Updates
 
In 2006, we made a grant to the Global Crop Diversity Trust, with the goal of protecting biodiversity and making sure that farmers in poor countries have access to the plant-genetic material they need to develop better crops.
In 2007, construction continued on the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, located on a Norwegian island less than 1,000 miles away from the North Pole. The vault opened officially in February 2008.

It can store 4.5 million seed samples for hundreds of years in a central and secure location, helping protect the world's valuable plant-genetic material.

 
 
In 2006, we teamed with the Rockefeller Foundation to launch the Nairobi-based Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), which aims to help comprehensively revitalize African agriculture. AGRA's first initiative is focused on making improved seeds more accessible to small farmers so their crops can thrive.
In 2007, former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan joined AGRA as its chairman. We also made a grant to support AGRA's second initiative, the Soil Health Program, which was launched in January 2008.

The Soil Health Program aims to help farmers revitalize some of the most depleted soils in the world. The goal is to reach more than 4 million small farmers and help them increase their yields by 50 to 100 percent.

 
 
In 2006, we hosted a peer-learning meeting in Chile that brought together representatives from six grantee countries who had worked on providing free public access to computers and the Internet through their libraries. The goal was to help them share lessons learned and ultimately build a network to transfer their expertise directly to each other.
In 2007, we launched a Global Libraries toolkit to provide an online forum for library leaders to continue the collaboration they started at the meeting.

The toolkit has three components: 1) an open discussion space for members of the library community to discuss topic of mutual interest; 2) a private online workspace to help grantees and program officers work on projects together; and 3) a repository of key documents, templates, and other resources that will be useful to our partners in the future.

 

Global Development Overview

More than 2.5 billion people live on less than $2 a day, and more than 800 million suffer chronic hunger. While these numbers are staggering, we believe solutions are within reach.

In 2006, we formed the Global Development Program to increase opportunities for people in the developing world to lift themselves out of hunger and poverty. Our work is focused on three key areas—agricultural development, financial services for the poor, and special initiatives that allow us to learn and have impact. These areas are all supported by policy and advocacy efforts around development issues.

Many of the world’s poorest people are small farmers who rely on agriculture for their food and income. We work with a range of partners who share our focus on small farmers, most of whom are women. Our grants seek to address every part of a small farmer’s economy—from better seeds and soil to helping farmers improve their techniques and find reliable markets for their surpluses. We also support data collection, research, and policy analysis. We believe a renewed commitment to agricultural development—from donor and developing countries, the private sector, and philanthropies—could help hundreds of millions of people move out of hunger and poverty.

We also believe that increasing poor people’s access to financial services can improve their financial security and make a significant difference in their lives. Having access to savings, loans, insurance, and other services is often the difference between planning for the future and reacting to the latest crisis. Our goal is to help expand the availability and affordability of financial products and services that meet the diverse needs of people in developing countries.

We realize that there are many ways to reduce poverty and increase opportunities, so our Special Initiatives grantmaking allows us to learn and have impact on a number of important development issues. This includes the work of Global Libraries, which helps provide free public access to computers and the Internet through libraries; Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene; and Urban Poverty, among other areas.

Our program is still young, but the results of our initial grants have reaffirmed our belief that hunger and poverty are problems with solutions. As we continue to learn from our partners and the people we serve, we are convinced that our interventions will become increasingly effective.