day of the annual meeting, where former U.S. President Bill Clinton is expected to announce more commitments.
Here’s a list of some of the issues to be tackled in the next two days:
Renowned journalist Nick Kristof will moderate a session on opening opportunities for women in participating in urban planning — from public health to environmental conservation. Habitat for Humanity International CEO Jonathan Reckford and U.N.-Habitat Executive Director Joan Clos will be among the session’s participants.
Trevor Mundel, president of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s global health program, and Sally Osberg, Skoll Foundation president and CEO, will participate in a session exploring “creative” ways philanthropists can maximize their impact through grants and partnerships.
A plenary session to be participated by Save the Children President and CEO Carolyn Miles and Malawi President Joyce Banda will try to identify the most effective interventions for early childhood development and how to scale them up. The session will also look into ways to design integrated and holistic health care and education programs.
Two Design Lab sessions are set for Monday: One on designing healthier urban environments to prevent chronic diseases and another on ensuring more children will benefit from early childhood education. The remaining Design Lab session on Sept. 25 will identify measures to protect poor people from shocks in the event of a disaster or crop failure.
A session on Sept. 25 aims to address one of the world’s most pressing challenges: food security. The session will explore ways to redesign the current food system — producing more food while reducing ecological footprint. It will also look at ways to boost livelihood and improve food quality while at the same time tackling waste and farmers’ resilience to natural disasters. Rockefeller Foundation President Judith Rodin will be the session’s moderator.
Former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, Mexican President Felipe Calderón, South Sudan President Salva K. Mayardit and U.S. Department of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner are set to take part in a session that will examine governments’ responsibility in “solving twenty-first century global problems.”
Chelsea Clinton will be moderating a session on optimism amid all global challenges. The session is in line with an editorial Bill Clinton wrote for Time Magazine. In the article, Bill identified five key areas where there has been “concrete, measurable and reproducible progress” because of partnerships: technology, health, economy, equality and justice.
Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and U.S. President Barack Obama will both deliver an address on the event’s last day, which will conclude with a plenary session participated by Bill Clinton and Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi.
Read more development aid news online, and subscribe to The Development Newswire to receive top international development headlines from the world’s leading donors, news sources and opinion leaders — emailed to you FREE every business day.
About the author
Jenny Lei Ravelo@JennyLeiRavelo
Jenny Lei Ravelo is a Devex Senior Reporter based in Manila. She covers global health, with a particular focus on the World Health Organization, and other development and humanitarian aid trends in Asia Pacific. Prior to Devex, she wrote for ABS-CBN, one of the largest broadcasting networks in the Philippines, and was a copy editor for various international scientific journals. She received her journalism degree from the University of Santo Tomas.
