CGI Day One Total: 107 Commitments, Over $2 Billion

NEW YORK, Sept. 20 /PRNewswire/ -- During its first day, the 2nd annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) resulted in 107 commitments, amounting to nearly $2.1 billion. The first day's total alone has nearly matched total commitments from last year's meeting of CGI, which resulted in over $2.5 billion in commitments.

President Clinton announced some of the additional commitments at the second plenary session this afternoon. The session, entitled Effective Action, Lasting Results, was attended by panelists Bill Gates, former President of Brazil Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and Hernando de Soto, President of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy. Brown University President Ruth Simmons moderated the panel discussion.

The 2nd Annual Meeting of CGI officially launched this morning in midtown Manhattan with the Opening Plenary Session: Urgent Issues & Innovative Solutions. Roughly a thousand leaders of business, government and non- governmental organizations attended the opening session, in addition to nearly 50 current and former heads of state. At the plenary session, President Clinton announced the first five commitments of 2006, including a commitment by First Lady Laura Bush to provide thousands of citizens in sub-Saharan Africa with safe, clean drinking water.

  Among the additional CGI commitments announced today were:

  CLIMATE CHANGE

  Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB)

KPCB is committing $100 million toward dramatically increasing support for breakthrough ventures in renewable energy and low carbon technologies, recognizing and rewarding outstanding green policy innovators and combating global infectious disease.

Appleton Foundation

The Appleton Foundation (in partnership with Hidary Foundation, SmartTransportation.org) will commit $1 million over three years to create a new national Canadian charitable program, GreenApple, to facilitate the conversion of taxis and other public transportation to hybrid and other low emission vehicles across Canada.

Environmental Defense

Committing $1.5 million over three years, Environmental Defense will approach key states' public utility and/or environmental commissioners to see that new coal-fired power plants are carbon-neutral, that is, that they sequester or offset their global warming pollution.

Wendy Abrams (co-chair of Cool Globes, Inc.)

With $1 million over two years, Cool Globes, Incorporated will be established to design and implement the premiere of the "Cool Globes: Hot Ideas for a Cooler Planet" program, a public art exhibition and educational initiative kicking off in Chicago. The public art exhibition will display dozens of 5-foot diameter globe sculptures, each themed with a solution to global warming.

Global Green USA

Global Green commits to raising $1.5 - 3.5 million over the next two years toward its continuing effort to apply green building design criteria, and where possible net zero energy and climate neutral strategies, to insure all school construction and renovation in New Orleans and Louisiana is built green. Utilizing our "climate solutions for communities" strategy will also allow us to show how green schools are smart solutions to global warming.

Marsh, Inc., Ceres, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies

Marsh Inc, Ceres and the Yale School of Forestry will commit $1.2 million over four years to create the Sustainable Governance Forum, a leadership development program that will prepare corporate directors for the business risks of climate change. The Forum will educate over 200 board members from Fortune 1000 companies.

  GLOBAL HEALTH

  First Lady Laura Bush, USAID, PEPFAR, The Case Foundation and the MCJ
  Foundation

This $16.4 million combined commitment will bring the PlayPump(TM) water system to more than 1,000 communities and schools in Sub-Saharan Africa in order to provide safe, clean drinking water to thousands of people. PlayPumps use merry-go-rounds to pump water for an entire community.

Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC)

Based on its highly effective health improvement and poverty eradication interventions in Bangladesh and Afghanistan, the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) will put $250 million toward programs in Tanzania, Uganda, Sudan, Kenya and Nigeria. These programs will target increasing access to medical care and malaria prevention, expanding primary education programs, sustainable and equitable agricultural activities and microfinance programs aimed at stimulating local entrepreneurship through a sustainable financial mechanism.

Pfizer, Inc.

In conjunction with its country offices in Ghana, Kenya and Senegal, and on-the-ground partners, Pfizer will help (i) to increase the percentage of patients who seek proper malaria care and (ii) to improve medicines delivery to, and enhance the effectiveness of the informal sector as the most important infrastructure component of anti-malarial delivery. Pfizer will commit $15 million over 5 years toward fulfilling these malaria control and prevention goals.

