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kids represents our resistance to
changing what needs changing most.
PND: What do you hope to be able to
say about the Greater New Orleans
Foundation in five years?
AR: We gave our all to this “impossible
but inevitable city.”
PND: That’s catchy. Who coined that
phrase? And what’s “inevitable”
about New Orleans?
AR: I think, though I’m not positive,
it was Pierce Lewis, who wrote New
Orleans: The Making of an Urban
Landscape. The inevitability of the city
has something to do with its position
at a crook in the Mississippi River
that catches all the richness flowing
down from the heart of the country.
But for me, New Orleans has always
been our Venice. I have this wonderful
photograph of Venetians buying bread
and cheese at a store that’s filled with
two feet of water. They have their waders
on, and they’re completely oblivious
to the fact that they’re standing
in two feet of water. Now, of course,
that’s not what I want for New Orleans.
But I do think it speaks to a tenacity
and love for their city that is very much
a part of this city, with its wonderful
built environment and cultural richness.
I mean, you can go into some of
the poorest neighborhoods in this city
and gaze on wonderful 19th-century
structures that have withstood storm,
fire, and all sorts of other assaults.
Your jaw will drop. And it makes you
realize how much has been invested
in this city, this jewel on the Gulf, and
makes you believe it’s going to be
around for a long time to come.
PND: Well, thank you, Albert.
AR: It was my pleasure.
—Mitch Nauffts
An Interview with
Jane Wales
President and Co-Founder,
Global Philanthropy Forum
Philanthropy and Social Innovation
The world is getting smaller, warmer, and more crowded. Disparities in income,
health care, and access to education continue to grow, even as technology
and globalization raise the expectations of billions of people around the
globe. Between now and midcentury, most of the increase in the world’s population,
some two to three billion people, will be concentrated in its poorest countries.
The world’s poor, in other words, will become much poorer. And destitution, notes
technologist and prize-winning author James Martin, leads to desperation.
That affluent developed countries must act to change that calculus is a
given — and not just for reasons of security or out of self-interest. We must act
because it is the right thing to do. And the prescription for averting disaster, says
Martin, is straightforward: End poverty. Eliminate disease and squalor. Educate
children. Teach women to read. And understand that non-action with respect to
the problems that confront us is not an option.
In March 2009, Philanthropy News Digest spoke with Jane Wales, vice
president of philanthropy and society at the Aspen Institute and co-founder of
the Global Philanthropy Forum (GPF), about GPF’s efforts to focus attention
on the plight of the world’s poor, the impact of the global financial meltdown on
international philanthropy, and the Obama administration’s interest in leveraging
social innovation to bring about needed change. A social activist with decades of
experience in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors, Wales has been asked by the
Obama administration to convene a series of meetings to explore ways in which
the public sector can work with nonprofits to accelerate social innovation.
In addition to her leadership roles at GPF and Aspen, Wales is president
and CEO of the World Affairs Council of Northern California and host of
the nationally syndicated National Public Radio show “It’s Your World.” Since
July 2007, she has served as acting CEO of The Elders, a group of experienced
global leaders convened by Nelson Mandela, Graça Machel, and Archbishop
Desmond Tutu, and in April 2008 she became chair of the Poverty Alleviation
track for the Clinton Global Initiative.
Previously, Wales served in the Clinton and Carter administrations, chaired
the international security programs at the Carnegie Corporation of New York
and the W. Alton Jones Foundation, and directed the Project on World Security
at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. She is the former national executive director
of Physicians for Social Responsibility, which shared in the 1985 Nobel Peace
Prize during her tenure.
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