Clinton Presidential Center "Transcript: Clinton Global Initiative Mid-Year Meeting 2007"

President Clinton: Thank you. Good morning. [Applause] Thank you very much. Good morning and welcome to Jazz at Lincoln Center. I’d like to thank the folks here for making this beautiful hall available to us and welcome you to the 2007 mid-year meeting of CGI.

I know a lot of you have come a very great distance to be here and I thank you for your efforts. As most of you know, we launched this endeavor, in 2005 with the aim of creating a community of global leaders to devise and implement some innovative solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges. We believe that if we created a space where people from all over the world, from all sections of society, from everywhere in the spectrum of life could come together, form partnerships, and then come up with solutions to make specific measurable movements to implement that we could improve a lot of lives and have a profoundly positive impact on the future. We started with just that simple idea, and two and a half years later it is, I believe, a working model that can change the world. Our members together have made over 570 commitments, impacting over 100 nations. In just over two years more than 100 of the commitments have been completely implemented. In the last six months, since our meeting in September 2006, we’ve had another 86 additional commitments spontaneously offered.
Today we have commitment makers from around the world who will share their experiences as members of CGI, and discuss how they are working to face down these big challenges.

Some of you have asked me about how we do the topic selections so I think I’d like to just talk a little bit about. In 2005, we decided that we would never have more than four main core topics and organized a meeting around it partly due to the physical limitations of these places where we could meet and partly because we wanted people to concentrate on all aspects of the issues. We discussed poverty, climate change, religious reconciliation, and governance. In 2006, we decided to add health and not delete governance but to simply recognize it in every area, if governance is an issue it must be dealt with in any topic. And so we tried to integrate concerns for governance into poverty, climate change, reconciliation, and health. This year we’re adding education, recognizing that the same is true of religious reconciliation, if you go into a conflict area, whether it’s an active conflict or whether there are underlying social tensions, you can’t educate, provide healthcare, alleviate poverty or convince people to take a different tack on climate change unless that is also dealt with.

The absence of education contributes to poverty, to conflict, to poor governance. It undermines the capacity to build healthcare systems and certainly to even get people to think about something as profound as climate change. I’ll talk more about that later but I’d like now to introduce Dick Parsons.

Dick Parsons and Time Warner have long been active in supporting education and in contributing to CGI. He joined us at the very first CGI meeting to talk about the power of the media in addressing global issues. Last year Time Warner backed it up with a CGI commitment to undertake a major public awareness campaign through HBO to encourage HIV testing in young people in Africa and the Caribbean. I cannot tell you how important I think this is.

Many of you know we are working through my own Foundation’s AIDS project and Lesotho to try to help that government succeed in becoming the first in the world to test everybody 12 years old and older with a volunteer system. It’s a simple system, you’re going to be asked and you’re going to have to say no, instead of having to come and say yes. So I’m very grateful to Dick for that. I’m pleased to be here in the Time Warner Center, and delighted to ask the chairman and CEO of Time Warner to come and welcome us. Dick. [Applause]

Dick Parsons: Well I had to be here, thank you Mr. President, I had to be here to hear your introduction to find out why I was here today, because it wasn’t clear to me but it’s now clear that I’m here in my capacity as a landlord, to welcome you all here to Time Warner Center, see, and truly this is Jazz at Lincoln Center, Jazz Lincoln Center in the Time Warner Center [laughter], so welcome.

Five minutes of your time. I don’t know if it’s occurred to many of you, I’m sure it’s occurred to some, maybe all, how the role of former President of the United States has evolved over the last 20-25 years. And the 42nd President of the United States, President Bill Clinton, has taken it to a new level. It’s almost like public office now. It’s almost as if you’ve passed through some veil of tears and merged on the other side and now have even greater standing and more stature to raise issues and to cause people to come together to do things about the worlds problem. I thought about it a lot because I think it probably started, at least in my memory with Jimmy Carter, who was just a superb former President. And as I say, President Clinton has taken it to an entirely different level and I think maybe what it is, somebody once told me that leadership in the 21st century is about two things; one, your put in a position of responsibility, or command, take control, right? Take accountability for something. And two, what’s right. And I think what impressed me most about the Clinton Global Initiative, and about this former President’s commitment to it is that it’s entirely motivated by doing what’s right. Not by doing what’s practical, not doing what you can get through the legislature. I’m not here to mount an attack on our system of governments, but all of you know that frequently in this sort of clash of ideas, and the clash of the genders, and the clash of special interests and personal interests, what we end up with is a homogenized thing that was do-able, but that isn’t necessarily right.

And I think, and this is a compliment, Mr. President, there is nothing that is on the agenda of CGI that all of us couldn’t at the end of the day and in our hearts probably say, “You know what, that’s the right thing to do.” And I think that’s why it’s attracted so much attention and that’s where its real source of power is. So, my compliments to you and I wanted to say that publically, I think it’s terrific. I think that, I’ve decided, I’m frequently threatened by having to do something in public life, and I always manage to dodge that bullet because it’s just too hard, but I know, there is an office I wish to run for, and I’m here today to announce it, it is former president of the United States. Somehow if I can figure that out, without having to go through the rest of the stuff, I’m done. I’m home.

Now, as the President has indicated with the agenda, the items of focus we’re here for, simply because the fight of poverty, world poverty health, religious ethnic conflicts, governance, and the environment. And we are extremely gratified that education has been added to that list because it’s like the old saying, of all of the seven great virtues, courage is the most important because you can’t adhere to the others without courage, I think of all of the things on this agenda education is the one that envelops and sits underneath each of the others. We can’t be successful in alleviating poverty; we can’t be successful in delivering better health through the world, or better governance, or resolving some of these rules and ethic conflicts, or improving environment without an all encompassing educational issue that sits underneath it.

And so, that’s been our focus here at Time Warner probably something in excess of half of our philanthropic, both dollars and in-kind contributions, go to support education primarily public education and primarily here in the US but with the President’s incentive and prodding and goading and elbowing, we’re moving out into the global community and we look forward to continuing to be proud in that way. And for those of you who are currently participates and contributors, for CGI, which is, I’m sure, most of you here, it’s, as a member of corporate America still, it’s satisfying to me that over two-thirds of support for this comes from corporations around the world. And for those of you who are part of that, we look forward to continuing to work with you going forward, and for the one or two of you who may not yet be a part of it, join up. Thank you very much.

