POVERTY? AN INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITY

"Responding to the global recession, former U.S. President Bill Clinton's philanthropic summit this year will focus on ways for companies to profit from tackling poverty, climate change, health and education. To keep companies engaged in fighting the world's problems amid an economic crisis that has seen millions of people lose their jobs, summit organizers said the meeting had to evolve from an event where corporate chiefs showed up and just wrote checks to support humanitarian work. "We recognized that the CGI (Clinton Global Initiative) of old was no longer going to be a feasible model to move forward on," said Edward Hughes, CGI's deputy director and director of program for the fifth annual summit this September." Companies couldn't simply treat us as a place where their foundation would come and write checks to NGOs (nongovernmental organizations), but rather for them to remain engaged, (CGI) had to deliver value to their core bottom line, to their business operations," he said. "We needed to justify this as being a real value-return exercise." ... This year, the Clinton Global Initiative will concentrate on four new areas -- harnessing innovation for development, strengthening infrastructure, developing human capital and financing an equitable future. It says each of those areas offers companies investment opportunities, while at the same time tackling world ills."
Yahoo News, 23 June) RD