Last month, fourteen-time Grammy Award-winning artist and HIV advocate Alicia Keys introduced EMPOWERED, an ongoing public information campaign to reach women in the U.S. about HIV/AIDS. At the launch event in Washington, D.C. at the Kaiser Family Foundation, Senior Advisor to the President Valerie Jarrett spoke both personally and professionally about how this disease affects us in so many ways, and detailed how the Obama Administration is tackling this crisis head-on.

Below is a select excerpt from her remarks.

This is the second event at Kaiser that Alicia and I have attended within the last year. We were here last July, and we are delighted to be back.

The first time we were here, we put the spotlight on black women in D.C. who are HIV positive or living with AIDS. And it was in the middle of the international AIDS conference, which we were so delighted to be able to host here in the United States because President Obama got rid of the travel ban on people who are HIV positive or have AIDS. We thought in the midst of an international conference, it would be so important to look at an issue right here at home in the nation’s capital. And so we had this deeply moving conference with many women who were either HIV positive or who have AIDS, and it was Alicia’s and my intent to lift them up and to put the spotlight on this issue here in the District and to talk about what we could accomplish together.

But, I have to say to you, and Alicia, I know you agree with this, their strength, their courage, their resilience, their good spirit, their humor and willingness to laugh and be so open about their life stories lifted us up. Those women were truly amazing, and I know a few of them are here with us this morning. So please, also, let’s give them a round of applause.

I’ve returned today because of the strong support that the Obama administration, from the President to myself to Grant to everybody who works on this issue want to give to Alicia’s launch of EMPOWERED, which she will describe to you shortly. Now, as you know, the HIV crisis touches every corner of the globe. And it’s personally touched so many of us, including me.

Every day, I carry with me the heartbreak of the death of my sister-in-law, who died nearly twenty years ago from AIDS. I think about Julie and the fact that she left this darling, darling daughter who was five at the time and is now grown and attended the conference with me last year, and I think about the fact that she went months without being properly diagnosed because back then nobody really thought to test a married mom for HIV. By the time she was finally diagnosed, it was too late.

I know we all have tragic stories about how HIV/AIDS has affected our family and friends, and these stories propel us all to continue to fight to end this disease. And while we have made great progress—and we have made great progress—HIV continues in the United States with about 50,000 new HIV infections each year. And about one-quarter of the new HIV infections are among women, but three-quarters of new infections are among women who are black and Latina. The rate of new HIV infections among African-American women is 20 times higher compared with white women, which Drew mentioned, and among Latinas, the rate is 4 times higher.

So there is no doubt the statistics are sobering. But here’s the thing: Every part of society has a role to play in ending AIDS. On our end, President Obama has recognized and demonstrated the need for immediate action, and here are just a few of the steps we’ve taken.

First, in July 2010, President Obama released the nation’s first comprehensive National HIV/AIDS Strategy, which is a blueprint for how together we can make great progress in this fight. The goal of the strategy is to prevent as many infections, and to save as many lives as possible—including through reducing health disparities, improving health and wellness for everyone living with HIV.

To this end, the President’s 2014 budget that he just released last week includes over $23 billion to address HIV/AIDS in the United States, including an additional $10 million from 2012 for the Centers for Disease Control that provides critical prevention and intervention funds. It also includes an additional $20 million, for a total of $2.4 billion for the Ryan White Program to increase access to life-extending care and treatment.

The Ryan White Program, as many of you may know, is named after a young man who was diagnosed with AIDS at age 13. He fought courageously against discrimination and for his right to go to school, the way all children go to school. Today, the program that bears his name works with cities, states, clinics, and local community-based organizations to provide HIV care to more than half a million people each year.

For women specifically, thousands of women at risk for, and living with, HIV will benefit from the Affordable Care Act, which President Obama signed in 2010. And Drew and I were just talking about all of the work he does for the Affordable Care Act. Thanks to this law, insurance companies are now required to provide women with access to a range of preventative services, including HIV testing, without any cost sharing. And starting next year, insurance companies are prohibited from charging women higher premiums than men or denying insurance for pre-existing conditions including HIV.

How many of you were aware of those two provisions? Most of you but not everybody. So when you walk away from here, one of my responsibilities, one of my asks of you, make sure that everybody you know knows what’s available to them. So many people don’t go in for testing because they think it’s going to cost them something, they can’t afford the copay. No longer. No longer because they’re women or simply because they’re HIV positive will they be discriminated against by insurance companies. That’s when you need your health care the most.

We are also addressing the fact that women who live with HIV are at a greater risk of experiencing domestic violence or assault. And I know that hits close to home for many of you, you’re glad I said that. That’s why President Obama established a working group focusing on the intersection of HIV/AIDS, violence against women and girls, and gender-related health disparities. We need holistic solutions, and this working group addresses that need.

Recently released national data does include some good news. HIV infections among women dropped by 21% between 2008 and 2010, and we are hopeful that this trend continues and it will in part because of this initiative. However, stigma and misconceptions continue to be significant drivers of HIV, keeping many from talking openly, using protection, getting tested, and starting and staying on treatment. Not just starting, but you have to stay on your treatments.

