rsvp chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk

examples 

honduras   ODEF

Guatemala   fixes at NYT Fixes explores solutions to major social problems. Each week, it examines creative initiatives that can tell us about the difference between success and failure. It is written by David Bornstein, author of “How to Change the World,” and co-founder of the Solutions Journalism Network, and Tina Rosenberg, contributing writer for The New York Times magazine and author of “Join the Club: How Peer Pressure Can Transform the World.” Readers with ideas for future columns can write to the authors at fixes@nytimes.com

1 Soluciones Comunitarias (“community solutions”) is selling products that improve the health and prosperity of villagers, and doing it in a sustainable way while providing rural people — the vast majority of them women — with new business opportunities that do not require risk or debt. 

Community Enterprise SolutionsDominga Akalo, a Guatemalan Soluciones entrepreneur, tracks sales and inventory in a village in Solola.

Soluciones Comunitarias uses the same model employed by second-hand clothing and furniture shops in the United States and elsewhere: consignment.  It’s an old idea.  What’s new is using it to improve the lives of the rural poor.

Take reading glasses.   Imagine you are a rural Guatemalan in your forties.  You make a living as a tailor, weaver, carpenter or mechanic, but to your horror, your close vision is getting more blurry each day.  It seems like the end of your livelihood.   If you were middle-class and lived in a city this wouldn’t be a big deal — you’d just get reading glasses.   But not only were these not available in villages, few rural Guatemalans even knew about them.  Their progressive blurriness seemed, to them, incurable.

Microcredit cannot help get reading glasses to Guatemalans in mountain villages.  With microcredit, an entrepreneur would first take out a loan, then buy an assortment of glasses, sell them to her neighbors and repay the loan. But there’s no existing market for reading glasses.  A good sales force can create one, by teaching people that their vision problems are curable — and that this is the cure.  And while it’s not hard for an ambitious entrepreneur to learn to test eyes and find the right glasses, someone has to teach her.  She has to be confident in her ability to sell people a product they don’t realize they need.  She has to acquire the credibility to sell a health product.  It’s one thing to take on debt to buy a cell phone or baby chicks to sell — she knows there will be a market for phone calls and chickens.  Reading glasses are too much of an unknown.  “Lots of women are afraid of debt,” said Clara Luz de Montezuma, a Guatemalan who trains women entrepreneurs for Soluciones.   “When you borrow money, you fear you won’t be successful, and it will be very difficult to pay it back.”

Greg Van Kirk was a Peace Corps volunteer in Nebaj, Guatemala, a town of about 10,000 people in a mountainous Mayan region, when he thought of consignment as the solution.  He was an unusual Peace Corps volunteer, having already had one career as an investment banker.  He had worked in structured finance for UBS, helping companies do complex deals to buy, sell or lease airplanes and power plants.

Darby FilmsGreg Van Kirk teaches an entrepreneur how to give an eye exam.

Van Kirk’s adventures in less-structured finance didn’t start with reading glasses, but with cookstoves.   He saw that families in the region cooked on open fires on the dirt floors inside their houses.  Their ceilings were black from smoke.  People coughed all the time and children were always sick. (Respiratory illnesses are a leading cause of death in poor countries, and indoor cooking is a significant cause.)  Open-pit fires, moreover, were inefficient.  The heat dispersed, and only one pot could be heated at a time.  That meant the family had to collect or buy a lot of firewood.  Moreover, fires were unsafe, especially for children, and cooking on the floor was unhealthy, luring ants and the family’s chickens into the house.

Van Kirk worked with a local mason named Augustín Corrio to try to find something better.  Corrio took a standard stove design and rejiggered it in various ways.  The best model had cement block legs, a brick chamber surrounding the fire on three sides, a metal sheet over the fire so several pots could be heated at once, and a chimney to take the smoke outside the house.  This stove used 60 to 70 percent less wood than an open fire — so even though it costs about $100 it could pay for itself quickly.  Buyers could pay in installments.  It could be locally produced from basic construction materials.

