CSR Press Release

Commitment to Action. That's what distinguishes the Clinton Foundation's Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) from other foundations' work. Instead of focusing on traditional grant-making, CGI convenes influential change-makers who enact solutions to the world's biggest problems. This year's meeting happened just last week in New York City, so announcements of commitments are abundant in the four focus areas: education, energy & climate change, global health and poverty alleviation.

To help alleviate poverty, for example, a microfinance consortium including Grameen Foundation, Deutsche Bank, and Pro Mujer launched the "Campaign for Client Protection in Microfinance." The campaign's centerpiece is the Microbanker's Oath, consisting of six core principles, such as avoiding reckless lending that creates over-indebtedness, transparent and fair pricing, ethical standards for staff, and non-coercive or abusive debt collection practices. If mainstream banks like Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and Goldman Sachs followed these principles, perhaps they could have avoided the subprime meltdown!

PepsiCo Foundation is using microfinance to promote clean water accessibility through a $4.1 million grant to the WaterPartners. The WaterCredit Initiative will provide microloans to 120,000 community-members in India to increase access to safe water and improve sanitation, particularly in urban areas where private control of water supply often leads to high prices for these necessary services. Several other Commitments also address water, such as Procter & Gamble’s support for the Children's Safe Drinking Water program and Circle of Blue's "Designing Water's Future" Challenge (which was profiled in a recent CSRwire News Alert.)

Working at the intersection of poverty alleviation and climate change, Swiss Re and Oxfam America announced a joint Commitment to Action piloting a project collaborating with the community of Adi Ha, a village in the Tigray Regional State of Ethiopia. The community, which is acutely vulnerable to climate variability and change, requested weather insurance as a risk management strategy for its staple cereal crop. The project also provides other risk reduction tools such as seasonal forecasting and improved agricultural practices. With 85 percent of the Ethiopian population dependent on smallholder, rain-fed agriculture, the pilot program could prove key for the country in navigating the climate crisis.

This week also brings more announcements from companies honored on the 2008 Working Mother 100 Best Companies list, including Abbott, Bayer, Deloitte, Dow, Kraft, Marriot, and SC Johnson.

This article was written by CSRwire contributor Bill Baue.