The Daily Tell

At the height of economic recession, a sudden increase in food prices drove nearly 100 million people into poverty and raised the number of chronically hungry people in the world to nearly 1 billion, reports the Wall Street Journal. Thankfully, help is on the way for the food insecure of the world.

The U.S. Treasury recently committed $475 million to a Global Agriculture and Food Security Program. The program will be launched by the U.S. Treasury in partnership with global governments and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Canada has pledged $230 million, Spain will contribute $95 million, South Korea will give $50 million and the Gates Foundation will award $30 million to the cause.

These funds will be used to provide financing to impoverished countries with high levels of food insecurity. Further partnerships will be formed with countries that have sound agricultural plans and that use their own resources to effectively invest in crop production, reports the Wall Street Journal. These food secure countries will serve as models to develop low-income nations’ agricultural plans.

Opportunity International and the MasterCard Foundation will work with the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program to develop comprehensive, financial services to more than 90,000 smallholder farmers living in poverty in sub-Saharan Africa. Opportunity International will also provide training and market linkages to these farmers so they can boost their overall income.

In a joint statement published in the Wall Street Journal, U.S. Secretary of Treasury Timothy Geithner and Bill Gates said, "as we work to build a stronger, more stable and balanced global economy, we must renew our commitment to tackle global hunger and poverty. Because a world where more than one billion people suffer from hunger is not a strong or stable world."

According to a 2008 study for the Center for Philanthropy at Indiana University, millennials will likely become philanthropic as they come of age. But some members of this younger generation are not waiting.

The Kairos Society is a student-run nonprofit organization based in the United States. It was founded by Ankur Jain and its members are some of the most intelligent students from the world’s top universities. They center their studies – and their lives – on the idea that they can "Do Well by Doing Good."

Each year, 100 of these future business leaders and philanthropists meet for the Kairos Global Summit. At this year’s summit held earlier this week, they formed partnerships with current business leaders to brainstorm solutions for myriad social issues.

Intelius – a company that empowers consumers with knowledge about personal safety – honored student startup companies at the summit that upheld the society’s motto and proved to have a positive impact on their communities.

Ankur’s father, Intelius CEO Naveen Jain said, "Intelius is committed to fostering and supporting the entrepreneurial growth of tomorrow’s leaders." Naveen Jain says the Intelius Entrepreneurship Awards honor "ground-breaking ideas" and new companies that creatively help improve the world. Students were recognized for startups that held promise with respect to social impact, technology, marketing and sustainability.

Former Kairos Society member, Bill Clinton, believes the Intelius Entrepreneurship Award winners demonstrate that students are connected to social issues in ways they never have been before. He said, "today’s generations of young entrepreneurs possess more power to change the course of our future than any previous generation."

While tech company Intelius encourages students who show promise in the realm of socially conscious business, another tech leader is giving a lecture tour to inspire other college kids to take up the mantle of philanthropy. Bill Gates recently spoke at several California universities advising students to consider how they can direct their studies toward improving the lives of others.

Bill Gates never graduated from college, but if he had he may have received a degree in philanthropic studies. He recently gave speeches at the University of California at Berkeley and Stanford University encouraging students to consider how their studies can be a starting point for them to help others.

Gates quipped that too many kids these days are studying science only to participate in research to cure baldness, reports CNET. "I’m not saying they should be banned. I know people would be more fun to look at if they had a baldness drug," the source quotes him as saying to students at the University of California at Berkeley.

While he was playful with the students, he delivered a serious message. He told them the brightest young minds in the nation should be devoted to working on the world’s hardest problems, though this is often not the case.

As an example of how to direct studies toward the greater good, he encouraged those in the sciences to consider developing vaccines – an issue close to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s mission. The students were shown a single slide during Gates’ presentation. It had an inspiring statistic about the decline in childhood death rates that came about from the advent of key vaccines.

The philanthropist empowered students with the knowledge that their undergraduate work can go toward having an impact on global issues. He told Stanford students it was unbelievable "how few smart people" were working on things such as global health issues and suggested they help change that.