The problem was how to sell it on a wide scale. No micro-borrower would take out the enormous loan necessary to buy a number of stoves to resell.

Community Enterprise SolutionsAn Ixil Guatemalan woman with her improved cookstove provided through Soluciones.

Van Kirk thought that consignment was the answer.  With consignment, a supplier gives a product to a retailer, who then sells it. After the sale is completed, the retailer reimburses the seller, keeping a commission.  The risk is taken not by the retailer, but by the supplier.  Van Kirk made a deal with Corrio:  Corrio went around to groups of people in Nebaj and surrounding villages to talk about the stove and show pictures.  When a family ordered one, Corrio built it right in their house with materials Van Kirk had bought for him.  Families paid in installments about equal to the money they saved by buying less wood. As payments came in, he repaid Van Kirk and kept a commission.

The stoves and the consignment model were both successful.  Soon Van Kirk and a fellow Peace Corps volunteer, George Glickley, began to train local women to sell the stoves and protective glasses, eye drops and reading glasses supplied by VisionSpring, a nonprofit organization that sells eye glasses to poor people all over the world.  (My co-author, David Bornstein, is a member of VisionSpring’s board.)

VisionSpring had started out using microcredit for part of its sales — its retailers took out loans to buy glasses to sell.  But it didn’t work very well.  “We needed a financing arm — but we weren’t a microfinance institution,” said Malini Krishna, the company’s vice president of development. At Van Kirk’s urging, in 2004 the organization switched from microcredit to a consignment model.  “Why put all that risk on somebody up front?” said Krishna.  “Why not help them put the glasses out there and then get repaid when glasses sell?”

One of the first entrepreneurs Glickley and Van Kirk trained was Yolanda García.  She was a primary school graduate and housewife — she knew the men because Glickley had lived in her family’s house when he was in the Peace Corps. Consignment was key for her, she said.  “If I had had to take out a loan I wouldn’t have done it.  I always felt I wanted to do something, but we didn’t have the economic resources beyond what we needed for the day.”

Community Enterprise SolutionsA Soluciones entrepreneur administered an eye exam in a village in Quetzaltenango.

Van Kirk and Glickley trained her in how to test eyes and fit glasses, but more important was boosting her confidence to sell a mystery product.  “No one knew about reading glasses,” she said.  “People thought I was crazy.”  That wasn’t the only obstacle.  Her first customer was eager — she wanted to be able to read her Bible again.  “But who will do the examination?” she said, looking around.  Clearly, there was no doctor there.

“I will,” said García.

García nervously took out her charts and instruments.  A few minutes later, the customer was reading small print and grinning from ear to ear.

“Luckily, “the ‘aha!’ moment comes quickly,” says VisionSpring’s Krishna.

Still, García said, it was not a very successful campaign. She sold five pair of glasses and netted 65 quetzales — about $8.  But García was thrilled to be earning anything.  She spent the money on school supplies for her kids.

In 2006, Van Kirk and Glickley founded Soluciones.  Its entrepreneurs — the vast majority of them women — now travel from village to village selling glasses, water-purifying buckets, solar flashlights, a solar panel that powers a lamp and cell phone charger, eye drops, sunglasses, energy-efficient light bulbs and vegetable seed packets.  (The stoves are mainly sold around Nebaj.)  A campaign in a village takes two days — one for publicity and one for sales — and usually nets each entrepreneurs some 200 quetzales, although once in a while a lucky salesperson can triple that.  Van Kirk said that a new salesman started just two weeks ago and has already earned $100 — more than he would make in two or three months in a different job.

Soluciones is still very small.   In the last two years, it has sold fewer than 7,000 pairs of glasses.  The solar lamps are the most popular big-ticket item, with 3,000 sold since their debut.  Soluciones today is owned and run by eight Guatemalans who were its original entrepreneurs, including Yolanda García and Clara Luz de Montezuma.  By the end of the year, it will be running a consistent profit.