President Clinton: Well, I like the idea of Dick Parsons as a former President, but in order to it Time Warner would have to adopt some version of America’s 22nd amendment, because he’s not term limited, as far as I know.
When we began CGI I wanted to get people together, as I said, not only to share ideas and come up with solutions, but to actually make a commitment to implement them, then I wanted to make sure we helped people develop the commitments and help them to implement them and keep score. Here’s what we know so far, we know that 570 commitments have been made to date, to reach every region of the world. Twenty percent target Africa, nineteen percent North America, eleven percent Asia, seven percent Middle East, six percent Latin America and the Caribbean, four percent Europe. Many commitments, however, affect multiple regions. A third of all the commitments impact people in three or more geographic regions.

The second thing we know is that in addition to global reach, our members’ commitments also reflect the power of both businesses and NGOs to come together to create change. We’ve seen them build partnerships within and across national boarders, reinvigorating and reinterpreting age old concepts like profitability and sustainability.

Of the 570 commitments, 221 have been made by non-profits, 118 by corporations, 108 by foundations, 79 by individuals, and the rest by governments, universities, think tanks and other entities. In just two years 144 entirely new private partnerships have been formed through CGI. And as I said earlier, we have been able to actually measure our commitments by impacts in the more than 100 commitments that have already been completed. For example, 50 Chinese companies, 50 Indian companies and 20 EU companies have been mobilized to address global nutrition. Thirty thousand children in Nicaragua have been vaccinated against rotavirus. Five hundred seventy-five people in Sudan have received life saving health services. And I might say here off the script, I’m quite encourage by the recent waves of the potential progress in Darfur with the final agreements in Sydney’s government to get the force group of European peace keepers there and I think it’s a tribute to the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon, and to President Bush and the Bush Administration who had pressured the sanctions into the Arab league and the Saudis who have gotten involved in this and I think quite a constructive way.

But it’s also a tribute to private citizens and school children all over America and all over the world lobbying for Darfur. When I drove home yesterday afternoon, I noticed that there was a banner hanging across the church half a mile across from my house, it said, “Save Darfur”. We see that all over this country and this is one area where Hollywood celebrities, who are often criticized and made fun of, have been incredibly effective and serious. George Clooney, Don Cheadle, a CGI participant, Mia Farrow, going around characterizing the coming Olympics as a genocide Olympics unless Darfur is fixed. All these people together have had a real impact and I’m grateful to that.

In one of our commitments seven thousand women in Mexico have received micro-credit grants and business loans. Seventy-six fellows from six countries in Africa have already graduated from the African leadership initiative. Three hundred students of low income families have received financial literacy here, four thousand around the world have been engaged in interfaith dialogue in community service. Twenty-seven mayors in the United States have agreed to significantly reduce the environmental impact of their cities over and above their required limits. One of our more modest commitments that will have a continuing and escalating impact, six thousand mega-watts of wind power have been purchased, offsetting five thousand pounds of CO2. We run a carbon neutral conference here every year, and I’ll hope we’ll be able to flip it to positive before we finish.

Some of the commitments reflect financial support, some reflect commitments of time and other resources. Some, like the staggering commitment of Richard Branson, to put all the profits of Virgin Airways and Virgin Railways into the development of clean fuels, run into the billions. Others are entirely non-monetary, involving technical expertise or time to work with budding entrepreneurs in developing countries. These commitments come in all shapes and sized, including those that have been offered over our website, Clintonglobalinitiative.org. We had about 250 spontaneously come in after last years meeting from some of the forty eight thousand people who followed the CGI over the webcast.

I want to pause here to briefly recognize a number of friends who have demonstrated their commitments. First I have to start with Tom Golisano, who is our original anchor sponsor. Without him we would have never would have had the first CGI and this never would have gotten off the ground. Thank you.

I’d like to recognize Dean Linda Rosenstock of the School of Public Health at UCLA, Cindy Horn from the School of Public Health, Cynthia Sikes Yorkin from the entertainment industry task force. They are creating a partnership to link government, universities, individuals, corporations, NGOs in the US and abroad to build the first high speed, high volume laboratory network to combat emerging infectious diseases. This is really important. One of the challenges we face in the 25 countries where my foundations work to develop healthcare systems to diagnose, treat and care people with HIV and AIDS is making sure we have sufficient lab capacities. If we had this sort of network it would obviate a lot of those needs.

I’d like to acknowledge my long term friend John Holdren who’s up here, the Director of the Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts. When I was President he was an invaluable supporter in our efforts to, our then failed efforts, to get the United States government to focus on climate change and our somewhat more successful efforts to strain the proliferation of nuclear and other dangerous weapons around the world. The Woods Hole Research Center, in partnership with Goldman Sacks for environmental markets, is developing new approaches to value the sustainable methods of forest for marketable products for ecosystems and services, and to apply those values to reduce the pace of tropical deforestation. I don’t know how many of you saw it, but about a month ago there was a news story that said that while reforestation could be quite valuable in combating climate change, it was far more important to reserve and enhance forests in tropical zones of the world than to plant trees and preserve them in other parts of the world because of the way global warming is catching on. So what John is doing is of potentially enormous significance and reinforced by that and by the recent report of the United States government, thank goodness, acknowledging that climate change is a national security issue to the United States and to every other government in the world, so thank you John for that.

I’d like to acknowledge Jack Smith, the Director of the International Center for Asset Recovery, ICAR. The partnership that ICAR has developed with the Drishtee Foundation as a result of CGI, established a corruption reporting system for thousand of remote villages in India via Drishtee internet kiosks, with the goal of defeating corruption and helping to end poverty.
I had a talk this morning with David Freeman, a consultant with Thomas Eggar solicitors in partnership with Matthias Stiefel of Interpeace. David is working to launch global peace funds that promote private investment and a new asset class of conflict and reconstruction stocks designed to reinvigorate the economy and post-conflict countries.

I’d like to thank my friend Mark Lasry, who’s here, who’s made a commitment to help Mount Sinai Medical Center respond to the healthcare needs of Liberian patients by leading a medical mission to the country and working with the Liberian Minister of Health to provide the public health support, public health support on an extended basis. Both these lasting commitments could help Liberia, by the way, a country that only has three million people, was devastated by 14 years of bloody civil conflict, has a per capita income still of less than one dollar per day, and many of us in the United States feel a particular responsibility for Liberia because it was founded by our former American slaves, that made the trip back to Africa. And since the country is so small, we should be able to be good partners in leading the turnaround.