Gates – albeit a college dropout – is a perfect model for the country’s students with respect to philanthropic pursuits. With assets of about $34 billion, the Gates Foundation has given about $21 billion in grants, including more than $3.6 billion to organizations working on expanding childhood immunizations.

Last year, arts funding reached a 10-year low, and one in three arts institutions failed to break even, according to Americans for the Arts. Simultaneously, the demand for arts education is continuously increasing as many organizations have had to cut back on learning programs and set higher fees for visitors in order to keep their doors open.

In struggling communities, arts education can be an important tool for keeping kids focused. Luckily for Harlem students, a number of public organizations and private donors understand the value of arts institutions in tough times.

According to the New York Times, last minute donations totaling $1 million will save the Harlem School of Arts from shutting down. The funds came from four organizations, two of which remain anonymous. The Herb Alpert Foundation contributed $500,000 to the struggling school and these funds were matched by Hand Greenberg’s Starr Foundation and the unnamed donors.

The donations came in the nick of time. On April 1, the school’s board of directors announced that their money had run out and officials feared the school would struggle to keep its doors open even until the end of the school year. The donor funds came at the precise moment school leaders feared doors would close indefinitely.

In order to help sustain the school, a group of celebrities, led by singer Mary J. Blige, are going to continue raising funds to keep the school strong in the years to come. Additionally, a number of new board members have been named to help the school remain vigilant about finances, reports the source.

Mayor Bloomberg applauds these donors for prioritizing the arts institution. He told the newspaper, "without a doubt, these are challenging times for the city’s nonprofits, but it’s vital that through strong public-private partnerships we support the programs that make a huge difference in the lives of New Yorkers. And the Harlem School of the Arts is certainly one of those institutions."

The Harlem School of the Arts celebrated its 45th anniversary in the midst of economic turmoil in 2009. Hopefully, these funds and administrative measures will help it continue to offer arts education to students for the next 45 years and beyond.

The Carnegie Corporation recently announced grants totaling $6.35 million to improve practices in state government and school districts to develop and retain effective teachers and principals.

The foundation says it is focusing the four grants on nonprofits dedicated to implementing systems that are aimed at cultivating the skills and quality of K-12 teachers. The nonprofits will place teachers into positions for which they are best suited and sustain their commitment over time, gauging performance with relevant metrics, says Carnegie.

The organization says the grants are a follow-up on human-capital work initiated in 2007.

The National Council on Teacher Quality will receive $850,000 to reform state policy, addressing provisions in district-union contracts, that allow promotion and prevent termination for poor performance.

The largest grant – $3 million – was given to The New Teacher Project, which works with districts and states to improve teacher evaluation to help retain the most effective educators and improve average workers. The project will develop human-capital management systems for determining which teachers should advance in the profession.

Vartan Gregorian, New York president of the Carnegie Corporation, says that without bringing in quality educators through savvy, strategic management, schools cannot expect to be successful.

"Education relies on the talent, skill and commitment of teachers and school system leaders," says Gregorian. "For students, no school factor is more important to learning than the quality of their teachers. The foundation is focusing on transforming policies and advancing innovations aimed at increasing the skills and quality of the K-12 workforce."

The foundation also awarded a $1 million grant to Uncommon Schools, which is piloting a system of teacher evaluation tools that are data-based and rely on student-focused inquiry.

While Carnegie is aiding K-12 education, another foundation recently donated to remedial education for degree-seeking students. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation recently donated $110 million in grants to improve remedial programs at community colleges.

When people sip on Bacardi rum, they can now applaud themselves for supporting green practices. Bacardi Corporation recently unveiled Puerto Rico’s largest wind turbine to help power its distillery near San Juan.

The company says this move is part of its plan to emphasize that the Bacardi family aims to be a leader in corporate responsibility and environmental progress. Joaquin Bacardi, president and CEO of Bacardi Corporation, says, "our latest innovation with these two specialized wind turbines seizes the power of the wind adding more force to Bacardi’s overall environmental commitment to save energy."

The wind turbines will generate about 1 million kWh of electricity per year, accounting for 3 to 7 percent of the power used by Bacardi. Their use translates into 900 tons less carbon production a year. Thus, thanks to Bacardi, environment-harming emissions in Puerto Rico will be significantly reduced.