At a government level, we continue to address HIV-related stigma as well, which we know is a tremendous barrier to women seeking care. For example, the U.S. Departments of Justice and the Labor aggressively pursue cases of alleged discrimination, something else that’s important for everyone to know. Since 2010, we’ve opened over 40 HIV discrimination cases, and recently we settled four cases in just five weeks this year.

In addition to progress the Obama Administration that we are making on a policy level, today’s EMPOWERMENT launch by Alicia attests to the fact that all, and I mean all of us have the responsibility and the ability to help end the disease. Everyone in this room, everyone who’s watching through the live stream, everyone around the globe can play a role. That’s why Alicia’s campaign is so exciting to us.

Alicia knows what we all should know! And that is the enormous power women have to turn this epidemic around. It was no accident then, that in in this year’s State of the Union, President Obama spoke of reaching an AIDS-free generation in the same sentence that he talked about empowering women. We can turn the corner on the AIDS epidemic, but we will only succeed if we embrace the power that we already have.

In closing, I’d like to share a story about a woman who has done just that, who I understand is here with us today. Last December, the White House hosted a World AIDS Day panel. One of our panelists was Stephanie Brown, a courageous young leader and activist who was diagnosed with HIV when she was 19. Today, she advocates for greater awareness of HIV/AIDS, speaking at community centers and to audiences near her hometown of Fayetteville. She also hopes to start an HIV advocacy group.

Stephanie has used her condition to motivate and empower both herself and others to make a difference. She said, and I quote, “I’m here for a purpose—to help others—and I’m not going anywhere until I’m done.” Well, thank goodness for Stephanie.

She should be an inspiration to us all of us. So this can be the beginning of the end of AIDS—and when I think about Stephanie, when I look around this room and I see so many amazing leaders and advocates and people that care about this issue as we do, I know that if we can change a room, we can change the District. If we can change the District, we can change the United States. And if we can change the United States, my goodness, we can change the world.

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1. Disrupting

Khan says that his aim is to build even better tools to facilitate deeper learning that is self-directed by students, not teachers, whenever they want. Hence, “turning school upside down.”

My own initiative, Globaloria–the first of its kind social learning network and curriculum to teach students design, engineering, programming, and global citizenship skills–also disrupts education, in some of the world’s most challenged communities. We deliver opportunity to these communities by facilitating a new learning culture using innovative techniques necessary to build blended learning that integrates onsite and online resources and daily tech-based activities. Such learning innovation helps students in those communities build their own self-confidence and expertise to position them to drive productive lives and leap into projects and careers in some of the fastest-growing sectors of the digital economy. Khan and I similarly understand it will require delivery—of technology, education, and opportunity–to change the world of learning for billions of people. And as The Art and Science of Delivery suggests, we must document these disruptive efforts, measure results, look at what works and what can scale, and replicate, replicate, replicate.

2. Blended Learning: The Promise and the Proof

But problems of access are not universal around the world, so one might ask how blended learning can offer a solution for disparate populations. I believe that blended learning must be context-sensitive and localized.  The focus cannot be “all things to all people,” but how flexible and broad really is the idea of designing networked learning environments for social change? Here are two examples from very different poor and technologically-challenged communities in the United States: one Eastern and rural, with a predominantly white population; the other a Southwestern inner-city with a predominantly Hispanic population. Each community has different obstacles, yet the outcomes have been remarkably similar. And while these communities are in the United States, they are quite similar to many places in the developing world.

3. Connecting Rural Students and Teachers to Each Other and the World

The median household income in McDowell County, West Virginia is $22,154. Thirty-two percent of all residents live below the poverty line, which is nearly double the statewide average. In global society, poverty creates the problem of isolation. “Most of our students don’t have Internet at home, and those who do usually deal with dial-up,” said McDowell County educator Ingrida Barker in a 2008 video interview.

Barker and her colleagues were among the first West Virginians to using Globaloria. Through visionary partnerships with Internet providers, social entrepreneurs, and government, Globaloria has since scaled to reach over 30 schools and thousands of teachers and educators in the state. As the network grew, the learning became more deep, and students felt more empowered.  Barker said, “This course helps kids build the skills necessary for competition in a global workplace, collaboration, working globally and communicating with their peers, not only across the state, but across the world.” Educators were motivated, too. Barker, who began Globaloria as a middle school social studies teacher and digital teaching novice, underwent substantive professional development–mapping new approaches to teaching and using the social network to collaborate with teachers in distant parts of West Virginia and learn new skills from experts from New York. Today, Barker is a supervising assistant principal of curriculum and instruction in a McDowell County high school.

McDowell County has a long road to travel to overcome the intertwined challenges of poverty. Yet, thousands of students have already benefited from educators’ courageous investment in cutting-edge curricula like Globaloria—which research links to improved scores on math and science assessments, valuable programming skills, and preparation for college and career success in the global economy.

4. Transforming a Community from the Ground Up in East Austin, Texas

Education entrepreneur Dr. Juan Sanchez, a nationally recognized leader and founder of the nation’s fourth largest Hispanic-led nonprofit, Southwest Key, identified Globaloria as a way to build STEM knowledge and college readiness among students at East Austin College Prep Academy (EAPrep), a charter school for underserved population of students, who are eighty percent Latino, twenty percent African American, and forty percent English language learners.