US Doctors for Africa and its Donors

With $75 million over five years, US Doctors for Africa commits to deploying 200 "Mobile Clinics" and 2000 volunteer medical professionals throughout the Sub-Saharan African countries by 2011. This initiative also includes revitalizing existing health infra-structure by renovating and adding a total of 100 on the ground Health Centers.

VillageReach

VillageReach will commit $3.1 million over five years to its continued effort in improving access to and quality of health services in Mozambique through a large-scale improvement of basic infrastructure and supply lines. VillageReach will expand in Mozambique's Cabo Delgado and Nampula provinces, where the program already has a presence, and build from there.

International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI)

IAVI will strengthen its substantial ties in India -- with industry, government, and communities -- and broaden the scope of its research and design projects in other countries where the HIV/AIDS epidemic is, or is likely to be, most severe. IAVI will commit $7.5 million over three years toward these goals.

The Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND)

FIND will commit $4 million over four years to creating a model for sustainable improvement in laboratory capacity, thus ensuring the reliable diagnosis of poverty related diseases at all levels of the health system. Working with the government of Uganda, the African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF) and other public and private partners, FIND will identify deficiencies in current diagnostic services, refine a package of essential diagnostics, and develop a plan to address those deficiencies in a sustainable manner through social franchising.

  POVERTY ALLEVIATION

  The Global Partnership for Afghanistan (GPFA)

The Global Partnership for Afghanistan (GPFA) will invest $450,000 over two years to launch 100 commercially-viable orchard and woodlot businesses in Afghanistan. Each operation is projected to generate an income sufficient to sustain a family of eight, and deliver a rate of return higher than poppy cultivation when averaged over seven years.

UNDP Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor

The UNDP Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor is providing $315,000 over the next 21 months to fund Working Groups bringing together practitioners and experts to identify specific barriers to business operation faced by small-scale entrepreneurs in the informal economy. By directly involving both business owners and local government administrators, the Groups will ground their recommendations in real practices.

Internews Network

Internews Network's new Humanitarian Media Assistance Program (HMAP) will conduct workshops around the world in impoverished areas and conflict zones to bolster local media's infrastructure and ability to respond to emergency. With $2.2 million over 3 years, HMAP will maintain a stock of communications equipment and a group of humanitarian journalists that can be rapidly deployed to regions in strife.

Opportunity International

The "$500 Million for 50 Million People" campaign will provide loans, savings, insurance, and training to people working their way out of poverty in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America. Sixty percent of the 50 million recipients of this aid will be loan recipients and their family members; the other 40 per cent will be those employed by loan recipients, or people who participate in Opportunity's savings and insurance programs.

Trickle Up Program

Trickle Up is committing $1 million over three years to help entrepreneurs in Africa, Asia and Latin America who have been particularly successful in the organization's core programs by graduating them to the Second Steps program. Participants will receive additional access to credit and advanced business training geared toward people with low levels of literacy. To be eligible, participants must present scalable business plans including components for community development.

First American Corporation

The First American Corporation will empower people in underdeveloped countries with legal title to their land by developing a template for creating and maintaining land-record systems. First American's $1 million investment will help develop land record systems which will open doors for the expansion of financial literacy and wealth-building by protecting current and future landowners with legal rights.

  MITIGATION OF RELIGIOUS AND ETHNIC CONFLICT

  The Engelberg Foundation

The Engelberg Foundation, in partnership with the Mosaica Association, Adam Centers, Foundation for Reconciliation in the Middle East, is committed to creating a cadre of religious leaders qualified to serve as agents of dialogue between and within Jewish and Arab communities. Their $350,000 commitment will help build educational frameworks in order to build meaningful relationships and lead to better inter-communal relations.

