Paul Litwin's Blog

In today's terrible world (e.g., war in Iraq, the mess in Sudan, Bush trying to gut the U.S. Consitution and the Geneva Convention) it's easy to get down on things and miss two truly great things that happened this past week.

• On Sept 12th, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, in a partnership with the Rockefeller Foundation, decided to spur the next Green Revolution in sub-saharan Africa with a $150 million initial grant. "The $150 million Gates-Rockefeller project, called the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, will be a five-year effort initially aimed at supporting the development of higher-yield and heartier seeds." And "The new initiative also hopes to avoid some of the mistakes made the first time around. The original Green Revolution, according to many critics, had some serious downsides." 

Links to read more:
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/GlobalDevelopment/Agriculture/RelatedInfo/AfricanFarmers.htm and
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/284913_greengates13.html

Go Bill and Melinda. Africa does need to feed itself and not a minute too soon!

• Two days later, on Sept 14th, Google announced that it was setting up a philanthropy with an initial grant of $1 billion "and a mandate to tackle poverty, disease and global warming." Wow. Now, that's ambitious. The twist: "But unlike most charities, this one will be for-profit, allowing it to fund startup companies, form partnerships with venture capitalists, and even lobby Congress. It will also pay taxes."

"According to people briefed on the program, the organization, called Google.org, is aiming to develop an extremely fuel-efficient, plug-in hybrid car engine that runs on ethanol, electricity and gasoline...In another project,...Google.org will try to develop a system to detect disease outbreaks early."

Links to read more:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/285054_google14.html, and
http://www.google.org/

Go Larry and Sergey! You guys are thinking outside of the box. I like your style! You are trying to tackle serious problems that GM, Ford, and The US government couldn't solve (or probably more likely wouldn't solve). Way to go!

In today's world, it's easy to be cynical about news like these two items, but I am truly excited about the Gates Foundation and Google.org stories.

Thank you Bill, Melinda, Larry, and Sergey!

Paul