Launched as a core course for all grades in 2009, Globaloria has helped those students cope with some of the challenges facing their community, as they are tasked to conceive of and create games about the social, economic, and environmental issues they see around them as a means of developing valuable STEM knowledge.  In a video interview Dr. Sanchez explains: “We’re using Globaloria as a way to address math, computer science and English. It also addresses the issue of community service and connecting our school to the community these people live in, and it tries to address the problems that these people confront every day.”

Preliminary research has shown improvements in students’ technological capabilities—particularly in problem-solving and self-expression with digital media. The results also demonstrate improved performance on standardized assessments in math and critical thinking objectives, and they evidence increased motivation for learning technology skills. Students also show a particular interest in pursuing the kind of STEM careers that have the potential to lift themselves and East Austin out of poverty.

5. Stepping into Opportunity through Increased Computational Abilities

What the Globaloria experiences in McDowell County and East Austin make clear is that kids from any low-income background—urban or rural—are willing and able to acquire the most sophisticated computational skills and analytical capabilities they need for constructing their own economic future. What holds them back is the lack of opportunities to learn in new and relevant ways, and to master the skills and confidence to be the next generation of engineers and producers–not just consumers. Since the economic future of our nation as a whole depends upon these children, it is up to us, education leaders and social entrepreneurs, to support the bold, innovative efforts needed to deliver this rich intellectual diet to all of the world’s zip codes and to our rural, urban locations, as well as charter and public schools, after school programs, and home schools.

6. How to Scale for Global Change

How to do so? Scaling to overcome the challenges of delivery requires us to work together to grow, localize, and sustain innovations like Khan Academy and Globaloria, especially when we spread blended learning to the “have-nots.” We must empower kids everywhere with blended learning networks. Let’s turn learning (not schools) upside down, to disrupt the whole ecosystem where learning lives.

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In 2001, I co-founded a social enterprise in Cambodia called Digital Divide Data (DDD).  Shortly after, we hired a young man named Kunthy Kann.  Kunthy, the son of a very poor family, grew up in a rural area of Cambodia.  Through his hard work and perseverance, he graduated from high school and enrolled in a computer-skills training program.  He showed potential doing basic work with data, so we gave him additional responsibilities and helped him get a bachelors degree. In 2003, he participated in our company’s management training program where his final project was to write a business plan for a new office.  When he finished, he opened a DDD office in Battambang, Cambodia’s second-largest city.  Kunthy rapidly grew the business to become a profitable operation employing 100 people.  Later, he came back to Phnom Penh to lead operations, managing a 300-person staff in the largest technology-related business in the country.

For people living in poverty, any kind of paid work enables them buy food for their families, pay for housing and school fees, and access medical care.  And work creates an essential sense of dignity that comes with self-sufficiency. I’m tremendously excited by the emerging opportunities for digital jobs that can be done almost anywhere, with tools as minimal as a basic mobile phone.  And the fact that these new digital jobs allow very poor people ways to earn additional income has the potential to change lives. However, if paid work is only a short-term project, people may likely end up in the same situation in which they started.  In addition, ongoing work that does not provide opportunities to build knowledge and skills does little to unleash individuals’ long-term success and the opportunity for economic growth in the community.

Last week at the World Economic Forum in Cape Town, South Africa, the Rockefeller Foundation announced a new initiative to create digital jobs in Africa with an extraordinary commitment of nearly $100 million.  This is unprecedented news, due to the 21^st-century employment opportunities that will be created in countries where technology is a critical lever for development, as well as the set of private and public sector partners the Rockefeller Foundation has engaged to ensure this contribution will have a transformative impact.

Digital Divide Data is proud to be a partner in this initiative. With the support of the Rockefeller Foundation, we established a Business Process Outsourcing operation in Nairobi, Kenya in 2011.  Using a model called Impact Sourcing, we currently employ 250 staff, including over 200 youth from slum areas.  The Rockefeller Foundation has committed to scaling the Impact Sourcing model.  You can see more about how we and our colleagues are creating value for clients and changing lives in a short video we produced with the support of the Sundance Institute.

DDD uses a model of Impact Sourcing that supports the personal development of every employee.  While working at DDD, data management operators like Kunthy have the opportunity to study and earn a degree. Helping our staff to build professional skills enables our business to do value-added work for clients like Ancestry.com and Stanford University.  And, this investment in human potential has a transformative effect, not only for individuals, but also for their families and communities. Our employees start to plan for professional careers and also can afford to send their siblings and their children to school. Because technology skills are transferrable and in demand, this ripple effect not only contributes to DDD’s success as a business, it is also a critical investment in the local economy.

I believe that our model is only one way to empower people on a path out of poverty through digital work.  Indeed, we’re continually working to strengthen our approach. However, I’m convinced that using digital work as a means to bring people out of poverty is not just about providing work opportunities for the poor.  There must also be a path for individual development—and real demonstrable outcomes—if we are serious about ending poverty.