Last year Bob Johnson committed to raise 30 million dollars from African-American business people to establish an investment fund there. Thirty million dollars doesn’t go very far in New York City but it will go a very long way in Monrovia where still more than half the buildings don’t have electricity at night. So I thank all of you for being here.

I am very grateful for all of the good that everyone has done through all of this CGI meeting. I’m grateful for the chance we’d had to connect people and help them transform good intentions and immeasurable actions. I’m grateful that we so far have been able to convince people that no gift of time, money or skills is too small and that this is not just the place for the very wealthy and very large. But there are still too many people dying from preventable diseases, too many billions living in poverty, too many children who don’t go to school, too much damage being done to the planet and too many people fighting over their identities as if conflict is inevitable, and in some cases mandated by their faiths. I can provide you with all the statistics in the world, and make no mistake, the results are meaningful.

But we’ve still got a lot to do and I think that nothing is more inspiring to keep us going than hearing from the commitment makers themselves. So I’ve asked four of them to provide us with progress reports on their commitment. The first speaker I’d like to call up is Eboo Patel of the Interfaith Youth Core, along with his students, Nabeel Ali, and Adva Saldinger. Both of whom have participated in this program that was expanded through CGI. Eboo.

Eboo Patel: Thank you Mr. President. Mr. President, I came to CGI in 2005 because I wanted to find people who shared my vision of a world where young people are the architects of peace and pluralism, not the foot soldiers of religious extremism. When I heard Her Majesty, Queen Rania, speak on a panel at that meeting, and she said those exact same words, I said, “How can we turn this vision into action?” Three months later I was on a plane to Jordan where I met with Her Majesty and her staff and youth leaders in Jordan and we shaped the Interaction Youth Exchange. This past January, 15 young Americans traveled to Jordan to work there. This June, 17 young Jordanians will travel to the United States. At CGI, an actress in Hollywood said, “You should make a film about this.” And she introduced us to a community of people who are helping us do just that. Mr. President, CGI is a space where a unique commitment could emerge. Between Her Majesty the Queen of Jordan, a young social entrepreneur in Chicago, an actress in Hollywood and philanthropists from all over the world. But I think, even more important than the commitments that we have made, are the commitments that the young people are making, to themselves, to each other, and to the new world that they are building. I want to introduce you to two of these young people now. I present you Nabeel Ali from Jordan.

Nabeel Ali: Mr. President the Interaction Youth Exchange Program was the first to engage me with a religious pluralism program. The time we share together as young people learning about each other from different backgrounds of faith was unlike any other experience I had in my life. It’s true, we started our acquaintances carefully but it was not long after we were sitting at the corridor of our hotel, then dancing, singing, and laughing all together. One moment that I remember is surviving a snow blizzard through our trip in Jordan. We had the 90 percent chance to be trapped by snow, and actually one of the participants stood in the middle of the bus and said, “Well, let’s just all pray, because at least one of us is right about his religion and I think God will protect us all.” We did laugh at the remark at the moment but when I reflect on it right now, I understand that God has intended a pluralist society and he will work to protect it. And this is actually what the Koran teaches us.

Mr. President, my commitment after this experience is to carry on the message that young people have the power and have the responsibility to create a world of pluralism. A world where people from different backgrounds of faith will live together side by side and work to serve all. And I would like to present my friend Adva Saldinger.

Adva Saldinger: Mr. President, I had several reservations about going to Jordan. My apprehensions were the result of my constant awareness of the conflict in the region and a horrible incident experienced by a close family friend in Jordan. I decided that I had the unique opportunity to push aside those hesitations and take part in what would be nothing short of a life changing experience. The Interaction Youth Exchange allowed me to meet and befriend Jordanians, and as I got to know the real faces of that country, I confronted my own personal assumptions. Unfortunately, when I was in Jordan, I got the flu; what I didn’t expect is that I would be welcomed into the home by the mother of one of the Jordanian participants on the program. She quickly gave me medicine and made me a cup of tea, and tucked me into bed at night saying, “Just like my daughter.”

This experience is about more than that one night of hospitality. It is about the sincere invitation I received the next morning to come and stay again. Mr. President, my commitment is to help my generation gain the knowledge that is only possible through the exchange of words, the sharing of a meal, and the joy of helping others together. I want everyone to have the experience of having someone you once saw as an other, treat you like a daughter.

President Clinton: There’s almost nothing I can add to that except, I would like to say that the thing that I think is most important about this is that this is one of the reconciliation initiatives, and one of the finest, that gives people a chance to do something that normally only occurs in the world today when there is a natural disaster. I remember after the tsunami hit South Asia, the approval rating of the United States soared because the American military and our civilian people and our non-governmental groups, both religious and non-religious were there just helping. After the tsunami, World Vision, this big Christian group was there helping Hindu tamils and these Buddhists in Sri Lanka, and Muslims in Indonesia and nobody cared anymore because you were sitting around looking at all these kids who have lost their parents and their brothers and sisters, and people who have lost their homes or their livelihoods. We have to find a way to make this happen before something horrible happens to us.

I remember when the earthquakes struck Turkey and Greece, the Turks and the Greeks were helping each other. But people forget when the disaster fades into time. We need to practice this and you give them a way to do that. I thank you very much. I’d like to now call on Jim Stengel of Proctor and Gamble to update us on his commitment to bringing safe drinking water to more than one million African children. Jim.

Jim Stengel: I come to you today as an ambassador, with my colleague here Greg Algood [misspelled?], of 135 thousand Proctor and Gamble employees who are proud and humble to be part of the Clinton Global Initiative and we thank you for bringing together people and ideas, President Clinton, and a call to action. My company is 170 years old, we have survived that long, we thrived that long, because we do what Dick Parsons said, we do the right thing and our people are so proud of what you’re doing and so proud of our role in this. So I want to start by saying thank you to your entire team, your colleagues, for what’s happening here and beyond here.