Soluciones is an incubator, testing new strategies and new products that may some day sell all over the world.  (Van Kirk and Glickley have more information about their non-profit efforts atcesolutions.org.) Improved cookstoves, reading glasses, water purifiers, solar lamps — these are all products that can provide equity, in the form of ability to work and better health, to villagers who before only had access to microcredit debt.  Yet the real news here isn’t the cookstove or the lamp.  Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of such practical and ingenious products exist.   Yet they do little good if the rural poor can’t use them.  A constant drumbeat of the Fixes column is that the more important innovation is the delivery mechanism.

Dear Friends

I commend white house's updating economics notes at http://www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/economy/ a clean break from a troubled past, and set a new course for our nation.

- drafting skils on communique with an appreciation of microcredit - ... equally Sam Daley Harris' office in DC at the centre for 12 years now of http://microcreditsummit.org - see eg these communiques with congress etc http://www.results.org/website/article.asp?id=3709 has the English speaking world's most practice at this but I dont know if his office has been invited to attend etc

Perhaps I should also add that my father's view is that most of the UK and US economics and professional establishment are still way off the mark in understanding what the banking crisis compound risks involves and thus what ever decreasing set of solutions urgently need starting now. I dont believe summit decisions made in April are time relevant to the decision dynamics which after 6 weeks of transition need attention within very few weeks from yesterday's inauguration. Ask now what is uniquely relevant to bending the curve from macroeconomic monopoly to microeconomics freedom. What I mean is we are talking about fundamentally flawed maths and a social process around the white house whose directions will be set within 90 days

The Mother of All Collaboration Networking Now

 .. if I was preparing a conference i would despatch 2 researchers to Paul Krugmans office as apparently the senior academic economist to have seen the system problem global professions have been non-transparently compounding and phone round every economist with a brand name to get them off the fence - which agree that global economics has been spun in an unsustainable and compound crashing way.  Then at least youth across US and Euro universities will know which faculty are on their side, and there is no yes we can constituency without youth's networking coming together. Mapping this is simple brand flow and compound truth stuff - is it not?

Micro University of Banking http://www.yunusuni.com/id61.html

Bending media curves http://brandchartering.com http://yunus10000.com 10000 youth dialogue

chris macrae usa 301 881 1655

Robert & all:  what especially good news is soros is saying that global has been spun wrongly for 25 years; and we shouldnt be so arrogant to believe one ruling class of Wall Streets MBAs were likely to exponentialise globalisation perfect first time - so now the worldwide networking opportunity to survey everyone's MICRO views other than wall street's and old MBA's

Norman Macrae: 1984's map of 2005-2010 (chapter 6) - we now know that macroeconomic policies which were the main stuff of democratic policies between 1930 and 1990 were disgraceful chicanery - microeconomics is replacing other economists and technocrats but not the humanities

can't imagine better time and spaces worldwide waves round this good news than:

1 yunus10000 youth survey - with 18 stories for them  to start recoinstructing micro-global summits around

2 paris and other SMBA

3 emerging microsummits of which it would be cool to make sure we map health by the end of the year in time to poster it all round the new white house

.. you tell us !!!

robert & alan - this also changes your and my profession of branding and global leadership values for ever

-only 20 years after my book world class brands demanded such but there ye go- 20 years up curious learning curves has its advantages- I am not if my ex-confederate at HEC Jean-Noel Kapferer will get this because his speciality is haute coture branding- the one branding whose free market/communal value multipliers have nothing to do with making sure people get life critical solutions wherever they are born

chris macrae usa 301 88 1655 (but london this sunday to wednesday)

see the 18 videos starters at http://yunus10000.com - print out the guide on one reason for hosting each video ; tell us when you find better reasons