Recently, Kunthy was recruited to become the CEO of a rice mill.  We miss him, but we’re proud of his success—and even prouder that DDD is the kind of organization that is developing this kind of talent. We hope our peers and colleagues will use the opportunity of digital work to create more leaders like Kunthy in Cambodia and around the world.

The post Giving Work is Not Enough to Bring People out of Poverty appeared first on Skoll World Forum.

Without significant assistance, Brian’s chances at higher education and a career leveraging his substantial intellect were almost as remote as those of Lou Her, a young woman who lives on the other side of the planet, just outside of the capital of Laos.  Lou also has significant drive and passion, but her circumstances worked against her ability to access work and higher education. She is one of 12 siblings born to a poor family, and contracted the polio virus at a young age, causing her legs to be permanently disabled. After graduating from public high school, her prospects seemed limited; she helped her mother weave silk while her siblings worked on farms or in factories, earning a paltry income. However, Lou is now building valuable job skills and is earning an Associates Degree in finance and accounting. She can support herself and lives in a shared apartment in the city. She plans to become an accountant after graduation.

Happily, we live in a world where Lou in Laos can reach her potential while helping Brian in New Jersey to reach his. Where technology and social enterprise can be catalysts. And everyone really can win.

Brian now gets most of his books through Bookshare ® the world’s largest library of accessible ebooks for people with print disabilities, such as visual impairments, physical disabilities and severe learning disabilities that affect reading.  Highlighted text with audio on an iPod Touch is great for Brian, while other students use enlarged font on a PC or even electronic braille. Bookshare books have specially formatted digital text that allows all of these uses, and, since its beginning in 2002, they have been created through scanning by individuals, typically by the users themselves.

But six years ago, Benetech had a dilemma. We had to scale Bookshare to provide hundreds of thousands of books.  Through funding from the Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs, we were charged to provide free services, and necessary materials, to qualified US students like Brian.  As a social enterprise, Benetech sought not only the best value for the money, but an approach that could maximize benefit. In short, we wanted to setup a high quality, low cost, flexible social supply chain.

The first step was finding like-minded partners, such as Digital Divide Data (DDD), who were busy pioneering the field of Impact Sourcing.  This approach pairs paid work needed by organizations with outsourcers who pay a living wage to people in need. Such programs often provide both needed financial income for families, as well as education assistance and flexible hours for the workers.  When the work being outsourced is information oriented, there’s another benefit: these employees have an entrée into the information economy.  For example, people with disabilities employed by one of our impact sourcing partners in India have gone on to work at major Indian IT firms after their tenure.

Through DDD’s offices in Laos, and other partners in the US, India, and Kenya, we found we were able to massively scale our longtime volunteer efforts, where people compare book scans to the resulting digital text and correct the scanning errors, to ensure our student users have the same textbooks as their peers.  We applied best practices from corporate supply chain management, including quarterly vendor scorecards. It was important to us to make sure that quality, timeliness, and cost-effectiveness were all reviewed regularly with our partners, in an open manner.  And these scorecards go two ways – they rate us every quarter as well, to insure we’re keeping up our end of this social and operational bargain.

Today, Bookshare serves over a quarter million users in 40 countries, and has 190,000 books in its collection, growing at about 3000 books per month.  While many publishers now contribute to the collection by generously sharing their new digital materials with us, a majority of our critical textbooks, for K12 and higher education students, are still processed through this social supply chain.  That means each dollar of funding in this area helps multiple people at once.  Continuous quality improvements and reduced cost mean we can serve more students better, while we also seek new technology solutions that will completely change the landscape in the future.

Then we can hear about more success stories like Brian, who is near the top of his class in high school and is now a well-known blogger on Assistive Technology.

This approach to social enterprise has so many benefits; it’s difficult to count the bottom lines.  The bottom line in this story is: Don’t just look at what you do to deliver your mission, look at how you do it.  See more about how DDD is providing services to Bookshare here.

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Business Process Outsourcing, often referred to by the acronym BPO, means contracting business functions to third-party service providers.  While call centers are the most visible part of this industry, BPO also includes many types of back office processing.  This industry largely operates invisibly for consumers in North America and Europe.  However, the sector employs several million people worldwide primarily in India, the Philippines and China. In India, the industry has grown from 1.2% of GDP 1998 to 6.4% in 2011–and has created more than 700,000 jobs in the Philippines.

While some make the case that outsourcing is just another industry chasing lower wage rates, I’ve seen something different.  In 2001, a former McKinsey consultant named Jeremy Hockenstein posed the challenge to me of creating BPO jobs for the poor in the developing world.  From my perspective at the time, working at a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, the idea that the BPO industry would employ poor people in a country like Cambodia seemed crazy.   However, Jeremy was struck by the talented skilled youth in this very poor nation, a country still recovering from genocide—and the challenge they faced finding work. He proposed to play jiu-jitsu with the forces of global business and technology, and he started a BPO firm in Phnom Penh, which he called Digital Divide Data.  The venture capital firm I worked for, Global Catalyst Partners, contributed $25,000 in philanthropic seed capital.  Two Cambodians learned how to manage the business from a firm in Delhi.  Jeremy purchased computers and rented a storefront on a dirt road in Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh.