BrighterEnergy.org says the wind turbines produce enough power to supply 100 homes, though all of the power generated will be consumed by the Bacardi family. Still, this is a first step in the company’s utilization of wind power and it says it plans to consider additional wind solutions that may have an even broader reach in the future.

Other environmental initiatives Bacardi has taken on include recycling barrels by turning them into mulch, creating renewable shopping bags from old banners and more.

In fact, Bacardi was the first company in Puerto Rico to create an anaerobic distillery process that helps reduce the overall waste products of the rum-making procedure. John Grey, vice president of global operations for Bacardi, says that this technique also saves about half the energy needed to run a distillery.

Notably, Bacardi is the only major spirits company to achieve certification under ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001 – marking it as one of the world’s best-run, green companies.

Community college presidents need to boost graduation rates by nixing weak remedial programs and offering new ideas and cutting edge technology instead, according to one of the founders of the largest foundation in the country.

Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, commented on the need for high-tech school solutions at the 90th Annual American Association of Community Colleges Convention in Seattle. She backed up her words with a large investment in initiatives that encourage schools to offer accelerated academic catch-up.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation donated $110 million in grants to design new efforts to replace traditional remedial programs with initiatives that are proven to boost graduation rates.

Melinda Gates says research demonstrates that improving remediation is the best community colleges can do to increase the number of students who complete their studies.

"Either community colleges can keep doing what you’ve been doing, in which case you will gradually find yourself able to meet fewer and fewer of your students’ needs, or you can innovate," says Gates. "You can educate your students according to new models that yield dramatically better results for a fraction of the cost."

Fifty-seven million dollars will be distributed in grants over the next two years. Half of the foundation’s commitment has already been given to programs and colleges. The remaining grants will be given based on success of the earlier investments.

The foundation is looking for colleges and programs that collaborate well with high schools and middle schools to prevent remediation and offer multimedia tools to boost remedial studies. They also want to see programs that can efficiently blend accelerated learning with career training.

While 11 million students attend community colleges each year, more than half of low-income students start their post-secondary education at a community college.

April 20, 2010 New York — Genocide has claimed more human lives than all the wars of the 20th century combined. It has never been stopped; but we believe it can be prevented. The Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation (AIPR) takes the never-before-tried approach of training policymakers to thwart genocide *before* it occurs. We do this by bringing them to the Holocaust site of Auschwitz for UN-approved instruction by leading genocide scholars as well as policy practitioners who have actually lived through genocide.

Our recent conference “Memory, Justice, Truth and Reparations as Tools for Genocide Prevention” took place April 12-14 in Buenos Aires, bringing together some of the world’s most committed and effective opponents of genocide to usher in a new and promising approach to combating a problem as old as humanity itself. Fittingly, the event was co-organized by the Government of Argentina, site of the “Dirty War” of the 1970s and 1980s in which up to 30,000 people were “disappeared” by the military dictatorship, leading to the founding of the groundbreaking Madres de Plaza de Mayo, as well as the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, who were represented at this historic conference. Today, Argentina is a model of transitional justice, an example of the societal healing and institutional rebuilding that can take place in the wake of decades of violent conflict.

On the third day of the conference we presented our first annual Raphael Lemkin Prize to Juan Méndez, President Emeritus of the International Center for Transitional Justice, and Carla Del Ponte, former chief
prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. The AIPR, through its Raphael Lemkin Center for the Prevention of Genocide, awards this prize in recognition of outstanding contribution to the cause of genocide prevention.

What makes the AIPR’s approach so unique? Over the past decade and a half, in the wake of the Rwandan genocide of 1994, citizen activism against genocide has blossomed. Besides the now well-established general
human-rights groups, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, there is now an encouraging abundance of grassroots campaigns against genocide, including the Genocide Intervention Network (and its student branch, STAND), the Enough Project, and Save Darfur. But on the elite level, little has changed.

