CGI Winter 2012

The SFF team made a trip to the Clinton Global Initiative last week, this time for the 2012 Winter Meeting in New York City. CGI is an important conference for us and was especially valuable during the founding of SFF. We attend each year to hear from President Bill Clinton and other speakers regarding the latest trends in the developing world. Additionally, the conferences are a great opportunity to network with other people who share the same goal of eradicating poverty and improving the lives of the world’s poorest billion.

The conference began with the Partnering for Impact Plenary Session where we heard speakers Ashley Judd, the Lead Scientist at The Nature Conservancy, the SVP of Global Health and Agriculture Policy at PepsiCo and the President of the Gap Foundation talk about the importance of cross-sector partnerships. Later, we attended the Global Health Breakout Meeting. It was great to catch up with some of our existing partners, like Raj of Tiyatien Health, Chuck Slaughter of Living Goods, Cassia Holstein of Partners in Health, actor Jeffrey Wright of the Taia Peace Foundation and Zainab Salbi of Women for Women.

Our discussion was focused on finding potential solutions to bring healthcare to rural, poor communities. We discussed ways to develop a database or system of best practices for training community health workers so that the many NGOs doing work in Africa have a framework to set up their programs and ways to make sure that they aren’t conflicting with others working in the area.

CGI is always a pleasure. We were impressed by the great facility, attendance and interesting speakers. We are always amazed by President Clinton’s knowledge and insight (and how good he looks!). He spent quite a bit of time referring to how media can allow a small group of individuals to change the world, for better or for worse.

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