In the meeting Scott shared with the the Millennium Development Goals that were established by 187 nations during the United Nations Convention of 2000.  The goals are as follows:

• Eradicate extreme poverty & hunger
• Achieve universal primary education
• Promote gender equality & empower women
• Reduce child mortality
• Improve maternal health
• Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria & other diseases
• Ensure environmental sustainability
• Develop a global partnership for development

Even though these goals have been in existence for about 9 years, I have never heard of them.  However, I am passionate about these goals and hope to do my little part to achieve them with social media.

• Growing tomatoes to be an anti-viral drug delivery agent.
• Developing an inexpensive device to diagnose malaria.
• Using lasers to enhance immune response from vaccines.
• Infecting malaria-causing mosquitoes with a fungus that inhibits their ability to smell humans.

These grants are given to encourage scientists to pursue bold ideas that could result in breakthroughs related to the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases, such as HIV, malaria, tuberculosis, pneumonia and diarrheal diseases.

The Gates Foundation also announced that it will be spending $73 million to help small farmers in impoverished countries.  This money will be used for a variety of different projects, such as developing drought-tolerant corn, implementing more efficient irrigation, and helping women develop agricultural training programs.

I wonder if God blessed Bill Gates to become one of the world’s richest people because he knew how much good Bill and Melinda would do with the money.

On average, about  16,000 children die from hunger-related causes each day, or one child every five seconds.  About 5.8 million children die from hunger-related issues each year, about double the total population of the state of Utah.  (Source: Black, Robert, Morris, Saul, & Jennifer Bryce. “Where and Why Are 10 Million Children Dying Every Year?” The Lancet 361:2226-2234. 2003.)

If all of the hungry people in the world were combined, the total number would be large enough to be the world’s third-largest country, and more than three times the population of the entire United States.

2007 World Population Rankings

(Source: The Orphan Foundation and State of Food Insecurity in the World, 2008 FAO.”Food Security Statistics”)

Hunger is essentially the most extreme form of poverty, a state in which individuals or families cannot afford to meet their most basic need for food (Source: Are We On Track To End Hunger? Hunger Report 2004. Bread for the World Institute. 2004.)  Hunger manifests itself in many ways other than starvation and famine. Most poor people who battle hunger deal with chronic undernourishment and vitamin or mineral deficiencies, which result in stunted growth, weakness and heightened susceptibility to illness. (Source: Are We On Track To End Hunger? Hunger Report 2004. Bread for the World Institute. 2004.)  Undernourishment negatively affects people’s health, productivity, sense of hope and overall well-being. A lack of food can stunt growth, slow thinking, sap energy, hinder fetal development and contribute to mental retardation.  (Source: State of Food Insecurity in the World, 2008 FAO.”Food Security Statistics”. ) Poor nutrition and calorie deficiencies cause nearly one in three people to die prematurely or have disabilities (Source: “Malnutrition”. World Health Organization.)

Here a a few good websites that are working to fight world hunger:

Action Against Hunger - an international network committed to saving the lives of malnourished children and their families while ensuring access to safe water and sustainable solutions to hunger.

Bread for the World – a non-profit organization focusing on fundraising and lobbying for hunger-related issues.

TheHungerSite.com – by using certain websites, money will be donated to charities that combat hunger issues.

WorldVision – allows you to sponsor a child.

Yesterday Crystal and I purchased the domain name Hunger.net. We would love your thoughts about how we can use digital media and Hunger.net to help solve world hunger.  For example, microlending websites such as Kiva, empower us to help entrepreneurs better provide for their famlies.  Microlending is one of the most effective, sustainable solutions to poverty.  Child sponsorship websites such as WorldVision, help connect great people with and sponsor specific children.  What other ideas do you have about how Hunger.net can make a large-scale difference to help solve world hunger?

Did you know that the official name for this statue is not “The Statue of Liberty?”  It was instead named “Liberty Enlightening the World.”  

In 1883 Emma Lazarus penned the famous words, which are now engraved at the base of this statue: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”

Millions of people in the world today who are still victims of slavery, poverty, abandonment, disease, and repressive governments. I need to not sit idly in my land of liberty and forget the “tired…poor…huddled masses yearning to breathe free” just as my ancestors did.  I am enjoying the gift of liberty because of my ancestors, and because I have been given the gift of liberty, I need to use that gift to help liberate others.