Building upon the success of CGI U 2008 in New Orleans, this meeting will bring together even more young leaders, university presidents, and activists to address pressing global challenges in the areas of education, energy & climate change, global health, human rights & peace, and poverty alleviation - first deadline - 7 November; final deadline 12 December

 http://yunus10000.com -video dialogue between 10000 youth & alumni networks of Yunus

Our 10000 dvds are not perfect cos we made them cheaply as a conversation starters and intended connectors across the generation08/09 which is in the cusp of change unlike any in my life, There was no intent on these dvds being an end product, and that's why they are also freely distributed. What's fun about them is that Mostofa arranged for us to interview all the main people at Grameen with international networking jobs including the 4 co-founders of the whole of microcredit when they started it as team project in 1976, and the main people forming worldwide partnerships around Dr Yunus' new book. Grameen never lets global management consultants anywhere near it so I am not sure this group of people had ever been interviewed side by side. (If anyone who wants to understand the unique capabilities of yunus alumni wants the full 7 hours of written transcripts they are welcome) At least they show that Yunus gravitates many exceptionally dedicated innovators around him. In my career I have worked with innovation teams of half of globally branded top 100 companies; I have never come across an innovation for humanity group like this. Accidentally because of my father from The Economist I have bene looking for 25 years for some core microeconomic mapmakers worth multiplying goodwill round http://www.normanmacrae.com/netfuture.html . As someone who mathematically maps expoential conseqeunces of systems, I have little doubt we are at a crossroads of what globalsiation future generations inherit from us and the outcome will either be very good for humanity or terrible

Capitalism's Future : YunusBookClub1000

I am not sure if you have seen Yunus 2008 book "creating a world without poverty - social business, future of capitalism" . If not please tell me and I will enclose a copy with the dvds. Join our club of 1000 readers http://www.smbaworld.com/id8.html

It’s really about actioning 3 open invitations to the world:

1 Networks of Free Market of Ending Poverty  over the last 10 years dr yunus has been one of the central people of microcreditsummit which has extended community banking for the poorest from 10 million mainly in Bangladesh to 100 million worldwide - by any means I can search this is the most human networking and conference process there is. Now Dr Yunus wants to bridge it to anything that determines communal sustainability - microhealthsummit http://egrameen.com , microintermet/mobilesummit, microenergysummit, microeducationsummit; he basically wants people who want a globalization that integrates localities equitably to connect their action networks and make this summits happen

2 Networks of Sutainability Investment & Goodwill Multiplication  These are the only known antiodote to Wall Street Crash & Smash banking as 1000 New Yorkers heard last january.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKXXsINFoHQ He has a very specific entrepreneur model on which all his systems have been designed for 33 years; work out how to get positive cashflow; reinvest all positive flow in replicating or deepening that organizations purpose; this model allows for no owners who want to extract profits from the community; if the organization has owners they are the poorest in the community; he is asking citizens everywhere to classify organizations that use this model; one day to make a stockmarket or other listing in which only these systems appear; but in the first instance when networks list all their favourite organizations to keep the classification separate so one knows exactly when one is dealing with a "social business entrepreneur"; he's not against for profit models but wants to know which is which; he advises billionaire philanthropists that if ever they want to systemise something useful the social business model which endlessly recycles the dollars you invest in is far more sensible than the charity model in many situations, and very much simpler to keep community grounded instead of global-trickled down; as well as asking citizens including our 10000 youth dialogue to start logging up social business models , he is starting unlearning MBA courses called SMBA - paris HEC business school will be first in this spring 2009

Thirdly Dr Yunus is seeking out future capitalism partnerships with the biggest or most famous organizations in the world; http://yunuspartners.com  the offer come and do a social business co-brand project in Bangladesh - we promise you no loss, but all the monetary gain will reinvest in the purpose; you will get the reputation gain and often a new leash of innovation coming from seeing how your knowledge can serve the poorest and their channels to market instead of the richest; sometimes this will create for-profit models in intermediary markets; moreover by branding what is your global market sector's greatest responsibility, you leap above all competitors with their corporate social responsibility models

