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February-March 2004
Global Giving Round-Up
Overviews of best-practices around the world and links to learn more about them
Schmidheiny's $1 billion gift creates new philanthropic model for Latin America
Stephan Schmidheiny's decision to donate the entire equity of his Costa Rican-based GrupoNueva business holdings to a newly established trust fund called VIVA (Vision and Values), has created a novel mechanism to foster stronger alliances between corporate and civil society in Ibero-America. Under the new arrangement, VIVA becomes the owner of GrupoNueva and the chief financial backer of the AVINA Foundation (www.avina.net), established by Schmidheiny in 1994 to promote sustainable development in Latin America, Spain and Portugal. (See GGM Issue 5, April-May, 2002, for an interview with Schmidheiny). The AVINA Foundation has invested more than $280 million in support of partnerships between business leaders and civil society to promote social development. VIVA will function as a lean, virtual trust, overseeing what Schmidheiny hopes will be a "virtuous cycle" of cross-fertilization between the business operations of GrupoNueva and the philanthropic aims of AVINA. Peter Fuchs, a former head of the International Red Cross and close associate of Schmidheiny is VIVA's president. Schmidheiny himself plans to have no direct role in management of any of the three institutions in the future. (INCAE press release October 9, 2003; GrupoNueva press release)
Outlook upbeat for socially responsible investing in Asia
While the bulk of the funds and investors involved in socially responsible investing (SRI) are still to be found in developed nations, the emerging Asian market has substantial potential for growth, according to an industry association from the region. Currently, SRI in developing countries is embryonic, representing only about $2.2 billion of the $2.4 trillion global market. Only $1 billion in SRI assets are actually held by investors in developing countries. Still, Asia's shifting demographics, rising middle-class prosperity in a region shrugging off the effects of the recent economic crisis, and increased social, environmental and ethical awareness are key factors that will accelerate SRI growth, predicts the Association for Sustainable and Responsible Investment in Asia (AsrIA -- www.asria.org). AsrIA concludes that conditions are particularly favorable for the growth of SRI in China, India, Thailand and Malaysia. (Origo Fourth Sector News; World Business Council for Sustainable Development)
Europe's first center for social entrepreneurship launched at Oxford
In its largest grant to date, the California-based Skoll Foundation (www.skollfoundation.org) has donated $7.5 million to launch the Skoll Center for Social Entrepreneurship at Oxford University's Saïd Business School in England. The Center will provide scholarships to five MBA students annually, each of whom will be expected to focus their studies on applying entrepreneurial strategies to create social change and to develop a plan to address a specific social problem. The Skoll grant will also finance research projects, a lectureship and an international forum on social entrepreneurship (see below). The foundation, founded and chaired by Jeff Skoll, former president of online auction site eBay, chose the Saïd School in part because of its diverse student body: 70 percent of its students are from outside Western Europe. (Philanthropy News Digest, November 25, 2003; Skoll Foundation press release, November 24, 2003)
Two global initiatives provide final push for eradication of tropical diseases:
End to guinea-worm disease within reach
The global campaign spearheaded by former US President Jimmy Carter to eradicate guinea-worm disease is nearly at an end. As of January 2004, the eradication effort is fighting the last one percent of the disease remaining in the world, making guinea-worm likely to be the second disease eradicated from the world (after smallpox) and the first to be eliminated without "magic bullet" vaccines or medications. Eradication strategies focus on safe water supplies and public education. Whereas there were 3.2 million cases in 1986, in 2001 the number was less than 100,000. In February, Carter paid a visit to the village of Dashie in Ghana, the most endemic guinea-worm country in West Africa, to urge the nation's leaders to finish the job of eliminating the illness. The Atlanta-based Carter Center (www.cartercenter.org) has been instrumental in mobilizing a multi-sector global partnership to combat the disease. In addition to funding, water wells and vehicles from the government of Japan, the campaign relies on major assistance from numerous private and corporate donors. Among the contributions are water filtering fabric from DuPont; larvicide from BASF; Tylenol® and other medical supplies from Johnson & Johnson; piping from Hydro Polymers; funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and field support from volunteers from Japan and the US Peace Corps. A weblog containing President Carter's journal of his visit to West Africa is available at the Carter Center website. (World Health Organization press release, February 4, 2004)
...Pfizer expands donation of anti-blindness drugs for trachoma
Pfizer Inc. (www.pfizer.com) is to donate 135 million does of its antibiotic azithromycin to the International Trachoma Initiative (ITI -- www.trachoma.org), another multi-sector global effort to curb trachoma, a disease that has blinded 6 million people in developing countries. ITI was founded by Pfizer and the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation (www.emcf.org) in 1998 and began work in Morocco and Tanzania in 1999. It has since expanded to include Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali, Nepal, Niger, Sudan and Vietnam, with Mauritania and Senegal soon to be added. Pfizer's previous donation of 8 million doses of azithromycin to ITI has helped reduce the prevalence of trachoma by 90 per cent in some countries. Administered in a single dose that lasts for 10 days, the drug is easy and effective to use. ITI aims to eliminate almost all blinding cases of trachoma by 2005. (Washington Post, November 12, 2003)
Ex-Marxist rebels lead a new revolution in Bogota -- social capitalism
In Colombia, a group of former Marxist guerillas who once plotted to overthrow the state are now embracing a new style of capitalism, which seeks to funnel profits from business enterprises into social programs. Backed by the conservative government of President Álvaro Uribe, Nuevo Arco Iris ("New Rainbow" -- www.nuevoarcoiris.org.co) was founded to coordinate the reintegration of former rebels into society. Although it has nonprofit status, it uses a standard business model to operate a range of ventures, including a 35-room hotel in downtown Bogota, a national construction firm that has built 600 homes, and an agricultural brokerage firm. Other deals are in the works, from a string of Internet cafes in Costa Rica to a partnership that makes light fixtures for export. Proceeds from these businesses are channeled into social programs that teach children about conflict resolution, and train human rights workers to run crop substitution programs for coca farmers. Run by Antonio Sanguino, 37, the former leader of a band of ELN rebels who disarmed a decade ago, Nuevo Arco Iris provides permanent jobs for about 200 people, 115 of them ex-guerrillas. The venture, with a budget of about $500,000, receives support from governments of various countries, including Spain and Netherlands, as well as from the European Community and contracts with organizations such as United Nations Development Programme, and is just about breaking even. (New York Times, February 6, 2004).