These famous words of Emma Lazarus are also just as appropriate to Americans today as they were to the immigrants from generations past who cheered as they entered New York Harbor and saw this statue welcoming them to America. These immigrants came to America seeking liberty.  Today, the immigrants’ ancestors are also seeking liberty…liberty from many repressive elements of our generation, such as addiction, debt, sin and abuse.

May each of us shake off the shackles which bind us, seize hold of our amazing gift of liberty, and help others to do the same.

Made to Stick talks about a research study that compared the effectiveness of donation requests using different approaches.  One donation request provided statistics about the masses of people in one region of Africa facing hunger and poverty.  The second letter simply told the story of one needy girl from that region and said that all money donated would go to her.   Obviously, the second letter was tremendously more successful.  

People are much more willing to help if they know of a specific need, instead of just helping a cause.  In other words, when people learn of a huge problem they often feel that “someone should do something”, but they feel the problem is too large for them to solve themselves, so they do nothing.  It’s kind of like a room that is so messy you don’t know where to start, so you go do something else.  However, when we connect with a specific person with a specific need, we are much more likely to sacrifice and help, because we know we can do something to make a huge difference to that person with whom we are connected.  The specific connection makes the service much more real and meaningful. 

The Adoption.com Photolisting is an example of this principle that I have observed first hand.   When prospective adoptive parents are able to see pictures and read bios of orphans they often connect with and then adopt a specific child.  Many parents choose to adopt internationally after connecting with a specific child, who otherwise would not have adopted. Many parents who thought they only wanted to adopt a healthy Caucasian infant in the U.S. end up adopting an older, special needs child from a foreign country because of the connection which they formed with that child by using the photolisting.

If I came to your church congregation and spoke about the many foster children in your state who need to be adopted, I might have a few families come talk to me after the service.  However, if I brought 12 of those foster children with me and explained that I needed emergency foster homes for those children that night, ALL of the children would be taken in (if the families were qualified), and most of those children (if not all) would be permanently adopted by families in that congregation.

Think about it.  How many of us would, without a second thought, take in a starving orphan who showed up on our doorstep needing a place to stay?  I believe there is enough food, money, compassion, time, and great people in this world to solve huge social crises such as the world orphan crisis, hunger, needless death to curable diseases, and poverty.  The problem is not a lack of resources, but instead is effectively connecting those resources with great people who would be willing to help.  

So, then the question is how we can create those connections on a scale large enough to solve the otherwise insurmountable social problems in our world.  Kiva has showed us one of the large pieces of this solution by helping to everyday people, like my family, connect with and lend to entrepreneurs in third-world countries.  On-the-ground organizations help qualify and administer the loans.  And, their repayment rate would put to shame EVERY major bank in the United States.  My family tried to make a loan around Christmas time through Kiva, and the system was a little too effective.  There were more than thousands of people making loans and only four entrepreneurs seeking loans.  By the time we read through a newly posted loan and tried to participate in the loan, the full loan had already been fully funded.  There were more people at that time trying to loan than people listed seeking loans.  I just looked at Kiva as I wrote this blog entry, and it looks like there are now 208 active entrepreneurs listed seeking loans.  However, just in the last week more than 2,000 loans have been made by people like you and I, totaling more than $750,000.  This is another example that there is an abundance of great people, food, money, compassion and time to solve the world’s greatest social problems.  We just have to figure out how to create the specific connections.  

I want to build my future career greatly around this concept of creating connections to solve world social crises.  How can we more effectively build connections between great people in need and the great people who would love to help if they were just connected with specific situations? 

First, I find the term “bottom billion” inappropriate and offensive, as I have lived among many of these amazing people during the nearly two years I spent in Brazil. These people face almost hopeless poverty, have enormous challenges and we need to help them. However, they are not the “bottom billion”. These are beautiful people filled with amazing potential. These might be the poorest, most underprivileged people on earth, but I don’t agree with the label “bottom billion”.

Regardless of the semantics of the name for this group of people, I agree with Dr. Collier that we need to provide hope for these underprivileged people. Dr. Collier analyzes the role the United States took to help Europe after World War II as a model that the world can follow today to help solve this problem.