In 2003, I lived above the storefront Jeremy rented in Phnom Penh and volunteered for DDD, which by that time had grown to employ 60 youth.  I was privileged to witness some of tremendous impact the new business had on its employees. I worked with an 18 year-old woman named Chantheng Heng, who came to work at DDD from a very poor family.  Chantheng was capable and had an affinity for computers; we soon promoted her from data entry work to managing an IT helpdesk. While she was working, DDD gave her a scholarship to attend university, where she studied computer science.  After graduation, she obtained a job advising Cambodia’s Ministry of Education on a computer education curriculum for the nation’s high schools.  She then received a scholarship for a Master’s degree in comparative economic development in Europe.

As I learned from the example of Chantheng and many others, work in the BPO industry has the potential to empower people to bring themselves out of poverty.  DDD pioneered a concept now called Impact Sourcing. Impact Sourcing means delivering BPO services while providing work and opportunity for some of the world’s poorest citizens.  It is a segment of the BPO industry that benefits disadvantaged individuals in low employment areas.  Impact Sourcing looks beyond the common source of supply for traditional outsourcing to provide higher-income employment, skill development, and access to new income opportunities to individuals who might not otherwise be employed in this sector.  You can see how Impact Sourcing works to deliver value to clients and create impact here, in a new video supported by the Sundance Institute.

Today, more than two dozen BPO firms in countries as diverse as Bangladesh, Ghana, Haiti, Kenya and Pakistan deliver services to clients performed by individuals from very disadvantaged backgrounds.  In countries where the BPO industry is thriving, including India, the Philippines and the U.S.A., social entrepreneurs are bringing this model to small towns and villages in rural and remote areas to create employment and opportunity.

Chantheng is now working in Cambodia to improve communications technologies to support development.  As she says, “I believe women must have their own skills and a better education to get the career they want.” Organizations like DDD can make this possible in places where access to education and jobs in the IT industry is quite limited for disadvantaged women.  But Chantheng is not an isolated example of the success of Impact Sourcing.

While not everyone who has worked at DDD has followed Chantheng’s path, more than 500 young people have worked at DDD  for four or more years,, developing 21^st century skills while obtaining university degree.  They’ve gone on to professional jobs in which they earn over five times more than the average high school graduate in Cambodia. A similar thing is happening at an Impact Sourcing service provider called Invincible Outsourcing in South Africa.  Another social business called Anudip operates a variant of the model reaching youth from very poor families in the Calcutta area of India—a region of the country most BPO operators have avoided.  There are even BPOs like this in the U.S.A.  For example, Accenture helped a Native American tribe in Oregon start Cayuse Technologies.  Still, in most cases, BPOs operate without this social mission.

Inevitably, the BPO industry will chase lower wages.  However, the nature of BPO work means that these companies will only thrive if they are recruiting and developing talent.  This is the potential–and the genius–of Impact Sourcing.

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In a world where there are more mobile phones than people, with almost unlimited global connectivity and where transactions occur in seconds not days, it seems incongruous that one out of eight children in sub-Saharan Africa die before reaching their fifth birthday. This is especially true, because the means of saving these lives are often much simpler, cheaper, and easier to implement than mobile phone technology.

It is in part, because of this simplicity that such tremendous gains have been achieved against malaria and other diseases.

Over the past four years, enough Long Lasting Insecticidal Nets  have been delivered to protect almost 1 billion people, along with enough diagnostic testing and treatments to reach hundreds of millions. Over the three year lifespan of a Long Lasting Insecticidal Net, a child is protected from malaria for less than half a cent a night. This is just half the cost that it was five years ago and prices continue to decline.

As a result of this scale up, progress has been astonishing.  Now, globally, there are about half as many deaths as there were a decade ago,  and a dozen African countries have cut their malaria death rates by more than 50 percent. Interestingly, the death rates of children from all causes have gone down faster, often when the only intervention has been an insecticidal bednet or a malaria treatment. This shows a link between malaria and outcomes for children with other childhood diseases.

In addition to gains measured in the form of lives saved, we know that the investment in malaria is paying off in the form of economic stability. A recent study conducted by McKinsey and Co. indicated that for every $1 dollar invested in malaria commodities, a $40 return can be expected in the form of productivity from healthier, better educated more productive working communities. As economies in endemic countries continue to grow (average growth rate of 6% in sub-Saharan Africa), endemic countries are better positioned to contribute a greater share of their own resources. As this trajectory continues, we are moving to a model whereby traditional donor aid can steadily decrease, with the difference being covered by the declining need, increased efficiencies, and increased endemic country support.

I’ve seen the results first hand, with burgeoning economies in countries like Rwanda leading to increased domestic investment in health.

There are now less than 1,000 days to the end of December 2015; the target date for achieving the internationally recognized Millennium Development Goals. Between now and then we have to collectively save the lives of nearly 4½ million children under the age of 5 to achieve the fourth of these goals which aimed to reduce the numbers of children dying each year from the 12 million in 1990 to 4 million or less by December 31^st, 2015.