The kinds of projects Dr Yunus has asked Mostofa and I to do as intercity and scaling up collaboration nnetworks are itemised in mostofa's mail below. The tricky thing about this personally is that while we know all the key descion-makers in Grameen we have no authority to make decsions on their behalf with their brands or service franchsies. The good thing from my viewpoint as a matematician is alumni networks around Yunus are the only ones governaing a sustainable and entrepreneurial way of moving the world forward whlst always connecting with ending poverty. These are colaborations that expoentialse more win-win-wins the longer one is prepared to connect them. I hope we can all keep connecting networks through these hi-trust system and innovation approaches for as long as possible

chris macrae usa 301 881 1655

PREVIOUSLY

From: Mostofa Zaman, LondonSent: 10 October 2008 10:57
To: zahid Barcelona
Cc: Christopher Macrae
Subject: Re: Introducing Zahid To Heads of Grameen Solutiions, Yunus secretariat, Grameen America & Mostofa

 

Dear Zahid   Nice to be introduced with you.   I am a student of Development Studies and International Relations at London Metropolitan University and am very happy to team www.yunusforum.net   As a student interested in development issues, I have found Yunus and his ideas are direly off for us to be developed. This is the why I am teaming to network around Yunus Forum.   As a good friend of Yunus - Chris and an intern of Yunus Secretariat- Me: -- are authorised by Yunus while in Bali to make a network of Grameen interns as Knowledge Ambassadors to represent in campuses or in cities.   -- are authorised to make a dialogue of 10000 youths through Yunus 10000dvds accros the globe. The next week is its launching.   -- are authorised to invite 1000 peoples in a spring meeting 2009 in London where Yunus will speak. Date is to be confirmed by Dhaka.   -- are authorised to make Yunus Forum in student unions.   -- are authorised to host a monthly meeting in London. The first one is on 21 October.   -- are authorised to host a summer 2009 day long dialogue in Dhaka with Yunus to listen the 7 citizen projects on him. Date to be confirmed by Dhaka.    many more ..............    As a long standing researcher on Global Brands, Chris has found Yunus and Grameen the ever most sustainable & trusted brands in the world and as a student interested in development issues, I have found Yunus and his ideas are direly off for us to be developed. So all the above programms are our efforts for us all & Yunus. We are in regular touch with Yunus and his secretariat about all we are doing.   Hope that many or all of our programs will be of your interests.     I will be happy to meet you sometime in London. Best Regards, ---------------------------- Mostofa Zaman London <zahid@ Subject: Re: Introducing Zahid To Heads of Grameen Solutiions, Chris thank you for the introduction. Kazi, Lamiya, Vidar and Mostofa - very nice to meet you. My area of focus is advising and connecting people who believe in the potential of business to fight poverty: - I helped create and am now Director of Business Action for Africa (www.businessactionforafrica.org ) - a network of 200+ businesses, business organisations and development partners, working collectively to support Africa's development through advocacy, on-the-ground projects and knowledge sharing. - I am the Founder of Business Fights Poverty (www.businessfightspoverty.org ), a network of around 1,000 professionals around the world committed to fighting world poverty through business. - I am one of the creators of Mentori (www.mentori.org ), a network that connects business professionals (especially from the diaspora) with SMEs in developing countries, to provide online mentoring. Through my company, Inspiris (www.inspiris.co.uk ) we are also advisers to a number of development agecies (eg DFID on the Business Call to Action) and companies. I have of course, along with most people, been a long admirer of Professor Yunus' work, and he has made me particularly proud of my Bangladeshi heritage (on my father's side). You will notice a lot of references to Professor Yunus on Business Fights Poverty! If there is any way I can support your efforts, through my networks, or otherwise, please do let me know. Best regards, Zahid __________________ Zahid Torres-Rahman Director Inspiris Limited http://www.inspiris.co.uk Registered Company Number: 05693777 Join Business Fights Poverty, the professional network for those passionate about fighting world poverty through good business: http://www.businessfightspoverty.org The information transmitted is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, retransmission, dissemination or other use of, or taking of any action in reliance upon, this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited. If you received this in error, please contact the sender and delete the material from any computer. From: christopher macrae <chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk> Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2008 15:18:33 +0000 (GMT) To: Subject: Introducing Zahid To Heads of Grameen Solutiions, Yunus secretariat, Grameen America & Mostofa Hello Everyone   I have long admired various networks and connections across business, NGOs, and government elite that Zahid Torres-Rahman, who is half Bangladeshi, has been developing www.businessfightspoverty.org -there are many subnetwork layers including ones that connect deeply with Taddy Blecher and CIDA free University , as well as elites like the world bank. And this is only one of his infrastructures for sorting out who's up for what sort of partnership experiment   The Yunus10000 dvd project became the permission to have a 30 minute phone call with Zahid. I think rather than go-between me being in the way it could urgently be best if all or any of you exchange information so you can work out where the network interfaces can first win-win-win at the 3 partnership levels of creating a world without poverty: *youth social action teams *emerging social business and job creation, linking in microentrepreneur centres *large scale future capitalism partnerships http://yunuspartners.com  http://egrameen.com  governed by social business goodwill/purspose investment and entrepreneurial leapfrogging geareed to end poverty and keep ownership of breakthroughs community banked instead of wall street destructed. Media responsiblity can open up the exponential choice between micro and macro to let the world see http://www.normanmacrae.com/netfuture.html http://www.wholeplanet.tv/id32.html   sincerely   chris macrae usa 301 881 1655 http://yunus10000.com   Zahid is based in spain but typically spends one week every 6 in usa and another in london or other euro cities so his maps of whose doing what connect with maps of many yunus forum cities of the sort that Mostofa at http://yunusforum.net is aiming to interweave and connect with eg clinton global university alumni as well as 5000 exporters of Bangladesh sustainability franchises