He recommends that we provide:

(1) AID

(2) TRADE – After WWII the US tore up the protectionist trade policy and totally reversed it, opening trade with Europe.

(3) SECURITY – After WWII, the US tore up it’s isolationist security policy and put hundreds of thousands of troops in Europe.

(4) GOVERNMENTS – Before WWII the US had not been willing to join the League of Nations, but after WWII we became part of a larger international community that helped create the solution for Europe.

DR. Collier spoke about the need to better utilize the resources booms in these under-developed countries. He recommended international standards to create informed societies, such as government financial transparency and competitive auction formats for contracts related to the developing country resources.

I agree with Dr. Collier that these lessons learned from the successfully rebuilding of Europe after WWII can provide us with several of the necessary pieces of the solution to end global poverty. However, many more solutions are available to help us solve this problem today as compared to 60 years ago. For, example, the power of the Internet allows us to facilitate microlending from millions of people around the world in a way that would have been impossible before the Internet.

Technology advances provide phenomenal solutions if they are shared with developing countries. For example, inexpensive solar panels can provide consistent power in developing countries that have struggled with insufficient and unreliably power supply. Inexpensive wireless technologies can facilitate communication necessary to efficiently run businesses, including access to telephones, email and the Internet. Vaccines for diseases such as malaria can help to halt the ravaging effects of these diseases.

Dr. Collier is right that we need to learn from the successes of the European construction after World War II, but let’s also open our minds to the additional innovative solutions that are available. We can certainly do a better job developing underprivileged countries today than was possible in the 1940s.

The video of Dr. Collier’s speech is embedded below:

· GoTo/Overture (became Yahoo Search Marketing) – paid inclusion search engine that was renamed Yahoo! Search Marketing after it was purchased by Yahoo to compete with Google AdSense.

· CitySearch – local city guides, acquired by IAC/InterActiveCorp.

· Commission Junction – affiliate marketing leader purchased by ValueClick.

· Insider Pages – Yellow Pages written by friends; a local search engine built around the concept that the best way to find a local business is through a personal recommendation. The Insider Pages community has written over 500,000 user-generated reviews of local businesses across the USA. The company was acquired by CitySearch/IAC in 2007.

· The DotTV Corporation – licensed the rights to the .tv domain, and sends the island nation of Tuvalu enough money from this license that it was able to join the United Nations. The company was acquired by VeriSign in 2001.

· eSolar – makes electricity generation from large scale solar thermal plants cost-competitive with fossil fuels. With mirrors that are 100 to 300 times smaller than conventional designs, eSolar’s product affords substantial advantages, including a 50 percent cost reduction. eSolar just received $10 million from Google and developed the solar power for the Google campus.

· Aptera Motors – is building lightweight, low cost composite electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles that are safe and reliable. By employing patent pending low cost composite manufacturing methods and cutting edge computational fluid dynamics, the company’s first car, the Aptera typ-1 will be available for under $30,000.

· Snap – is dedicated to getting users to results they really want faster. Snap.com delivers superior relevance and visual, rich and interactive search results to broadband users, and offers risk-free, flexible Cost-Per-Action advertising to advertisers. The company’s Snap Shots service is an open platform for delivering contextually relevant content such as stock quotes, streaming audio or video, product information and more, directly to users as they browse the web. (I have implemented Snap technology on this blog.)

· Tickets.com –a leading provider of tickets for sports and entertainment events worldwide.

· Compete – web analytics website that allows visitors to view and compare traffic to websites around the world (a site I use constantly).

· eToys.com – internet toy retailer, purchased by KB Toys.

· Picasa – a digital photo organizer for the PC that was widely reviewed as the best product on that platform. The company was acquired by Google in 2004.

· WeddingChannel.com – a central resource for couples about to get married. The site attracts millions of unique visitors each month and contains the bridal registries of a wide variety of retailers. WeddingChannel.com merged with The Knot in 2006.

· PayMyBills.com – online bill payment service acquired by PayTrust.

· Intranets.com – provided on-demand collaboration services — an “instant intranet” — for small businesses or departments and groups inside large organizations. By the time it was acquired by WebEx Communications in 2005, it had amassed over 300,000 paying subscribers and 10,000 corporate sites.