To achieve the goal we have to achieve the UN Secretary-General’s target of near zero deaths from malaria by the same date. If we do that, not only will 750 thousand children’s lives be saved, but it will be one of the best examples we have of Foreign Aid in action and provide an example for the other major child killers: pneumonia and diarrhea. Indeed, one of the best interventions we can do, in addition to replacing worn out nets, is to ensure that all fevers are tested for malaria. WHO recommends this and the technology is available through rapid diagnostic test kits, which cost very little and there is only a 15 minute waiting time to know the result. In malaria endemic countries, this will show that not all fevers are caused by malaria (much less than half) and the appropriate treatment can be given for whatever may be causing the fever. That has been shown to improve correct diagnosis and reduce deaths of young children.

Much of the malaria funding is available from the Global Fund against HIV, Tuberculosis and Malaria, as well as from USAID/President’s Malaria Initiative, UK Aid and other partners. There is, nevertheless, an estimate of a gap of $3.8 billion to cover the full replacement of worn out nets, diagnostic tests and treatment for the next 2½ years. We know that over time, this need will decline, and alternative resources will increase, but at the moment, responding to this shortfall is of the greatest urgency.  Every minute that goes by another child dies of malaria, and that is one minute and one child too many. Every day, nets are expiring, leaving children at risk if they are not replaced. The clock is ticking, we cannot afford to wait.

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This week, 200 of the world’s most influential global health leaders will gather in the island city of Abu Dhabi to talk about a big, bold goal: ending polio. The devastating illness has dwindled almost entirely in the last 25 years, but children in a few pockets of the world are still becoming infected with polio despite decades of work to prevent it. The global health community is tantalizingly close to wiping out this scourge, and the Global Vaccine Summit promises a chance to put even more muscle into the global eradication campaign.

Cases of polio are lower than ever in recorded history, and the last one is in sight. To help banish this disabling disease, PATH is working hard to bring more affordable vaccines against polio to the people most in need of protection. We’re identifying new, low-cost sources for vaccine production to ensure all children can be immunized, and we’re evaluating how best to transition global immunization efforts from the mainstay oral polio vaccine to inactivated polio vaccine to prevent disease reemergence.

An enterprising approach

Those of us who work in global health know how critical it is to set a bold vision and work toward achieving health milestones that can change the course of the world. We also know what it takes to achieve such a vision. At PATH, we call it innovation enterprise—innovating across multiple platforms, using a whole toolkit of health interventions.

Partnerships between the public, nonprofit, and private sectors—such as those that will emerge from this week’s summit—can accelerate progress and turn ideas into powerhouse solutions. Groundbreaking technologies and approaches can overcome roadblocks to immunization. Scientific expertise, advocacy efforts, and a focus within countries on their specific needs can ensure that vaccines are accessible, affordable, and driven by public health goals. Entrepreneurism and an approach rooted in evidence can help us develop and facilitate new ideas and technologies. After 35 years of driving global health solutions, all of this is in our DNA.

Solutions that scale

Amid this vital global focus on polio eradication, we’re continuing to drive advances in other vaccines—for pneumonia, diarrheal diseases, and malaria—and partnering with the GAVI Alliance and others to make sure all children have a chance at healthy futures.

In the last two years, for example, we’ve seen meningococcal A meningitis epidemics virtually disappear in parts of sub-Saharan Africa as a new vaccine, MenAfriVac™, rolls out across two dozen meningitis belt countries. In Burkina Faso, epidemic meningitis A has been eliminated because of the vaccine, and other countries are poised for the same success.

The story is one of my favorite examples of how technical know-how, cross-sector collaboration—between PATH, the World Health Organization, and the Serum Institute of India—and buy-in from African countries fatigued by a century of deadly epidemics, allowed the partnership to deliver a new solution directly to the people who need it, at a price they can afford.

As I join fellow health leaders in Abu Dhabi this week, I tip my hat to the many people who are strategizing how to stamp out polio once and for all. PATH works on all facets of achieving goals as audacious as this, and we know it’s possible—with the right combination of tools, talent, and collaboration. This week also marks World Malaria Day and World Immunization Week—a reminder that we have our work cut out for us not just to eradicate polio but to protect people all over the world from what we know are preventable diseases. These are all big, bold visions—and ones I deeply believe we can achieve.

The post Achieving a Bold Vision for Global Health: Yes, it’s Possible appeared first on Skoll World Forum.

Co-authored with Sanjay Mehrotra, co-founder, president and chief executive officer of SanDisk Corporation–a global leader in flash memory storage solutions, and a Fortune 500 and S&P 500 company. Prior to becoming president and CEO in 2011, Mehrotra served as SanDisk’s president and chief operating officer starting in 2006. Mehrotra is also a Founding Partner of US2020.

Thirty years ago this spring, A Nation at Risk declared that the United States had been “committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament” by failing to maintain an education system that positioned citizens for success in a global economy. The economic, technological, and civic challenges of the 21^st century are no less daunting than those we faced in 1983 – yet, each year, we neglect to arm tens of thousands of young people with the critical skills and experiences in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) that they will need to compete.