I just want to give a small background on what we’re doing and then a progress report since the meeting in September. The issue we’re dealing with is contaminated water. It kills four thousand people a day, most of them children, and we want to be part of providing a solution to that. And what I have here is a sachet. This is the idea: A very small sachet, dropped into a bucket of ten liters of water, and stirred, will make it perfectly safe to drink. It will be as clean as any tap water in the finest tap water systems in this country. Totally portable, and costs a few pennies to make. Now, we have tried to make a business model of this and four years ago I traveled to one of our test markets, on the island of Sabu in the Philippians, with my wife to see this in practice in schools and villages. It was incredible. I heard mothers, teachers and nurses say how much healthier their children are, and the difference it is making in their lives.

So what we committed to is to find a way, even though the business model wasn’t working, to make a difference. So what we did, in September, we committed to add an incremental 3.8 million dollars to bring this, to provide long term provisions of this at cost to us, and then to go in to reach one million more African children and provide at least 34 million more liters of fresh water. And I’m happy to say in the six months since we left, this was last year’s part of the commitment, that we have reached four hundred thousand children and we will exceed our goal of reaching one million children, with 35 million liters within three years, we will exceed that goal. And we also, through the Clinton Global Initiative, opened up more partnerships; we’re working with UNICEF, with CARE, with PSI, to take this effort even bigger and even broader. It is becoming the focal philanthropy of the Proctor and Gamble Company.

So I’m telling you that we’re really, really proud to be part of this. That it has been an extraordinary inspiration for our people, and we want to be a long term partner and we can’t thank you enough President Clinton and your team for what you’re doing to help the world make life better and improve lives. Our company believes in that, our people believe in that, and again, we’re humbled and proud to be a part of it. Thank you again.

President Clinton: Thank you very much. I would like to highlight one thing that Jim said at the end of his remarks, because I’ve gotten increasingly interested in this. When I go around and talk about this I still see people who say, “Well, but I’ll never have as much money as Bill Gates, or even the millionaire down the street. I’ll never have the influence and the contacts Bill Clinton has.” It’s really not that. I’ll give you an example, there’s a guy that works in my grocery store in Chappaqua, who lives in Brooklyn. He commutes every day up to this little town. He’s an amazing human being, he’s got seven children, and it’s all he can do to take care of his seven kids. I mean, I don’t know how much money he makes working at that store, but not very much. He’s a magnificent guy, but he loves this thing we’re doing with CGI, so he talks to me all the time. Businesses have an enormous opportunity to give people like him a chance to participate, because you just heard they’ve got a partnership with UNICEF and CARE. After CGI last year, someone who followed it over the internet, was so impressed with your commitment that she sent us an email saying, “I don’t have much money, but since those packets only cost a few cents a piece, that’s my commitment, I’m going to buy as many as I can afford, and give as many kids I can clean water.” This is really important because everyone who produces something, the cost of which can be broken down into manageable size, has a partner like UNICEF or CARE that can receive charitable contributions. There might be five million people like that lady and if they just give five dollars worth of packets, you’ve got another 25 million dollars. So I think this is something. I really want to emphasize what Jim said, they have established a partnership with UNICEF and a partnership with CARE, and maybe some others, and they have given people who hardly have any disposable income, the chance to save a child’s life, for just a few cents. So thank you very, very much.

Now I’d like to call on Jacqueline Novogratz, who is here from the Acumen Fund, a fascinating operation I might add. I want to invite her to discuss her companies CGI commitment, launching of their energy portfolio. Jacqueline.

Jacqueline Novogratz: Thank you President Clinton. What’s been striking to me in listening to the people talk today is the community that you built in the interconnections, and someone supported Drishkey.com which is an organization that we have an equity investment in health, and brought him to, couldn’t go on global initiative, for him to now be working in corruption and what struck me about what Jim said and what Proctor and Gamble is doing, is that through P&G and what you are doing on the website, is that we’re not only trying to bring dignity to people in the developing world, but it’s really for all of us too. And I know that’s a theme that you really care about.

Acumen fund is a non-profit venture fund that brings affordable water, health, and housing to the poor, and at the last CGI meeting, really inspired by President Clinton’s relentless focus on the link between climate change and poverty, we decided to launch a fourth portfolio which would focus on bringing alternative energy to the poor at prices they can afford. The poor typically pay thirty to forty times what their middle class counterparts pay for alternative energy, for energy which is typically very bad for their health. As you know, climate change adversely affects the poor in significant ways and because there is such a link between energy and productivity, and therefore income, the poor really are willing to pay for alternative energies that will improve their lives and will improve their income.

So some entrepreneurial activity is now starting around the world that’s really focused on this. We decided to make a commitment of raising three million dollars and building a pipeline, finding some investments and investing it, at least one or two buy next September. So since last September we’ve put together an advisory board, we’ve raised 1.1 million with other CGI members. We’ve looked at dozens of companies, many of which are not sustainable but are moving towards sustainability and have an energy sphere and have a pipeline now of about 2.5 million dollars in bio-fuels solar LED lighting and feel quite confident that just as we’ve been able to do now in health and in water and in housing, by building scalable enterprises, not only do you impact lives directly but we’re starting to find real blueprints and models for how we can scale these on a much larger basis often bringing in government with real blueprints for how to make change in the world, specifically for those three billion people on Earth who have been left out of the global economy.

So, I thank you very much, with my colleague Molly Alexander of Acumen Fund for including us in this truly groundbreaking work that you’re doing.

President Clinton: I want to thank you very much for that. I don’t want to sound like a broken record here because most of you know how I feel about this, but, the traditional energy economy, in and of itself, does not create anywhere near the economic opportunities that a more decentralized clean energy economy does. We have some people here who are from Brazil who produce the cane based ethanol there which is the most efficient ethanol in the world. Sometimes they’re getting more than eight gallons of bio-fuels for every one gallon of gasoline it takes to produce. And they’re beginning to work in looking at the Dominican Republic as a way of producing not only for the Caribbean, but also for the American market. You may remember this that President Bush recently went to Brazil, he and President Lula talked about doing this, about having the Brazilian entrepreneurs come up to the Caribbean because of the American 53 cent a gallon tax on imported bio-fuel from the sale that does not apply in the Caribbean. So it offers us an enormous opportunity to create grassroots jobs for rural Dominicans who may not be profiting from the current economic arrangements there, although more and more are being deployed in the tourism industry. And this is the sort of thing that I think really needs to be looked at. I am astonished still that the number of people in the world who believe that a country cannot grow rich, stay rich, and get richer without putting more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. They simply accept without analysis as a matter of faith that the old energy economy which generates more greenhouse gases is the only way to make a living. And no matter how much evidence there is to the contrary, they just keep asserting it over and over and over. So, I thank our friends from Brazil for coming here, and I thank all of you for doing this. I think this is the way out of poverty. I also think it is the way out of the inequality trap that is gripping every single wealthy country, all the developed countries of the world that have not chosen the glean energy path. The only countries where there has not been an increase in inequality, wealthy countries in the global economy, are those that have embraced a commitment to a clean independent energy future.