· NetZero – one of the first companies to offer free, ad-supported dial-up Internet services. It expanded its services with low-cost access in 2001. In that same year, it merged with Juno Online Services to form United Online. United Online is publicly traded on the Nasdaq stock exchange (Nasdaq: UNTD).

· HomesDirect – quickly became the largest online auction site for foreclosed properties with more than 10,000 homes sold per month. It was acquired by eBay in 2001.

· AirWave Wireless – a leading provider of specialized tools to centrally manage large, multi-vendor wireless LAN, mesh, and WiMAX networks.

· Free-PC – an opportunity to deliver free PCs to consumers, with the costs fully borne by advertising revenue. After providing free computers and Internet access to 20,000 customers in just a few short months, the company was acquired by eMachines.

· Energy Innovations – delivers cost-effective, grid-competitive solar electric power. It is currently developing the Sunflower, the first high-concentration PV system designed for commercial rooftop and adjacent ground-mounted applications.

· X-1 Technologies – changes the way corporate information is accessed and acted upon by end users. The company pioneered fast-as-you-type searching, intuitive interface, file and email previewing, the ability to save searches, and the ability to act on the found email or files. X1 is now available in both desktop and enterprise editions.

· New.net – provides more logical web address ending suffixes such as .travel and .shop. By partnering with Internet service providers to enable these new addresses to be recognized, the company sought to expand the market for web addresses and make it easier for users to find sites of interest. The company was acquired by Vendare Media (now Connexus) in 2004.

· Partsearch – a leading provider of Outsourced Parts Management (OPM) solutions.

· Infinia – improves the quality of life by changing how the world generates and uses energy. Having developed and delivered innovative Stirling engines and generators since 1985, the company’s technology is at the core of residential combined heat and power appliances currently being commercialized worldwide.

· Cooking.com – the leading online superstore for all things related to cooking.

· Desktop Factory – developed a breakthrough desktop 3D printer with capabilities similar to traditional rapid prototyping systems costing tens of thousands of dollars more. Combining high performance and low cost in a desktop size, this printer will allow three-dimensional printing to become pervasive in business, schools and homes.

· Perfect Market – an automated search engine marketing company that helps online publishers monetize content. The company maximizes the profitability of publishers’ pages by adjusting the amount spent with each traffic partner as calculated by Perfect Market’s proprietary algorithms through a closed loop feedback system. The high degree of automation provided by their patent-pending SEMgine™ technology is the key to profitably monetizing content that would otherwise remain invisible to Web searchers.

· InternetBrands – is a leading operator of media and e-commerce sites for “large ticket” consumer purchases, such as cars, real estate, mortgages, and travel. InternetBrands operates a portfolio of websites with 34 million visitors and 458 million page views in March 2008. In April, Internet Brands purchased five new websites, including FitDay.com. Some of the other InternetBrands websites include:

o CarsDirect

o Autos.com

o VacationHomes

o ApartmentRentals

o Loan

o CruiseReviews

o BikeForums

o Vamoose

o DVDtalk

o FamilyCorner

o FlyerTalk

o HorseTopia

o HuntingNet

o World66

o WikiTravel

o vBulletin (powers the Adoption.com Forums.)

o And many others.

IdeaLab was the simultaneous home to about 50 dot-coms at the height of the Internet bubble. After the burst of the bubble, Bill and IdeaLab went through some dark times. They had taken private placement funds at a $9 billion valuation, but then dropped in value to an estimated $500 million. Both sides eventually came to terms and dropped the suit.

After the dotcom crash Gross and IdeaLab shifted their focus to “big, impactful, change-the-world companies”. They felt it was going to take at least five years to get any company profitable, so they needed to focus on much bigger opportunities to make the effort worth while. Gross says, “We slowed our pace dramatically. We still had 20 ideas a month, but we just rejected 20 a month for six months, before we started one.”

Now, IdeaLab focuses on about 16 companies in a much more diverse portfolio. Bill is starting fewer new ventures, showing more restraint in which companies he starts, holding his companies longer, and trying to stay further out of the way of his management teams while they do their jobs.