What will it take to build a vibrant 21st century STEM workforce? It will take a more expansive definition of who teaches STEM, and when and how they teach it. It will take creating new spaces in which young people learn more about the wide range of exciting STEM careers, and about what they must do to access those careers. And it will take a concerted effort to connect today’s successful scientists and engineers with girls, low-income students, and students from African American, Latino, and Native American communities – all of whom are massively underrepresented in STEM fields.

As the leaders of a fast-growing, Silicon Valley-based technology company,SanDisk, and a fast-growing Boston-based education non-profit, Citizen Schools, we are excited to join at the White House today with executives from Cisco, Cognizant, and other technology companies and education non-profits to launch US2020 – a bold effort to mobilize one million STEM mentors annually by the year 2020.  US2020 will rely on leadership from today’s technology and engineering companies to build the talent base for the future, while providing our current employees with a professional development opportunity in a structured mentoring program serving children in kindergarten through graduate school.

Our goal: to mobilize 1 million STEM mentors annually by the year 2020, creating millions of moments of discovery – those eureka moments when children launching rockets, building robots, or looking through microscopes open their mouths and eyes wide and open the door to a brighter future.

Young people – like all humans – learn primarily through experience and relationships.  If your mother or your uncle is an engineer or a scientist, you are likely to grow up conducting experiments in the basement or launching rockets in the back yard.  For children with STEM mentors in their families and neighborhoods, even a basic childhood activity like flying a kite becomes a lesson in aerodynamics, and a window into the wonders of the universe and future careers.

But what if you don’t know any engineers?  What if you don’t know what chemists or scientists do?

Data from ACT testing shows that only one-third of eighth graders are interested in the exciting and fast-growing STEM careers of the future.  Meanwhile a survey by the Lemelson Center at MIT survey found that the majority of teenagers may be discouraged from pursuing STEM careers because they do not know anyone who works in these fields and they do not understand what people in these fields do.

US2020 will build a bigger and better pipeline of STEM workers by focusing on a three-part strategy.

SUPPLY – US2020 will build the supply of mentors through CEO commitments, corporate volunteer engagement programs, and a bottom-up recruitment effort among technology professionals. We aim to change the culture of STEM workplaces, making mentoring the new normal just as pro-bono work is common in the legal profession.

DEMAND – US2020 will strengthen education partners who engage STEM mentors in and out of schools by creating a community of practice with shared data, shared accountability, and shared best and worst practices.  In the long-run, as the supply side grows, we will create sustainable pipelines of STEM volunteers for our education partners.

MARKETPLACE & MOBILIZERS – US2020 will connect STEM mentors and education partners through a web-based marketplace – a match.com for STEM volunteers – as well as the creation of community-based and school-based mobilizers who make volunteering effective and rewarding for all involved.

There are important national efforts underway to recruit and support new science and math teachers in our schools and clearly these efforts are vital to building a vibrant STEM workforce.  But the reality is that children spend 80 percent of their waking hours out of school.  The great opportunity gap growing between children of affluent families and their lower-income counterparts has more to do with informal learning experiences in the summer, on weekends, and in the afternoon or evening.  During these times some children are engaged in activities like scouts, or robotics camp, or other structured learning opportunities that provide eye-opening learning experiences, but others are left out.

Citizen Schools currently partners with schools in 15 communities across the country to expand the learning day for all children by three hours every day, filling this time with more academic practice and with hands-on apprenticeships led by volunteers from the community – many of them professionals from firms such as SanDisk, Cisco, Cognizant, and Google.  Students learn coding and build video games from scratch, using the algebraic concepts they are starting to learn in school.  Or they launch rockets in the backyard of their school and conduct video conferences with real astronauts at NASA – a once in a lifetime experience.  The results: participating students graduate from high school at a rate 20 percent higher than their peers, are twice as likely to be interested in a STEM career, and close math proficiency gaps with their wealthier counter-parts.

At SanDisk we have more than 4,700 employees, many of whom are eager to make a difference in their communities and in the underserved communities that are our neighbors.  As we enter our 25^th anniversary year, we want to offer all of our employees high-quality options for contributing to the community.  Specifically, as founding members of US2020 we are excited to pledge that at minimum we will mobilize 20 percent of our workforce to deliver 20+ hours of high-quality STEM mentoring by the year 2020.

The demand for professionals in STEM fields like medical technology, computer science, and chemical engineering is large, with a projected three million new job openings by 2018, and a projected gap between openings and qualified applicants of almost two million.  The U.S. currently ranks 23^rd in science performance in international tests, and 31^st in math.  This must change.

Inspiring students through hands-on STEM projects is a key first step to building the STEM workforce – and the informed citizenry – that we need.  It is a social justice and national competitiveness priority.  US2020 aims to stimulate a movement – a cultural shift – that generates millions of moments of discovery for millions of underserved students.  We hope you will join with us in bringing this vision to life.

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In However Long the Night, Aimee Molloy tells the unlikely and inspiring story of Molly Melching, an American woman whose experience as an exchange student in Senegal led her to found Tostan and dedicate almost four decades of her life to the girls and women of Africa. This moving biography details Melching’s beginnings at the University of Dakar and follows her journey through of 40 years of work throughout West and East Africa, where she became a social entrepreneur and one of humanity’s strongest voices for the rights of girls and women.