Denmark hasn’t because they’ve grown their economy 50 percent and haven’t increased their energy use at all. The United Kingdom has it because they created hundreds of thousands of jobs by beating their Kyoto targets 25 to 50 percent while American’s are saying the world would come to an end if we had to deal with Kyoto. I can give you lots of other examples. If you look at nation after nation after nation, I’ll give you one place where we’re working on economic development and AIDS in Rwanda, and even though there are only eight million people there, they’re quite densely populated because it’s such a tiny country. Even there because of the problems of the genocide and it’s aftermath, only 65 percent of the people are on the electric grid. Now what should Rwanda’s development strategy be? Should they spend the money to put the other 35 percent on the grid, or should they develop decentralized power and treat energy the way they treat cell phones. You’d be laughed at in most countries today if you said, “The number one thing we have to do for poor countries is to run telephone lines.” They would be laughing. You would think that I had basically been asleep for the last ten years if I made that statement. But you can stand up and make the statement and say, “I’m really sorry but we have to spend a fortune importing coal, we have to spend a fortune importing oil, we have to spend a fortune building transmission and distribution centers. I hate it but otherwise these people will be poor forever.” That is not true.

And you’re going to prove it, so I thank you very much. Otherwise I don’t have strong feelings about it. Our last speaker is Vincent Mai, of AEA Investors, and the Ubuntu Education Fund. AEA made a financial commitment at CGI benefitting the Ubuntu Fund which develops and implements an intensive case management system for orphans and vulnerable children. One of my favorite words in the world. So, Vincent would you please, you have the floor.

Vincent Mai: Thank you Mr. President. My involvement in Ubuntu started with participating last year in the CGI program in New York and where, as President Clinton mentioned earlier, two of the focal points were poverty and health, and I was really inspired by a lot of the discussion that occurred at that meeting, and I wanted to put something back into South Africa because I grew up in South Africa, I grew up in the Eastern Cape. I grew up on a farm, Mr. President, you grew up in a town called Hope, Arkansas and the town I grew up next to was called Perseverance. So I think between Perseverance and Hope there, if you have those two you have a lot going for you. But I had decided that I wanted to really put something back into the community I grew up in. I am a naturalized American, I’ve been here for 30 years, and I really felt that this country’s been great to me but I wanted to put something back into South Africa, a county of which I have a very, very great affection.
I knew about Jacob Lief, a co-founder of Ubuntu, and had heard about the magnificent quality of the programs there and I was really inspired by the CGI discussions, so I connected with Jacob and made a five year commitment to Ubuntu. The CGI activities, my interest in Eastern Cape, really aligned perfectly. Now, you’re going to be hearing from some wonderful people here in a second, but just to let all of you know, I’ve met and visited many times the Ubuntu programs in the township of Port Elizabeth, and it is truly, truly inspirational to go there. You see these little kids in desperate poverty and yet you see the enthusiasm, the thirst for learning that these kids have, an absolute relentless positive attitude that they have about life and wanting to break out and enjoy all the opportunities that life has to offer. You then see the quality of the Ubuntu team, how focused they are on addressing the needs of these kids and the range of areas, but you see their high impact of work, you see low cost and incredibly efficient, and the team there operate very, very effectively at the grassroots level. And the perfect combination of things that you really want to see in a township program, I can’t tell you how inspirational it is. And I would say, many people go to South Africa, they go to Johannesburg, they go to the Western Cape, and they look at the wine lands, and they come back. Go to the Eastern Cape and get in touch with Jake Lief, and go and visit Ubuntu, and I can guarantee you it will be the highlight of your trip, I really mean it. So, you should do that.

Anyway, you’ve got some wonderful people here who are the perfect embodiment of that I’m talking about. Zethu, who is one of the children who’s benefitted, and Fezeka, who’s a case manager. But I do want to say for me that I truly draw great inspiration from these people, to me, you’re a great example and so it is such a pleasure to work with you to see the programs. So, I’ll turn it back to you now, thank you. BILL CLINTON: I think they have something to say.

Fezeka Mzalazala: Good day everyone. My name is Fezeka Mzalazala, I am a South African. I am working for Ubuntu Education Fund that is based in the township of Port Elizabeth. Ubuntu reaches over 40 thousand people in the community, where one in three people are HIV positive and unemployment is over 80 percent. We are an organization that empowers orphaned and vulnerable children and their families with access to HIV testing, getting them on treatment, assistance on social services, and to also provide them with educational opportunities. I have been working at Ubuntu for five years and I feel so lucky to be a case manager that works and provide life saving information to orphaned and vulnerable children. I grew up during the uppertake era, in South Africa, where I was unable to get a formal education but Ubuntu saw a potential in me and gave me an opportunity to grow personally and professionally over the last five years. When I first started working at Ubuntu, I had a grade twelve education and I didn’t know that helping people is something that was within me. But after two weeks working for Ubuntu, I met a young girl, in a primary school called Virginialder, this girl was sexually abused. I managed to help this girl to get through the experience that she had, that’s when I realized that this is what I want to do. I want to make a difference in my community. I told myself that next year I’m going back to school so I can be a social worker and continue working for Ubuntu helping people.

Because Mr. Vincent Mai made a commitment, now we able to reach 300 more children in the community, just like Ntombizethu the young lady that is special to me. I’ve been working with her a long time. Ladies and gentlemen, I would like you to listen and sit there and hear what she has to say. I thank you.

