Today, Change.org is hosting its annual Blog Action Day, held on October 15, in which bloggers all over the world take a moment to write about a specific topic. This year, the topic is Climate Change.
By the way, have you heard of Change.org? It’s a social entrepreneurial, web-based platform for raising awareness, raising money, and exchanging information with the goal of fostering social change. There are a variety of causes to get involved in via the change.org website, such as Poverty In America, Education, and Global Health. As a matter of fact, our second philanthropic investment guide, Lifting the Burden of Malaria, was reviewed in Change.org’s Global Health section by Alanna Shaikh.
So, back the the topic of Climate Change: What does climate change have to do with philanthropy? Well, I can offer some helpful information for you to investigate further. The Chronicle of Philanthropy recently ran a story from Bloomberg News about a $100 million dollar climate-change initiative, pledged by billionaire, George Soros. Soros has previously donated money to organizations like the Robin Hood Foundation, to help them continue to provide basic needs services (i.e. food and shelter) to New York’s growing low-income population. There is an article in the New York Times here, written by Stephanie Strom and Graham Bowley, which covered Robin Hood’s fundraising event held earlier this year.
A Reuters press release early this morning, announced a $120 million initiative from the Gates Foundation to roll out multiple grants for agricultural development in Sub-saharan Africa and other developing countries. Many of the poorest populations in the developing world depend on farming for food, and this push for policy change and political action is a step in improving these conditions. Agriculture can also affect Climate Change by reducing greenhouse gas concentrations, according to the Council on Agricultural Science and Technology (CAST). For any of you academically-inclined readers interested in climate change research, you can refer to a study by Mendelsohn, et.al. titled, Climate Change Impacts on African Agriculture. In addition to the Mendelsohn study, you can check out the Climate Change Faculty Working Group in the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Arts & Sciences (SAS). If you are local to Philadelphia, Penn’s Department of Earth & Environmental Science hosts a Seminar Series every Friday in Room 358, Hayden Hall, 240 South 33rd Street.
With the aforementioned resources, as well as the various other bloggers who have contributed to today’s Blog Action Day event, I hope that you will find something useful to further pursue, question, or engage in action towards the global phenomenon of Climate Change.