IdeaLab has been a dream for a serial entrepreneur such as Bill Gross. He has all of the entrepreneurial tools he needs to create great businesses, and the business incubator allows him to spin of many ideas simultaneously. However, even with his phenomenal resources and talent, some of his businesses have failed. He has learned from these mistakes, and has modified the IdeaLab strategy.

Bill Gross said: “We found after starting fifty Internet companies after five years, the ones which succeeded were the ones with protect-able, intellectual property. It was not time to market, it was not how fast or lightweight the company was. It was how deep a reach, how proprietary, and what differentiation and barriers to entry those companies had so that others wouldn’t copy our idea. It led us to say–that building stuff was not bad. It wasn’t that assembly lines were a bad thing; it’s just that building things without protect-able differentiation is bad. We thought we should start companies in all our areas of expertise, as long as it meets the criteria of making an important difference to the world, that it meets the criteria of having fundamental demand, as well as meeting the criteria of company structure–protect-able, differentiable barriers to competitive entry. All our energy companies have that all in spades. In all aspects, they are large opportunities, with big potential impact, and also have patent protection and trade secrets that make it hard to copy the idea. We’ll continue to start Internet companies, too, but put them through the same test — big impact on the market, big potential, and intellectual property. “

What can I learn from Bill Gross as I create my new ventures? I am particularly impressed with his focus on social entrepreneurship, as many of his ventures make the world better, such as the clean energy companies. Life is to short to spend it just building businesses that make money. There are plenty of ideas and opportunities. I need to focus on those ideas that make a large social contribution in addition to making a profit.

I am impressed that Bill Gross and the IdeaLab team discipline themselves to toss out so many good ideas so that they can pursue the great ideas. I need to focus on fewer ideas that have the potential to be really big. I need to select ventures that have substantial demand, and have protect-able barriers of entry.

(Source: I gleaned information to write this blog entry from various sources, such as Wikipedia, the IdeaLab website, and news articles.)

The Song “Amazing Grace”

When William Wilberforce was a child, his pastor was John Newton, the author of the song “Amazing Grace”. John had been the captain of a British slave ship, and had transported tens of thousands of slaves in abominable conditions. He later became a priest to atone for his sins, but lived with thousands of ghosts “haunting” him for his deeds of the past. The first time Wilberforce visits Newton in the movie, Wilberforce is contemplating becoming a pastor instead of continuing with politics. Newton encourages Wilberforce that he has an important work to do. Newton finally confesses his role in the slave trade, possibly as a result of Wilberforce’s outspoken position against slavery, and then Newton writes his memoirs which helped Wilberforce to document the atrocities of the slave trade for his political battle to abolish slavery. During Wilberforce’s last visit to Newton, he discovers that his friend who wrote the words from Amazing Grace “I was blind but now I see”, is now himself blind.

The Fight to End the Slave Trade

Wilberforce was chronically ill for most of his political career. His anti-slavery bills were rejected each year by parliament for about 20 years, despite the fact that he collected extensive evidences of the slave trade and 390,000 signatures to support his cause. William Pitt had been Wilberforce’s friend since they were both teenagers. Pitt became Prime Minister at the age of 24 and was credited with encouraging Wilberforce to take up the abolitionist cause. However, during the war with France, Wilberforce’s friends, including Pitt turned against him. Finally, Wilberforce crafted an anti-slavery bill which was disguised as an anti-French bill, and this brought Wilberforce and Pitt back together as friends.

The Horrors of Middle Passage

Imagine being kidnapped from your home, your family and friends. You are forced to walk in chains with captors speaking languages you don’t understand, and you have no idea where you are going. You are taken to a ship where you are traded to the slave traders for guns and other merchandise. The captors make you lie down below deck in chains in a space that is about 4 feet by 18 inches by 18 inches. The stink of human waste, perspiration and death reak in the air. On your trip across the atlantic ocean you watch as the slave traders throw the dead as well as some living slaves overboard. More than half of these slaves may have died during this middle passage voyage of injustice, cruelty and unimaginable human suffering.