The most powerful long-term effect of the AIPR’s approach is the creation of a worldwide network of policymakers with the tools and the commitment to prevent genocide and other forms of violent conflict. Now, for the first time, a veteran of the Dirty War in Argentina can trade with his or her colleagues from Burundi, say, or East Timor, not only his or her experience with the personal and societal trauma of genocide, but also the perspective “from the other end,” on building policies and institutional barriers to future conflicts that may explode into genocide once again.

We are available to speak about the Auschwitz Institute and our unique approach in relation to news about any genocide (or violent conflict) past or present — Darfur, Bosnia, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Kosovo, Cambodia, Rwanda, East Timor, Sri Lanka, Congo, Armenia, Burma/Myanmar.

Contacts:
Tibi Galis, AIPR executive director
212 794 9760, 503 928 0091
tibi.galis@auschwitzinstitute.org

Also available for interview:
Natalia Luterstein, Ministry of Justice, Argentina:
nluterstein@derhuman.jus.gov.ar

Teresa Barroso, Special Secretariat for Human Rights, Brazil:
teresa.barroso@mj.gov.br

Memunatu Pratt, Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, Sierra Leone:
pratt.memunatu@gmail.com

Check out the Daily Tell’s interview of Alex Zucker and Tibi Galis of the Auschwitz Institute of Peace and Reconciliation

Legendary emcee and producer Keith "Guru" Elam passed away earlier this week after suffering from cardiac arrest and being hospitalized. Guru Gang Starr, as the hip-hop icon was better known, died from an undisclosed cancer after being diagnosed with anoxia.

Now, Guru’s nonprofit Each One Counts will continue his work on behalf of disadvantaged, sick children – and perhaps help find a cure for the disease that took his life. The Each One Counts foundation raises funds and provides grants to help more than 50,000 U.S. children a year who die from painful diseases.

The funds are used both to promote research on diseases linked to kids’ deaths and help parents-in-need find proper care for their suffering children. The foundation reports that the need for this kind of assistance is important – less than 1 percent of American kids who need palliative or hospice care receive it.

The organization draws on some lines written by Emily Dickinson to articulate its mission: "If I can ease one life from aching… I shall not live in vain."

Ironically, several of Guru’s fans have been tweeting Dickinson lines to honor their beloved emcee. Twitter user heavyd posted, "that it will never come again is what makes life so sweet" on a Twitter memorial for Guru.

The quote is fitting as Guru’s illness seems to have given him an understanding that life must be lived to the fullest. In his final letter to fans, he said, "I write this with tears in my eyes, not of sorrow but of joy for what a wonderful life I have enjoyed and how many great people I have had the pleasure of meeting."

He also mentioned Each One Counts in his parting words. He asks fans to carry on his charitable work for suffering children and help find cures for illnesses so kids may live longer than the late 43-year-old star.

The National Football League recently announced that it is donating $1 million to a university-based nonprofit partnership studying brain injuries, according to the Associated Press.

In hopes of furthering health care for athletes who suffer head trauma, the NFL gave the grant to the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy.

The center is a partnership between the Boston University School of Medicine and the Sports Legacy Institution – a nonprofit dedicated to advancing athlete health. It will use the funds to support research on the effects of repeat brain injuries, with a focus on football players.

The NFL is the first sports league to financially support this research at the school, center officials say.

Concussions and resulting brain trauma have plagued many players in the football league for decades.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell says the donation is made to increase knowledge about the long-term effects about head injuries caused on the field.

"We obviously are very interested in the center’s research on the long-term effects of head trauma in athletes," Goodell told the AP. "It is our hope this research will lead to a better understanding of these effects and also to developing ways to help detect, prevent and treat these injuries."

The NFL says that CSTE researchers have been a driving force in providing proof that repetitive blows to the head in sports can cause a degenerative brain disease called Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or CTE. The disease is linked to cognitive and behavioral problems that develop later in life, and eventually causes dementia.

Early symptoms of CTE include emotional instability, memory impairment, erratic behavior, depression and impulse control problems. CTE patients eventually develop full-on dementia.

Sometimes compared to Alzheimers disease, CTE is also called the "punch drunk syndrome" and has been most frequent in boxers. In recent years, college football players and a professional hockey players have increasingly developed the disease.