Philanthropy in the United States has traditionally played a vital role as a catalyst of innovation, research and social change in American society. Yet, as the world unites around the Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs, what role is philanthropy playing to advance the agenda for achieving these global goals by 2030?

Philanthropy in the United States has traditionally played a vital role as a catalyst of innovation, research and social change in American society. Yet, as the world unites around the Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs, what role is philanthropy playing to advance the agenda for achieving these global goals by 2030?

In this episode, I take A Deeper Look with Vikki Spruill, President and CEO of the Council on Foundations and a leading […]

This post originally appeared on the Sightsavers website. Reposted with permission.

A pilot project enabling blind and visually impaired children in Senegal to attend mainstream school has led to a breakthrough government commitment to introduce inclusive education throughout the country.

Senegal has more than 700,000 blind and visually impaired people, including thousands of school-aged children. Before the pilot, education for children with visual impairment and other disabilities was mainly segregated, and with only one state special-needs school in operation the vast majority of children were missing out.

In 2011, Sightsavers Senegal and the Senegalese Ministry of Education began enrolling blind and visually impaired children into mainstream primary schools in Dakar. By 2016, 187 had been enrolled in three schools.

The programme’s first cohort […]

This post originally appeared on The Lily. Reposted with permission.

For almost seven years in the 1980s, I lived on Mali’s Dogon Plateau. I was a Peace Corps volunteer focused on primary health care and spent most of my time with women. I learned about their joys, sorrows, dreams, struggles and, surprisingly, their great fear of childbirth.

As a young, single American woman, I thought of birth as natural, safe and joyous. Nothing had prepared me for the death of Yabara, a 27-year-old pregnant woman in my village. Like many rural Malian girls, she had married early, during her teens. She had six children at home and was pregnant with her seventh child when she died from obstructed labor. The complication […]

This article originally appeared on Degrees. Reposted with permission.

The Sustainable Development Goals will remain only aspirational if there is no accountability for their implementation. In this episode, I speak with Roland Schatz, a leader in the field of media impact and an expert on the SDGs, on how to create accountability, particularly in the private sector.

Roland talks about the first SDG Commitment Report 100, which tracks companies’ efforts to contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals. He also shares some interesting perspectives on the use and impact of media on development. You might be surprised by our discussion about the role of social media in driving social change.

This conversation is part of a series of candid discussions I’m having with […]