http://www.forceforgood.com/Videos/The-PM-and-Muhammad-Yunus---creating-a-world-without-poverty-201/1.aspx

I tried to put this up at force for good under the muhammad yunus video at number 10 ... clearly the financial system is at the last crossroads - gordon browns pledge to action must be one shared by any leader , youth or human in london and then beyond

http://yunus10000.com the same themes run through the 25 videos from grameen which we are trying to write a host's guide to

Perhaps some of you could help edit down the 4 threats and solutions that Gordon Brown committed our nation to be passionate about at Clinton Global Initiatives

Threat 1 Jobs
Threat 2 Resources eg energy and food
Threat 3 we dont have a free global market solution of responsibility in financial services
Threat 4 we must seize the generation opportunity to end poverty and collaborative action the millennial goals. Interestingly the PM's office launched a millennial goals youtube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fP5QlLoIc5s

Full Transcript is at http://www.clintonglobalinitiative.org/NETCOMMUNITY/Document.Doc?id=284

Abridged version:

Threats 1 massive restructuring of jobs all over the world makes people insecure

(missing solution from gov- we can’t help you save this job but we can help you get the next job)

Threats 2 we’ve got to deal with is not just the
risk of protectionism and how we deal with the restructuring of jobs, the second problem is the pressure for resources: oil prices, that long-term demand for oil and for food and for basic commodities is exceeding the supply of it and until we solve that problem, then we are going to have volatile oil
prices and potentially volatile food prices.
So, we’re seeing the first pressures of globalization
in this area, rising populations demand rising standards of living particularly in Asia and the pressures lead to a scramble for resources and what people are now calling resource nationalism and we have to have answers to that problem.
And interestingly enough, it’s exactly the same problem
that we’ve got to solve because of climate change. We have there basic energy issues ahead of us. One is energy security because of what’s happening in Russia and elsewhere, affordability which is raised by the rise in gasoline prices here and you have the issue, of course, of climate change. And they all point in one direction.