Seeds of Peace

Partnering with ExxonMobil, USAID, Marble Collegiate Church, Private Arab and Jewish donors and Israeli recording artist Liel, Seeds of Peace is forming a $1.2 million institute to provide advanced negotiation and mediation training to university-aged Israelis and Palestinians alumni of Seeds' other leadership programs. The institute's mission is to empower an emerging generation of Israeli and Palestinian youth to lead their communities toward peace. Program curriculum will cover human rights, gender issues, religion and democracy, and program participants will do outreach work using Seeds' communication technologies to expand their reach.

Alan B. Slifka Foundation

The Alan B. Slifka Foundation will host dialogues for acknowledged leaders in different fields to discuss how to use "macro-level" forces, including public policy, pronouncements, and economic strategies to promote peace and tolerance. Participants will commit themselves and their constituencies to establishing high-level agencies that will address coexistence in their nations and communities.

Interfaith Environmental Council (IEC)

Interfaith Environmental Council (IEC) is committed to a $550,000 expansion of its "Green Sanctuaries Program," a pilot program currently in 16 religious facilities in Los Angeles. The Program's four component projects will all be expanded to help religious facilities install solar panels, improve water conservation, educate young congregants about green homes and communities and provide all congregants with a comprehensive green resource guide encouraging them to implement sustainable practices in their own homes and businesses.

Gadi Kenny

Gadi Kenny committed $100,000 to fund the "Abraham's Vision" program for the summer of 2006. The program works with students from Jewish, Palestinian, and the broader Muslim communities in order to create safe spaces in which they can develop and re-develop their notions of themselves, the "other," and the world at large.

Breakthrough

Breakthrough is launching a $4.5 million education campaign to reduce hostility towards immigrants, to encourage diversity, and to endorse fair immigration policies. The Value Families campaign targets young adults with a set of multimedia products including music videos, podcasts and video games and frames immigration issues in terms of human rights instead of the current discourse based on fear and anger.

The following organizations and individuals also made one or more commitments today. For more detailed information on these commitments, please visit the CGI website at http://www.clintonglobalinitiative.org/.

  The Club of Rome
  Dallah-Albaraka Group
  JN Medical Corporation
  Eileen FisherGETF
  BroadReach Healthcare, LLC
  L'Altra Napoli
  AES Corporation
  International Renewable Energy
  Teleperformance Group Inc.
  VidaGas
  VillageReach
  Sabin Vaccine Institute
  Christiana Figueres
  Urban-Climate & Energy Inc.
  The Albright Group, LLC
  The Advocacy Project (AP)
  Citigroup Foundation
  International Alert
  Peres Center for Peace
  City Year, Inc.
  Drishtee Foundation
  ENDEAVOR: High-impact Entrepreneurs. High-impact Change
  The First American Corporation
  KickStart International
  Inveneo Inc.
  International Diabetes Federation
  School of Natural Resources & Environment, Univ. of Michigan
  MAP International (Medical Assistance Programs)
  Skoll Foundation
  GAIN - Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition
  PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative
  Helen Keller International
  ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability
  CNIC (Spanish National Centre for Cardiovascular Research)
  World Heart Federation
  Save the Children
  University of Michigan School of Natural Resources & Environment
  First Voice International; Population Media Center
  ecoAmerica
  The Public Library of Science
  Kiva.org
  Microcredit Summit Campaign
  The Wolfensohn Center for Development
  World Vision
  BD Biosciences
  BroadReach Healthcare, LLC
  Bipartisan Policy Center (BNPC)
  Sierra ClubCitigroup
  World Health Organization (WHO)
  Novo Nordisk Inc.
  S. Daniel Abraham
  The University of California, Berkeley
  The Sanam Vaziri Quraishi Foundation

The Clinton Global Initiative is a non-partisan catalyst for action with an emphasis on results. During the three-day annual meeting, attendees participate in workshops and meetings focused on four main topics: Energy & Climate Change; Mitigating Religious and Ethnic Conflict; Poverty Alleviation; and Global Health. Attendees will make specific commitments to address one of the topics covered and will report to President Clinton on the progress made throughout the course of the coming year. Attendees who do not make or keep their commitment will not be invited to attend future meetings.