What Would Three Billion Dollars Do?

Title: President of MercyCorps

Organization: MercyCorps works to build community-based solutions for poverty, especially in areas heavy with disaster and conflict.

The Idea: Invest in technologies (like a new type of stove) that would address a number of issues at once.

Long Solution:: "I would invest in those cool ideas that could address specific aspects of poverty or climate change and bring those ideas to scale. There is no silver bullet. I would love for somebody to tell me that they had invented a new stove that operates on very inexpensive, totally clean fuel, then you can work hard on introducing it into all these places where the lack of fuel is destroying forests and creating insecurity. If there were a super-cool technology that would allow people to heat their homes and cook their food without interrupting their social patterns, which is the case of solar technologies, that would get at a lot of issues. But you'd then have to embed it. You would have to go in and work with communities and help them get excited about it and work with it. We can't just send them stoves and say, 'Problem solved.'"