Missing solution: you cannot solve this by national measures alone. You can only solve this by global action. If you got a source of inflation in your society that is based on a commodity that is actually sold globally like oil and food, then you got to deal with that at root and it requires us to act together as governments to do this. But we’ve got to change the debate about energy and we need the Arab countries and the oil producers to recognize that they too have an interest in a stable energy policy rather than a volatile oil price and we have got them to agree with calling a conference in London in December the 19th, to get them to agree that they should invest the oil revenues and other sources of energy so that we can create a stable energy market to their interest and to everybody else’s interest. And then food around the world isn’t it amazing that Africa has 70-percent of its population on the land. It has 20-percent of the world’s land and it is the net importer of
food and produces only 6-percent of the food of the world. So,a continent that is basically got huge amounts of land, unable to produce food even for its own people and only 5-percent of land in Africa is irrigated. And if we are to solve the food shortage problem which means that food prices are going higher in all countries, then got to involve Africa and we’ve got to look at how we can move forward in that, so, pressure in resources.

THREAT3
And then the third problem of globalization we’ve now
got to deal with is how we build a global financial system. I mean I’ve got no doubt as President Clinton said that this proposal to bring liquidity into the American system that has been put forward. Whatever the details of it is in principle not only the right thing to do but it’s the essential thing to
do to begin to restore confidence in markets.
And I’ve got no doubt, other countries, and I’ve talked
to people all over the world that would be at the United Nations this week from Latin America to Asia to Europe and to Africa, they all want that liquidity injected into the system to give us the stability we need.
But we know there are bigger problems than that and
basically, the problem is and it goes back to the point, global problems need global solutions, but we now have global financial markets. We now have global capital flows, but we have no national supervision and we have no effective global supervision.
Solution: And I’ve been proposing for some years now that the
International Monetary Fund or a similar organization has got to be an early warning system for the world economy that we’ve responsibility where it is lacking in boardrooms where they must understand the risks that they’re taking because their ordinary customers are affected by that and we got to get ridof the conflicts of interest that are the heart of some of the
system. But the basic point is there. You’re in a global economy with global financial markets. In any other area, if you had a global issue to deal with, you’d have global cooperation that we’d make it easier to solve a problem and I believe as we move forward from solving the liquidity problem and the problems of solvency in some institutions. We must now build a global financial system that means
proper supervision that everybody can support so that outside America, you don’t have, if you like, effective havens in other countries where people can hide assets and at the same time make it impossible for a global financial system to flourish.

THREAT 4
And then there’s the fourth problem we’ve got to deal
with in globalization and that is the problem that everybody at Clinton Global Initiative has been talking about also this week. It’s the gap between
rich and poor. As Bill Clinton has said in so many occasions that rightly so, we have a world that is unsustainable. We have a world that is unsafe and we have, for many people, a world that is unfair. And it’s more than unfairness. We have a moral problem about the rights and dignity of every child. We have also a security problem. And I believe that if we don’t face these challenges about the gap between rich and
poor around the world, if we don’t’ have a new deal that binds the richest countries to the poorest countries