Colombian actor rescues child soldiers from life on the streets
Meanwhile, it's not just an older generation of combatants whose reintegration poses challenges for Colombian society. Some of the poorest youths showing up on the streets are former child soldiers pressed into fighting or recruited by violent insurgent groups. As Colombia's government slowly tries to turn the corner in the civil war, these child fighters have been deserting the rebel armies in ever greater numbers. For these dislocated and desperate young people, most in their teens, help is coming from an unexpected quarter. The Colombian actor Manuel Busquets, beloved by soap opera fans throughout Latin America, has taken on the cause of the child soldiers and has created a program of drama instruction for kids whose previous experience was limited to the theater of war. Busquets, who frequently portrays rich and powerful characters in his television roles, in real life is the son of a wealthy executive of Standard Oil. The program he fashioned a few months ago to teach child soldiers about his profession has won acceptance from the government, and has come to the attention of the International Organization for Migration, which has expressed interest in financing an expansion of Busquets' theater classes. (New York Times, January 24, 2004)
GEXSI offers new, improved marketplace for social investment
The Global Exchange for Social Investment (GEXSI -- www.gexsi.org), piloted in 2002, went operational last November and has established offices in Berlin and London. GEXSI, developed by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship and a consortium of other institutions, grew out of a concern that high quality social initiatives were going unfunded because investors could not find or properly evaluate them. GEXSI is seeking to remedy that situation by facilitating productive, transparent and reliable linkages across the spectrum of players in civil society and private sector institutions. It hopes to mobilize a variety of resources for social investment including commercial finance, official development assistance, investment guarantees, voluntary philanthropic giving, corporate social responsibility programs, ethical venture capital funding, and other sources of finance and in-kind support. GEXSI has several private sector founding consortium members. Financiers include Deutsche Bank, Foursome Investments, the Open Society Institute, and the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship. Advisors include Bain & Company and PricewaterhouseCoopers. The leader of public sector support for GEXSI is Germany's foreign aid agency, GTZ.
Broadcast CEOs join global battle to combat HIV/AIDS
Top executives from more than 20 worldwide media organizations have joined a global awareness campaign that aims to reach people everywhere -- especially youth -- with information about how to prevent and treat HIV and to help battle AIDS-related stigma and discrimination. The Global Media AIDS Initiative arose from a partnership between the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, and uses tools of the information age to combat ignorance that fuels the spread of the disease. Among the companies committed to the scheme are China Central Television, the South African Broadcasting Corporation, and Time Warner. The BBC World Service Trust also plans to develop educational campaigns in eight African countries, working with local media and governments. Most outlets plan to put out the message through public service announcements, expanded news coverage and documentaries, with some intending to weave it into their entertainment lineups. The director of the UNAIDS, Peter Piot, said that when it comes to prevention, the media could save as many, if not more lives than the doctors. (BBC News, January 16, 2004)
"Digital pony express" connects rural Cambodia to the Internet
Without electricity or telephones, villagers in the remote northeastern corner of Cambodia have joined the online world via a development project that connects 13 rural schools to the internet -- and links villagers to wider social and economic opportunities. Once a day, five motorcycle riders equipped with wireless "Wi-Fi" units make a slow circuit through the villages, permitting the exchange of email between the wireless unit and computers at the local schools, powered by rooftop solar panels. At dusk, the motorcycles converge on the provincial capital, Ban Lung, where an advanced school is equipped with a satellite dish, allowing a bulk email exchange with the outside world. The "Motoman" project is sponsored by American Assistance for Cambodia, a group based in Phnom Pen, and is run by Bernard Krisher, the Far East representative of the Media Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In a country in which telecommunications monopolies inflate the price of satellite dishes and uplink fees far beyond what is affordable to villagers making an average of $1 a day, the Motoman system offers rural residents access to a range of otherwise inaccessible services. These include telemedicine through a linkup with the staff of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, who donate their time to the project. Sponsors hope the project will bring economic benefits by connecting rural residents to wider markets for their products as well. In the rural center of Rovieng, for example, women weavers sell their raw silk scarves and ties through www.villageleap.com, a website operated by Krisher's group. The weavers now have among the highest incomes in Rovieng. (New York Times, January 26, 2004)
© 2003 The Synergos Institute
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