Olaudah Equiano

Olaudah Equiano is an important figure in the abolition of the English slave trade. He wrote his first-hand account of slavery and the slave trade in his memoirs The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, which sold 50,000 copies in just a few months. This was a very important work because it was one of the only first-hand accounts of slavery, and helped to change public sentiment about many elements of slavery, which had previously been kept secret. Equiano saved up enough money to finally purchase his freedom from one of his various masters. He then traveled the world on many adventures. He eventually returned to England and became very active in the anti-slavery movement where he traveled the country bearing witness of the atrocities of slavery. The abolition of the slave trade was finally passed ten years after he died.

Conclusion

This movie was tremendously inspiring, and made me want to commit my life to make more of a meaningful difference for good. According to Anti-Slavery International, more than 12 million people are still in slavery today, more than 200 years after William Wilberforce succeeded in ending the English Slave Trade. Find out what you can do to help end slavery world-wide at AntiSlavery.org.

Find the Amazing Grace DVD at Amazon.com.

• According to a recent study, people who spend money on others are happier than people who spend it on themselves.  So, in theory we can buy happiness with money. We just buy happiness by spending our money on other people in ways that make a meaningful difference.  By this standard, Melinda Gates might be one of the happiest people on earth (exaggeration intended to make point).  Since 2000, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has committed $16.3 billion in grants to programs that range from global health and development initiatives and the U.S. educational system. It currently oversees an endowment of roughly $38 billion. Its assets include a gift by billionaire Warren Buffet, who in 2006 announced he would bestow the majority of his fortune, in annual installments, to the couple’s foundation.

• The Gates Foundation has two driving principles: “All lives — no matter where they are being lived — have equal value,” and “To whom much is given, much is expected.”

• “We say, where are the biggest places that need change in the world and what is it we might impact?” Gates said. “We are the catalyst in many cases — or the voice for the diseases we’ve chosen.”

• Melinda cried tears of “unbelievable joy” after learning of Warren Buffet’s decision to hand over most of his wealth to her organization.  She said the gracious donation has allowed the foundation to supplement its health programs by addressing issues such as the elimination of poverty.

Read the article.

Kiva works to qualify and monitor microfinance institutions (”Field Partners”) around the world. Then, these Field Partners post profiles of qualified local entrepreneurs on the Kiva website. Then, individual lenders (like you and I) can read through the profiles of business opportunities and decide which we would like to fund. Individual lenders can contribute just a few dollars, or the entire amount needed. Many requested loans are for just a few hundred dollars.

Once the needed capital is raised, Kiva sends the funds to the Field Partner, which distributes and administers the funds. The local entrepreneur then uses the funds to start or improve a business, or in some cases to improve living conditions. The borrower is supported by the Field Partner and often by a borrowing support group in the local community. Here are some examples of lending opportunities on Kiva:

• Help a fisherman buy a refrigerator in Azerbaijan.
• Improve a restaurant in Pakistan.
• Increase inventory in a spare parts stand in Ghana.
• Increase inventory for a timber business in Tanzania.
• Buy farming equipment and supplies in Samoa.

During the course of the loan, which usually lasts 6-8 months, the lender can receive journal updates and track repayments. Eventually, as the borrower repays the Field Partner, those funds are then returned to Kiva. Kiva claims that its borrowers have a historical repayment rate of 99.7%. Once the loan is fully repaid, the lender can elect to withdraw the funds, or to re-invest the funds in another lending opportunity. Lenders can choose to invest smaller amounts in a larger number of lending opportunities, and keep a portfolio of loans in which they are participating.

Field Partners do charge an interest rate to the borrowers, but Kiva will not work with organizations that charge too high of a rate. Kiva lenders do not receive interest because of U.S. government regulation. However, PayPal waives all transaction fees, so 100% of the funds loaned reach the entrepreneurs in developing countries.

According to Kiva, as of April 13, 2008, 40,577 loans totaling $27,502,710 have been made by 277,535 lenders through Kiva with an average loan size is $520.20.

I believe that most people who learn about Kiva are moved to help. So, what can we do to help? We can obviously choose to start lending, even if it is a very small amount. We can give Kiva gift certificates for birthdays and holiday gifts. Families could save their change, and together select the people to receiver their loans. We can also ask that others make contributions to our Kiva account for their gifts to us. I would LOVE to receive a Kiva contribution as a gift, because it would be far more meaningful to me than traditional gifts.

In addition to Kiva, eBay also operates a similar project, MicroPlace.