Zethu Ngceza: Greetings to all. My name is Ntombizethu Ngceza, I am 17 years old. I’m staying with my two siblings, my legal sister and my legal brother. We are staying together in a household project called The Gwando Lenza in Port Elizabeth. I lost my father 2004, and my mother died 2005 because of HIV and AIDS. It was very too hard to me, I couldn’t face it. I began to start by asking myself some questions, questions like where I am supposed to go, or should I go or should I just run away. I have got dreams, I don’t know what can do this to me, how can I face this thing. But I told myself that these are my siblings, this is my sister and this is my brother, I love them, they deserve the best, so what can stop me, I have to do this. But it was really, really hard. But then at my primary school there was an Ubuntu counselor there called Sister Guza. Sister Guza go to our life school class and said, if somebody got a problem, or somebody need help, should go to her. So I did. She introduces me to Sister Mzalazala, the lady that I’m here now with today. Sister Mzalazala saw me and my siblings staying in that small shack room with eight people, staying with our aunt, and unfortunately my aunt couldn’t be able to take care of all of us. She left to Johannesburg. She left us with no home and no hope. Sister Mzalazala works so hard in order for us just to get a safe place just as every child. I don’t know what could I be without Ubuntu Education Fund and Sister Mzalazala. Ubuntu plays a big role in my life because each and every month they make sure you’ve got a food parcel, each and every month they make sure we’ve got electricity, and they make sure that each and every year we’ve got a school uniform. They make sure that we don’t pay school fees because we don’t have money. When I grew up I would like to be an accountant. But I wasn’t doing well in mathematics, but Ubuntu tutored me in the afternoon program that they have in my school, and now I love and am pretty good with mathematics.

During school or holidays, Ubuntu provide [inaudible] for orphaned children just like me. We laugh and enjoy ourselves, we also learn. We learn about HIV and AIDS, how to prevent it, how to look after our bodies, how to reduce the stigma that exists in our communities. Each and every home has a father and a mother who is a bread winner, but in my family Ubuntu is my bread winner because of everything that Ubuntu has done for me.

I want to thank Mr. Vincent Mai, and the Clinton Global Initiative for making a commitment. Their commitment didn’t just help me, my family only, it helped hundreds of children. I believe that a commitment, it’s a promise. I’m standing here as a child from South Africa, I believe that I can change the world. My commitment is that when I get back to South Africa I could start an orphan, support group for orphan girls in my school. This is my way of changing the world. On behalf of children of South Africa, I thank you for letting me to speak to you. I thank you.

President Clinton: Before you become an accountant, I think you should seriously consider politics. I might even become a citizen of South Africa to vote for you. Well, thank you both, thank you, thank you, all four of you.

Ubuntu has become a well known word in Southern Africa as more and more people have taken this kind of responsibility. It’s now the motto of the City Year Project of volunteers, both white and black South Africans, who do community service work in the country. It means roughly translated into English, “I am, because you are.” We ought to find a word for it in every language in the world. It takes us back to our first commitment, to the Interfaith Youth Core and to everything that’s been said in between. So I thank you all.

There’s something I’d like all the rest of you to think about too, which is that quite apart from the emotional power of that presentation, the practical impact of a seventeen year old young girl, who was helped by this program, making her own commitment. For the last several years the only NGO, global NGO that I am aware of, that makes a condition of receiving assistance that the people who get help make their own commitment, is the Heifer Project. And it’s well known to a lot of you and I’ve been involved with it for over 30 years because their headquartered in my home state and now their global headquarters is next to my presidential library. But the stories are of a legion of women in Tibet who got goats and gave the goats to the other people in their village and then they liked giving so much that they wound up giving geese to their counterparts in China. There’s a group in the Dominican Republic that were displaced when a damn was built and they received 58 cattle, and so their obligation was, each of the 58 families was to give cattle to 58 more, it’s a brilliant idea except that it kinds of infects them, just like you’ve been infected. Now over 600 families have received cattle as a result of that first 58 because you just take the offspring and just keep on giving. So because of this magnificent example, that’s another thing I would like to ask you all to think about, in the run up to September, how many of the things that we all do could we amplify, by giving, maybe not even requiring, but at least giving the beneficiaries of these efforts the opportunity to at least give something themselves. You’ve given us all something to think about. Bless you all, thank you very much.
Now before we go I just want to take a few moments to discuss the topics that we hope to address from the annual meeting from September 26th through 28th. In education, our new topic area, we will look at new ways to improve quality and expand access without a trade off between these two vital components. This is very important, we have two people from Kenya here, it’s amazing what happened to them when thy dropped the school fees. But what do you do if you’re a country and all of a sudden two million kids show up to school from what there were yesterday. I think that’s what you’re enrollment eventually increased. Stand up, give them a hand. Because of the revenue strains on governments and developing countries, a lot of people in our country don’t even know this yet, it’s in the poorest countries in the world, the poorest people are supposed to pay to go to the public schools. Something that doesn’t happen here because we broadly finance it. Hillary and I are long past having school age children but we pay property taxes to our local school district, state taxes to our state, and we’re only too happy that a portion of that goes back to fund the school systems. In countries without stable revenue like this, governments often feel they have to charge school fees with the reverse impact that the people that need most to be in school never get there.

Countries that have reversed the incentives have done remarkably well. And Brazil and Mexico have two brilliantly innovative programs for they essentially pay the mothers of their poorest families to send their kids to school instead of to work or to leave them home. And Brazil, which now has quite a rapidly raising income, but they have for several years now, over 98 percent of their school age kids in school. And, if you’re kid comes to school and stays 85 percent of the time, you can go monthly to the office of the local lottery and get a cash income supplement of up to, what used to be 15 dollars a child up to a maximum of three. And though Mexico has a slightly different system, but it works in the same way with similar results. But in order for these things to really work, we have to provide trained teachers, we have to have these facilities, we have to have access to learning materials. And I think that’s very, very important.

We want to talk about what we can do to strengthen and expand primary and secondary education for girls and to increase their access to economic health and social benefits that flow from education. There is still a significant disparity in attendance in the developing world between girls and boys. We want to discuss the impact that universities in developing countries can have on the next generation and how to strengthen developing world institutions, while enabling continued international opportunity and diversity. And we want to talk about how to provide education to children in conflict situations, in refugee camps, conflict zones, and post-conflict areas like Afghanistan, and Liberia, and Sudan. We want to talk about how to educate children who are disadvantaged by having been, or currently are, child laborers and sex workers, HIV/AIDS orphans, disabled, or otherwise disadvantaged.

