A Decade of Difference:About Our Focus Areas

“It is difficult to imagine how the world can grow together and overcome the instabilities and inequalities of global interdependence unless something serious is done to turn the tide on AIDS.”

While worldwide access to lifesaving medicines and treatments has improved significantly in the new millennium, we still have much work to do. Every day around the world, more than 7,000 people — including 1,000 children — are newly infected with HIV. Every 20 seconds, someone dies an AIDS–related death. Each year, nearly one million people die from malaria, most of them children in Africa. Malaria morbidity alone costs the continent an estimated $12 billion in lost productivity, overwhelming fragile health systems and preventing communities from determining their own futures.

In 2002, the Clinton Foundation began its HIV/AIDS work in the Bahamas, eventually expanding to more than 70 countries around the world. By collaborating with manufacturers and governments to organize the market for these medicines and implementing a high-volume, low-cost model, we’ve helped nearly four million people access lifesaving antiretroviral treatments (ARTs) at significantly reduced prices — representing well over two-thirds of all people living with HIV and on treatment in developing countries. In recent years, we’ve applied the same model to reduce the costs of the most effective malaria medicines by up to 80 percent and improved their distribution, helping millions of families access these lifesaving treatments.

“The solution to the climate crisis isn’t far off in the future — it’s in the buildings we inhabit, our civic infrastructure, and the way we organize our lives.”

Our planet’s future depends on the way we produce and consume energy today. Most climate scientists agree that we must dramatically reduce these emissions or face devastating consequences; already rising temperatures and changing weather patterns are disrupting natural and economic systems and exacerbating intense poverty and health pandemics. Yet we are only just beginning to recognize that the answer to how we protect the environment is inextricably tied to how we power our economy.

In cities and forests across the globe, Clinton Foundation programs are proving that we can confront the debilitating effects of climate change in a way that makes sense for governments, businesses, and economies. From iconic projects like the retrofit of the Empire State Building to tree-planting program that generates income for farmers in Malawi, our work to build more energy efficient cities and reverse deforestation has reduced global greenhouse gas emissions by tens of thousands of tons per year while also creating local jobs and boosting economies.

“We can help turn people’s lives around and give them hope for a healthier future”

Children across the world have different challenges and opportunities, yet they share one certainty: Their ability to be successful in their futures depends on the nutrition and care they receive today. In developing communities around the world, children lucky enough to attend school often arrive hungry, thwarting their ability to learn. Even less fortunate children may suffer from malnutrition, which leads to chronic health issues and even death. In the United States, the opposite is often true. Children typically have an abundance of food, even in economically distressed communities. Yet the food they have access to is not always healthy. Today nearly one in three children in America is overweight or obese — a trend that’s also linked to historically high rates of type 2 diabetes, particularly in low-income neighborhoods.

In close collaboration with families, physicians, and communities, the Clinton Foundation’s nutrition programs aim to help all children, no matter their background, live longer and healthier lives. Much of our work is done in schools, where many children take most of their meals and spend most of their time, but our programs also extend to doctors’ offices, hospitals, and clinics, and even to families’ homes.

“We are working to give people and communities the tools they need to work themselves out of poverty.”

While intelligence, hard work, and ability are all equally distributed in communities around the world, investment and opportunity are not. In Africa, where two-thirds of the population relies on agriculture for survival, farmers still lack access to the resources and markets they need to build a future. In Latin America, where the gap between rich and poor is perhaps more dramatic than anywhere else in the world, small entrepreneurs struggle simply to keep their businesses afloat, with little hope of growing economically, creating jobs, or uplifting their communities. And in the United States, small businesses face a tough economic reality: About half fail in their first five years. Yet they are crucial to inner-city communities, where they provide 80 percent of jobs.

In each of these regions, despite their unique challenges, the Clinton Foundation works to strengthen the capacity of people and communities to achieve greater, more sustainable levels of progress and prosperity. The Foundation’s results-oriented programs — whether developing agribusinesses in Rwanda, helping small and medium enterprises access financial capital and new markets in Peru, or cultivating entrepreneurship through business-to-business mentoring in Oakland — ensure that people everywhere have the means to build their own future and lay the foundation for continued development.

The 21st century has raised new challenges but it has also invited new responsibilities. For the first time in history, because of our interdependence, we have the opportunity to work together to make positive changes that will impact our world for generations to come. But in order to implement effective solutions to the most pressing issues, we need to match the best resources with the best ideas — and then we need to work harder to turn those ideas into action.

After decades of attending meetings where people talked about issues but took little action to solve them, President Clinton launched the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) to bring together world leaders, business executives, leaders of effective nongovernmental organizations, and philanthropists to match resources with those doing good work on the ground. CGI asks everyone who attends the annual meeting to make a Commitment to Action — new, measurable, and tangible — to solve a specific global challenge. CGI has revolutionized philanthropy and dramatically increased its impact, convening the global community to make a measurable, meaningful, and sustainable difference in millions of lives and communities around the world.