Below is an exclusive excerpt of the book. Click here to learn more.

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Author’s Note

I first met Molly Melching in Philadelphia in the summer of 2011. She was in town for a week to attend a conference at the University of Pennsylvania, and we’d planned to have dinner to discuss her work with Tostan, the NGO she’d started in Senegal, West Africa, where she’d been living since 1974. By this time, Molly’s work had received considerable recognition. Forbes magazine had recently named her one of the most powerful women in the field of women’s rights, and Newsweek had included her as one of the “150 Women Who Shake the World.” A year earlier, in 2010, she was presented with one of the prestigious Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship, and in 2007 Tostan was awarded the Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize—the largest humanitarian award in the world—for empowering African communities and also in recognition for doing what no other organization before it has done: help bring about the widespread abandonment of the deeply entrenched and harmful tradition of female genital cutting (FGC).

The issue of female genital cutting is not one that many people are necessarily eager to discuss. In Western cultures, the practice is most commonly referred to as “female genital mutilation” and is generally viewed as a heinous act of cruelty born from gender inequality that girls are forced to endure. But the issue is far more complex than this, and to consider it from the point of view of the millions of women in twenty-eight nations where the custom is practiced is to understand a far different reality. The truth is, women who adhere to the tradition do not view it as an act of cruelty, but rather as a necessary act of love. Cutting one’s daughter is critical to her future, ensuring that she will be a respected member of her community and preparing her to find a good husband in cultures where marriage is essential for a girl’s economic security and social acceptance. To not cut one’s daughter would be unthinkable—setting her up for a lifetime of rejection and social isolation.

With a background in writing about issues surrounding human rights violations and the disadvantages of women in developing nations, I was eager to learn about Tostan’s work. But I admit that it was not the issue of FGC that drew me to this story. It was Molly herself. How had a woman like her—a sixty-two-year-old single mother from Illinois—managed to devise a strategy to possibly bring an end to a highly entrenched and revered custom that has existed for nearly two thousand years?

It doesn’t take long after meeting Molly to understand that not only is she a gifted intellectual, but she is also extremely likable and funny. Our first dinner, meant to last an hour or two, easily stretched to five. Though she is, at times, somewhat reluctant to speak about herself—her ordinary beginnings in Illinois, her personal life—she comes alive when she speaks about her work. We’d barely finished eating before Molly had pushed aside our dishes to draw for me a rough map of Senegal and guide me through Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations outlining the extraordinary movement under way in Senegal.

It began in 1997 when a group of thirty-five women from one small village became the first to stand up and publicly declare an end to the practice of FGC in their community. Since then, nearly five thousand additional communities have followed suit. In each case, village representatives—including women, men, and adolescents—have bravely stood up before their extended families, government representatives, and journalists from around the world to announce they would no longer cut their girls. “We are now on the verge of something unique and historic—total abandonment of FGC in Senegal,” Molly said to me at this first meeting. “I truly believe we are at a point where, in a few years, Senegal may be able to say that it is a country free from this practice that is violating the human rights of women and girls, causing so much suffering and, at times, even death.”

From small, local organizations to large international NGOs, there have been considerable efforts to bring about an end to the practice. While many have had success in increasing international awareness around the issue, none have come close to having Tostan’s success at the grassroots level. Currently, Tostan’s approach to FGC abandonment—implementing a human-rights-based education program taught in national languages, disseminating information, and holding public declarations to announce an end to the practice—has been integrated into the strategies of numerous organizations, including ten UN agencies and several African governments. The World Health Organization, UNICEF, UNES CO, USAID, and others have recognized Tostan for its ability to bring about social change and mobilize communities to improve their own lives, and in Senegal the government has officially adopted a national action plan that calls for using the human rights approach pioneered by Tostan to totally end FGC by 2015.

How has this relatively small organization achieved such results?

“I have learned many lessons during the decades I’ve been doing this work,” Molly says, “but none as important as this: if you want to help empower people to positively transform their communities and their lives, human rights education is key. For many years, our education program did not include discussions on basic human rights. We were successful, but it was only after introducing human rights learning that an amazing thing happened. I can’t explain it. It felt like magic.”

Despite the recognition she has personally received for Tostan’s accomplishments, Molly is loath to take the credit, and as our dinner came to an end and we prepared to say good-bye, she grew serious. “It’s really the women themselves who should be telling you this story. The only way to truly understand what is happening, to experience the magic, you have to come to Senegal.”

Excerpted from HOWEVER LONG THE NIGHT: Molly Melching’s Journey to Help Millions of African Women and Girls Triumph by Aimee Molloy. Copyright © 2013 by Aimee Molloy and Molly Melching. Used with permission of HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers.

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“This week is such a whirl of ideas and inspiration that it’s hard to put one’s arms around the whole Forum. I’ll remind you of some of the things you’ve said over the last three or four days…” Stephan Chambers

The post Highlights from Skoll World Forum 2013 appeared first on Skoll World Forum.