Within global health we want to explore the role of nutrition and healthcare. The other day I got a call from a friend of mine who works with an AIDS project in the Dominican Republic that’s treating 12 hundred children and she said, “This is, it’s great because now we’re getting the medicine for the kids under this new project and this new price we negotiated with the UNITAID Funds of 60 dollars a person a year”, she said, “but there’s no money to give them nutrition packets and we’re afraid that the medicine won’t work because the kids don’t have adequate nutrition. Can you help me with that?” We want to talk about that.

We also want to talk a little bit about the reverse of that, which is that now were finding even in developing countries, problems I previously thought were reserved to America, rising rates of obesity, rising rates of diabetes among young people, type II diabetes, we’re now seeing it in developing countries. In India, for example, there are significant dramatic increases in heart attacks and strokes, diabetes, and other conditions normally associated with eating habits that they didn’t used to have but alas have now begun to adopt.

So, this whole area of nutrition is something that we hope to deal with. We want to talk about strategies to improve maternal and child health, and a range of other important issues, including access to rural healthcare, AIDS, TB, and malaria treatment. I was particularly glad to have this presentation by P&G because ten million kids die every year of preventable childhood diseases and one on four of all deaths on earth are from AIDS, TB, malaria, and infections related to dirty water. And as you pointed out, 80 percent of the people that will die from cholera, dysentery, diarrhea, any infection they get from dirty water, 80 percent of them are under five years of age. So, we want to talk about that.

In the area of poverty alleviation, we want to talk about how to actually create jobs in the economies, through investment, whether it’s from micro-credit or some big chunk of investment from another country, and I hope to have some interesting things to report to you on that by the time we meet.

We want to talk about how to create economic prospect for children in developing countries with limited access to job training, current job opportunities and technology. How we can do more to help women to lift themselves and their communities. What can we do in post-crisis situations to create economic opportunities. As I just mentioned that I was very excited last year that Bob Johnson put together this group of African-American entrepreneurs to go to Liberia and they should have a report on, their continuing to work, their staying on schedule, it’s very interesting but I think some times we underestimate how much an amount of money that seems like nothing in Europe, or United States, or Japan, or increasingly even in a Chinese or Latin America city, how much it could do in a country that’s been ripped apart by conflict. We forget how limited the resources are and how quickly you can return, at least to an acceptable living standard. I want to talk about not only disaster affected areas by conflict, but also natural disasters because I think it is certain that no matter what is done in climate change, we will have more of those in the years ahead because of natural disasters and their increasing number.
In the energy and climate change area we’re going to explore clean energy possibilities for two million people who live without access to any modern energy services, the future of coal and whether we can find a way to minimize the environmental degradation resulting from it. There are two basic options here: one is obviously the development of clean coal technology, the other is rooted in the fact that the coal fired power plants that are running now, all of the ones that have been up and running for a certain time are on average only 40 percent efficient. That is, you get 100 percent of the greenhouse gases for only 40 percent of the heat potential, with more modern turbines they could be 65 percent efficient and it could obviate the need to build new plants because you could increase by 50 percent the capacity of the old plant and then argue about whether you could recover the greenhouse gases there. I don’t want to go into the details now, but in America there are disincentives to doing that because of other environmental problems presented by coal production and therefore we don’t have the utilities running now to do the thing that I think would be the most interesting thing of all to do, it would be much cheaper otherwise, to make all your existing plants 50 percent more efficient and go out and try to build a bunch more. And it could have relevance in China and India and elsewhere.

We want to talk about what state and local governments could do, what we can do to protect tropical forest, how we can use green architectural practices to reduce emissions from buildings. In America, just for example, the greenhouse gases we get are about a third from transportation, a third from buildings, a third from electricity generation and manufacturing. And obviously there’s some overlap between electricity generation and buildings, but in New York City where we are more densely populated and where we travel more by mass transit and increasingly reluctant to get caught in cross town traffic, almost 80 percent of our greenhouse gas emissions are from buildings. This is especially relevant. I talked to two fascinating people here today, one who is working on slum eradication in India and wants to do it around the world. And another who says he’s not only producing carbon neutral buildings, he has a way to produce energy positive buildings, to have the buildings, the operation of the buildings generate more energy than it uses, which we typically find in America today only when a house or business has the most updated conservation technologies and solar power and in most states, the utility will buy the surplus energy back and then put it through the grid, but if we could regularly design for every climate energy positive buildings, and if we could, and if we develop what I think is coming with nano-solar technology, then we can make a lot of these problems that we think are completely insoluble go away in a hurry. So I think that this is going to be a very, very exciting conversation on the energy front.

I would like to say just a word more about global warming because it’s so closely connected to poverty and to health around the world. While I have these meetings to bring people together and talk about what we can do no matter what government policy is, I think it is highly doubtful that all our efforts together can avoid the most calamitous effects in climate change in the absence of more comprehensive action by government, especially by the American government. I do not believe that we will be able to persuade the Chinese or the Indians, or the other rapidly growing countries to take action on climate change unless we show a willingness to limit carbon emissions, and although the Chinese already have better standards for cars than we do, because of their own experience for having huge pollution problems in the major cities.

Now we have made an enormous amount of progress in this country. First of all, no one really denies the existence of climate change anymore, or the fact that it’s caused by people. And I think that when Al Gore’s movie won the Academy Award this year, it was as much as anything else an embrace of the fact that people finally realized that what he’s been saying for more than 20 years is true. And that’s a very good thing. The only arguments we’re having right now in America are over how bad is the problem going to be, when is it going to start, and is it going to be fixed in a way that slows the economy down or is there a way to do it in a way that speeds economic growth and actually positions us for decades of new innovative economic opportunities. I think you know what I think about that. But we already have four hundred cities in America committed to meeting their Kyoto targets. Our Foundation is helping the Large Cities Group organize with the mayor of London, with forty of the biggest cities of the world on every continent, and we’re trying actually to organize purchasing consortiums for them the same way we did with AIDS medicine and a lot of the agricultural products we buy in Africa. It will be interesting to see whether we can do it, but I think we can. I’m encouraged by what is happening in California; they adopted sweeping climate change legislation in the last year and I hope other states will do the same. But I will say again, we will never be able to avoid the worse consequences of climate change unless, and this is one place where we need help from the government, unless we adopt the right sort of limits and a cap and trade system, then all of us will be empowered to do even more. We can do the rest, but the government has got to take the lead and prove to our counterparts, because in just very few years both India and China will be producing more greenhouse gases than we are. And we cannot expect them to accept the proposition that they can grow rich while reducing emissions if we reject it. We just can’t do it.