Solution: I think can see how it could be done.
The richest countries demanding of the poorest
countries that they are open and transparent and free of corruption and they run economic systems that allow them to make for prosperity for other people and open up to trade. In return, we help them finance their education and health and their economic development so that they can enjoy and benefit from the global economy.
But this is a problem that if not solved and it’s not
solved soon, I believe the tensions will grow between the richest countries and the poorest countries and people will ask themselves why can I not have some benefit from the globalization that is happening around the world and also, I wanted to just say about some of the other things I did when I went to Africa.
I saw so many children that were lacking in opportunity
but I also saw so many mothers and my wife, Sarah has been involved in a campaign, the White Ribbon Alliance and, you know pregnancy because of the inadequate facilities, because there’s no treatment if the pregnancy is going wrong. So, during their
pregnancy, go around and say to their friends and relatives, goodbye.
They think that they will not survive and in Sierra
Leone, one in eight mothers dies in childbirth. It is an astonishing and appalling statistic. There are only 18 midwives in a country of 6 million people. There are only 200 nurses, only a 100 doctors and if we can’t help in midwifery training and other things, then I believe that we will be failing a generation of people who deserve our people.
And that’s why the millennium development goals are so
important and that’s why in my view, we should build upon them. I just want to say one final thing. The
opportunity that exists for us is not just to build the
institutions of a global economy, a reformed International Monetary Fund or an organization that is an early warning system for the world economy. I believe that the World Bank should be a bank for the environment to give the funds for investment that would allow countries that are too poor to adopt climate change policies to do so. I believe that the United Nations has got to transform itself because it’s got to deal with the breakdown of states and the terrorism that is implicit in that and its got of an agency for the reconstruction of countries that involves not
just military help but civil help and I believe that these changes could be made immediately and help build the institutions of the global economy and global society. But I think we also need to do one other thing. We need to recognize that we could in this generation not only eradicate illiteracy amongst children, not only eradicate the diseases like tuberculosis and polio and malaria that still threatened the lives of far too many people and caused millions of people to die unnecessarily when we have the technology and
But I believe we could also build a truly global civic
society and what people find across the internet or in
communication with people from other countries, is contrary to what they believe, they have more in common with each other than they thought. They find that the golden rule of every single religion and five billion people involved in the religions of the world has the same central golden rule, treat others as you would be treated yourself. And whether you are Sikh or a Muslim or a Hindu or Judaism or Christianity or any of these Buddhism, all these religions have the central golden rule, treat others as you would be treated, the idea of fairness to each other and responsibility to each other. And I believe that given that we are more in common than people have thought and given that we are opening up communications across frontiers, what we are
failing to do is to build the institutions of a global civic society as well. The internet, some people it is a shouting match without an umpire, when people are chatting to each other and blogging, but remember the power of it in the last few years.
In the Philippines, some of you know there was a
president that fell in the Philippines, when people texted to each other and said that they wanted to get rid of him because of his corruption and it was called in fact at the time they all assembled together, a million people. It was called the first coup d'etext and we’re seeing the extraordinary power of people to communicate with each other. We’re seeing that
people have amazingly in common so much in the philosophy that they hold.
When people meet, they can find so much common ground
and we’re finding the NGOs and civic groups are building up all over the world and we have got to have the means by which we recognize that in greater effect by building the institutionsof a global civic society. Now, whether that is young people,you have the Peace Corps in America and Bill created a great
organization for young people. Perhaps, there should be a countries and involves every country in the organization of that.
Perhaps we can create global organizations where people
can communicate and discuss about major issues in a more effective way. I’m absolutely certain that if disasters befall or violence or genocide, the world would know about that very quickly but the world has got to be in a position to act. And of course, it means that business too must be involved. Businesses are global and what we’ve seen in the Clinton Initiative is the power or private individuals to change things
and to change the world.
Bill changed the world once as president and he’s
changing the world again by his actions as a private citizen. But this global economy and this global society creates more opportunities than ever before for people to actually contribute to the public good.
And I’m not asking business leaders to contribute just
charity and philanthropy; I’m asking them to use the enterprise and skills, everything that they’ve learned in business to apply to some of the great problems of the world including building economies in some of the poorest countries of the world.

And I think the causes of the world require us to act
together. This could be the generation and we could be the people that gave every single child in the world the chance for schooling. But 77 million children are not at school. This is the generation that could end the needless deaths from diseases that we know we have the power to cure. This is the generation, the fortunate generation, that can make of the opportunities of this new global economy a more inclusive and more sustainable globalization by sorting out the problems of poverty and the environment.
I believe that we are summoned, all of us, to build a
the duty of this generation. I know that everybody here can contribute to that and is already. Let us change the world together. Thank you.