The Allianz Knowledge Site's Who's Who features people and organizations that make a difference in the areas of climate change, microfinance, and demographic change.
Millennium Promise
Who are they?
A non-profit committed to achieving the eight UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Africa by 2015.
What do they do?
The centerpiece of the Millennium Promise's activities is the Millennium Villages project - a five-year attempt to achieve the MDGs in almost 80 villages in 10 African countries. Since 2004, a variety of interventions - including school lunch programs, bed nets, and fertilizer - have resulted in dramatic increases in school attendance, drops in malaria prevalence, and improved crop production in Sauri, Kenya, the flagship Millennium Village.
Millennium Promise was co-founded by economist Jeffrey Sachs and philanthropist Raymond Chambers. The organization is also a founding partner of Malaria No More, an initiative founded in 2006 to mobilize the private and corporate sector to help reduce malaria deaths in Africa and elsewhere through education, bed nets, anti-malarial drugs, and insecticide
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Opportunity International
Who are they?
A Christian microfinance network that currently serves over one million clients worldwide.
What do they do?
Opportunity International currently operates in 28 developing countries with the help of over 40 partner organizations, mostly microfinance institutions (MFIs) that recruit local loan officers and work with clients. Eighty-six percent of all loans given out by Opportunity and its partners go to women.
During the early 1990s, Opportunity International pioneered the concept of a Trust Bank, a group of 15-40 lenders who guarantee each other's microloans. Opportunity has also begun to promote the conversion of local NGOs and MFIs into formal financial institutions - regulated commercial banks, development banks, and credit unions that can accept deposits, borrow money, and accept investments that will help them grow.
Most of Opportunity International's funding comes from private donors, with some money coming from church, government, and foundation grants. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation gave Opportunity International a 5.4 million-dollar grant (and a 10 million-dollar loan) in February 2007 to expand microfinance in Africa.
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Pew Center on Global Climate Change
Who are they?
An institution dedicated to climate change research, policy analysis, and engaging the businesses community on climate change.
What do they do?
Pew's Business Environmental Leadership Council (BELC) is the largest alliance of corporations in the United States focused on addressing climate change. The Council's current 44 members include Bank of America, DuPont, General Electric, Deutsche Telekom, and Boeing. The corporations meet quarterly to discuss climate policy and practical solutions to climate change, but make no financial contributions to the Pew Center.
Founded as a non-profit, independent organization near Washington D.C. in 1998, the Pew Center also regularly publishes climate-related research and analysis. The center's scientific and policy experts are frequently consulted by the mainstream media and members of U.S. Congress.
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Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK)
Who are they?
A center for research on global change, climate impact, and sustainable development.
What do they do?
PIK staff conducts research on climate impact and sustainable development to provide information for decision making an the public. The institute’s founder and director, Hans Joachim Schelnnhuber, advises German Chancellor Angela Merkel on climate change. Schellnhuber and other PIK staff contributed to the IPCC’s influential fourth Climate Change Assessment Report and various World Bank studies.
PIK was founded in 1992 and now has a staff of around 150. Studying the impact of global change – especially climate change – on ecological, economic and social systems, the institute has become of Germany’s leading centers of climate change research. It is part of a global research network on environmental change, and collaborates with international partners, such as the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in the United Kingdom.
The institute identifies four research domains: Earth system analysis, climate impacts and vulnerabilities, sustainable solutions, and transdisciplinary concepts. Among many projects, PIK researchers are currently working on a climate change damage library to better understand the sensitivity of societies to climate change impacts.
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Pro Mujer
Who are they?
An organization dedicated to empowering poor women in Latin America with micro-lending and business training.
What do they do?
Founded in 1990 by Lynne Paterson and Carmen Velasco, Pro Mujer now reaches around 150,000 microfinance clients, most of them in Bolivia where the organization was founded, but with thousands of clients also in Peru, Mexico, Guatemala, and Argentina.
Along with its microfinance and training initiatives, Pro Mujer also provides affordable primary health care services and education, as well as legal education, so that women become aware of their rights in cases of domestic abuse. In Bolivia, the organization also built a computer center to teach basic computing skills to the children of microfinance clients.
Pro Mujer has been supported by a number of organizations including USAID, Unitus, and JP Morgan Chase. In March 2006, the organization received a 3.1 million-dollar grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2006 to expand services in Latin America.
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