In 1990, the first President Bush signed legislations to cap emissions of sulfur dioxide plants to fight acid rain. It worked. The costs were a fraction of what was predicted and they were no where near the affirmative positive economic opportunities that you find in clean energy and energy conservation. No where near. It just turned out that we created a market which minimizes the cost and the health benefits, the dollar value of the health benefits dwarfed the net costs of the regulations. But here’s a case where the dollar benefit of the actual new businesses and new jobs created will dwarf the cost of meeting the caps. So I hope the federal government will do this.

And I have long been in favor of this. I will never forget when I asked Al Gore to go to Kyoto to try and finish our negations so that climate change treaty, 1998, they were then being led by, on America’s behalf, by Stuart Eizenstat and he called me and he told me what the deal was, I thought it was actually a little weak but the best we could do. The Senate voted against the Kyoto Treaty 95 to nothing before Al got off the airplane and took a shower. It was the only time I ever lost a bill in Congress before I ever even sent it to them. Oh, the world was going to come to an end and I just want to point out that the British, when we rejected it, they accepted it but thought it was too weak, they’re going to beat their targets by 25 to 50 percent, and unlike America where we’ve had five years of economic growth and a 40 year corporate high in profits but our median wages are stagnant and we have an increase of four percent, four percent of the number of working people working full time, who have fallen below the poverty line. In the United Kingdom they have rising wages and no increase in inequality, there is no conceivable explanation for this other than it’s they embrace this decade source of new jobs, while we have not. So, I will say again, I’m going to do whatever I can on this with these big cities, but I don’t think we can avoid the worse consequences for our children and grandchildren unless America passes comprehensive legislation because that’s the only way to get all of our partners to do the same.

Now, I would like, again, to thank our previous speakers. I believe that your commitment is maybe the most remarkable one ever made at CGI. For all the attention that we get at CGI, we’re basically just a catalyst to give people a chance to come together and do things like that. It’s kind of an experiment in the nature of philanthropy and good works, I just believed that when we started this, with the opening of the UN and our location in New York and the international quality of this great city gave us a chance to see whether or not we should all start having meetings where we never leave without committing to do something. But we just don’t think and talk and reason and come up with good ideas, but we test them out. I think it’s important that we try to have a measurable impact, I think it’s important that we’re now working with people to help and find commitments, and help and find partners, and help them implement the commitments. And I do want to thank John Needham and our whole CGI staff, and Eric Nonacs who is liaison between our Foundation and CGI, these people do a great job all year long and I think we ought to give them a round of applause and thank them.

I’d just like to say one other thing, I’ve been working for some time on a book about all your, what you all do, and how people give and how you can give no matter how much money you have or time you have, or what you know, everybody’s got something to give. So now I have exhibit A. And I thought a lot about why some people do this and why they don’t. I think most people give because they think it will make a difference or somebody they know asked them to. How many times have you written a check because somebody you know asked you, or because they feel morally obligated to do it, or because it makes them happy. And I think that when people don’t do it it’s sort of the reverse. They’re skeptical about whether what they do will make any difference, and one of the reasons I organized this was to debunk that myth. Because many of you in this room have been doing this stuff for decades but only a fraction of the world’s people who could be participating know it.

So one of the main benefits of what I think we’re doing here is to totally debunk the myth that you can’t get an enormous return for the investment of the public good if you do the right thing. Then, I think there are some people who literally have never been asked. So, we’re trying to do this and eventually we’re going to get the technology to a point where we’re asking a billion people a year to do something. So they can’t say they weren’t asked. Whether people feel morally obligated to do it or it makes them feel happy is a decision they have to make. Most religious faiths of everyone I’m familiar with imparts this as a moral injunction, and EO Wilson, the great Harvard biologist, since has just written a stunning little book called “On Creation” in which he casts himself as what he is, at best an agnostic, a non-believer, scientist, and he’s written a letter, he’s written this book as a letter to an evangelical Christian minister arguing why they both have a moral obligation to save the planet and all of it’s life forms. It’s a stunning argument and a better statement than I could ever make about it. But the last thing I can say is, I’m looking around this room and I’m thinking, everyday I can pick up the New York newspapers and read – and I don’t want to trivialize this because today the papers are about the horrible tragedy at Virginia Tech - but on the days when there is not a truly horrible tragedy, we are usually treated to a story about some act of self-destruction, some act of self-indulgence. We had days and days and days about the unfortunate comments made my Mr. Imus, and almost no coverage about his attempt to apologize for it. But we live in a culture, at least here, and increasingly in other places, where the so much public focus is on negative energy and like, defining people in their worst moments. There’s not a soul in this room that would be particularly happy if all the rest of us looked at you only through the worst moment in your life. And yet, when I see all of you come here I think the main reason you do it is it makes you happy. Maybe I am just thinking about this because I just buried my 91 year old stepfather, he lived to be 91 because he was happy, he got up everyday and tried to make something good happen. And I’m not morbid about this, people make fun of me of joking about my age when I turned 60, as if I were done some terrible thing to acknowledge that I was no longer 20. I would have thought it was self evident. So maybe if I’m lucky, when I grow up, I’ll live as long as Walter Shorenstein. But, who was forenally young.

But here’s what I want to say, if I long as my step-father, which would be quite a long time, I’ve got twice as many yesterdays as tomorrow. We’re all, no matter how young or old you are, you’re already too old to waste time doing things that will make you miserable when you have options that will make you happy. And I will give you this in closing, my profile in courage for this meeting, and I hope you will not be embarrassed, the man in the wheelchair over there, Allen Rosenthal, was one of the first prominent physicians in the world calling for us to do something about HIV and AIDS. He helped us to start our HIV/AIDS fund. He is dealing with, as you can see, a debilitating illness, which thank God did not hit him until he was in his 70s. He could be anywhere in the world, but here today, given the difficulties he faces getting through the day. You know why he’s here? He’s happier here than he would be home in bed. This has been his life. He is a great man and we should be the same. Thank you and God bless you.

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