UNESCO’s 2010 Education for All Global Monitoring Report is sobering, particularly when it comes to statistics in Sub-Saharan Africa. Almost half of the global, out-of-school population is in this region and more than half of them are girls.
Education plays a pivotal role in building human capital and increasing productivity of the economy. In particular, secondary education... (continue reading blog post)
Earlier this year, I wrote about the young men and women I met in Uganda, Kenya and Senegal who told me that having “a safe place to save money” is important to them. Fatimah and Lekum, members of youth-led savings groups in Senegal, shared that these groups provided them with financial literacy and the self-confidence to manage their money... (continue reading this blog post)
My typical ballpark snack, a giant salted pretzel, was short stopped by a new addition to the food stands at Yankee Stadium: calorie labels. I'm not usually a calorie-counter, but seeing the shocking 630-calorie label on a seemingly harmless pretzel suddenly made the 175-calorie cotton candy more appealing.
This is the response New York City health officials hoped for when they became the first city in the U.S. to implement a law requiring chain restaurants to post the calorie count of each item, in the same size and font as the price... (continue reading this blog post)
In my last post, “Reinforcing Resilience, Rebuilding Haiti,” I described the partnership The MasterCard Foundation had formed with Fonkoze. It’s intended to stimulate the country’s economy—from the ground up—by enabling extremely poor women to rebuild or create livelihoods... (continue reading this blog post)
It was an uplifting phone call. There were whoops of joy, some laughter and a few tears. Last week, I called Anne Hastings, the CEO of Fonkoze – the leading microfinance institution in Haiti – with big news. Our foundation committed $4.5 million to spur Haiti’s economic recovery from the earthquake. At its core, this commitment will rebuild Fonkoze, which, in turn, is helping Haitians rebuild their country from the ground up through microfinance... (continue reading this blog post)
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Over the past year, I’ve spent time listening to adolescents and young men and women in urban slums and rural villages in Senegal, Uganda and Kenya. Most of them were between the ages of 12 and 25, and their families were surviving on less than $2 a day.
Why this group? Because of the enormous opportunity they present to advance economic growth, social progress and leadership in Africa... (continue reading this blog post)
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