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Name: Nancy Lindborg
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.'"
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Name: Van Jones
Title: President and Founder of Green For
All
Organization: Green For All looks to solve
worldwide economic problems through green solutions.
The Idea: Cut down immediately on carbon
emissions and support green economic solutions.
The Explanation:"A lot of carbon emissions could be eliminated right now by doing simple, mundane things — weatherizing buildings, improving public transportation, planting trees — on a massive scale. Those approaches would also create a lot of jobs and help cut family expenses right now, during a time of economic recession. Increasing the number of people who are working to green America also increases the number of people who will vote and make purchases to support a green economy. For instance, we could set up a multi-billion dollar revolving loan fund, which entire cities could use to cut emissions through mass weatherization, and repay the fund out of the savings on energy."
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Name: Dr. Brizio Biondi-Morra
Title: Chairman of the Board of AVINA
Organization:
AVINA seeks a prosperous, democratic and sustainable Latin
America.
The Idea: Empower local leaders to create
community programs and develop local businesses.
The Explanation: "Start by investing in
leadership, strong institutions, and effective networks. In our
experience, dialog and synergy between leaders of business and
civil society offer some of the greatest opportunities to create
social value.
"No one institution or individual makes large scale impact by itself. You need alliances with other institutions at the international level, regional and local levels. You have to work across sectors, reach out and team up to build critical mass. Reaching out to governments around the world and exposing them not only to the problems but to the progress being made is very important. Although building common ground is a complex process, that is how real self-sustaining change begins."
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Name: Jenni Wolfson
Title: Acting Executive Director of
WITNESS
Organization: WITNESS was founded in 1992 by
Peter Gabriel and seeks to expose human rights violations via video
and online technology.
The Idea: Raise awareness of worldwide human
rights violations through video and online technologies.
The Explanation: "We currently work with twelve to fifteen human rights organizations at any one time in an intensive partnership, and we train several hundred more each year on short-term training courses. We would scale up to work with hundreds of human rights organizations each year to produce and distribute human rights videos on a broader range of issues, covering many more countries. We would do this by creating regional video advocacy centers, where we would provide video equipment, hands-on technical and tactical training, editing, advice on strategic distribution and advocacy to organizations all over the world, research and develop new video and multi-media advocacy training programs, including on emerging communication technologies such as digital security and using cell phones in advocacy campaigns, develop online interactive learning modules to reach thousands more organizations and individuals, develop and implement a train-the-trainers program to create a multiplying effect, translate our curricula into several languages and spearhead the development and implementation of shared standards on visual media and human rights. And we would do all this using open source tools and a creative commons license to ensure the broadest possible audience for these materials and programs, and to draw on collective experience to keep improving and building on them."