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Though the gap between haves and have-nots is increasing in the digital economy, this same economy is also creating new ways to dramatically help the poor. For example, farmers in Bangladesh are using cell phones to bypass corrupt middlemen. A huge increase in Indian software workers is shifting the momentum away from poverty. Innovative IT models all over he world demonstrate that no one needs to be left behind. We can do more by tapping the power of the marketplace to make sure that everyone everywhere benefits. There’s an interface between harnessing digital technology for sustainable development and the pursuit of a spiritual path.
Biography:
Craig Warren Smith, PhD. has been shaping public/private partnerships for the past 25 years. He has played this role on behalf of some of the most influential organizations in the world, in each of the four sectors. In the business sector, his clients include Microsoft, an 18-month stint helping Bill Gates develop policies regarding philanthropy. They also include private foundations, such as helping Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and Kellogg Foundation reach out to corporations. They also include universities, helping Harvard and MIT build technology partnerships with nonprofit organizations. He was an early instructor at Naropa Institute in the 1970s, and has taught meditation in the Shambhala Buddhist community for 25 years. His academic degrees are from Stanford, University of California-Berkeley and Brandeis University. In 2002, he was employed as a Visiting Professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.
Craig’s non-profit, Digital Partners, is committed to harnessing the unprecedented momentum and potential of information technologies to enfranchise the millions of poor increasingly shut out of an information-driven world economy. He believes that it is possible to use the market dynamics of the explosive Digital Economy to create new opportunities to empower the poor as agents of their own development.
His Social Venture Fund invites members of the Brain Trust, corporations, and angel investors to support the expansion and enhancement of IT-based, anti-poverty efforts around the world. It provides seed capital to social entrepreneurs to leverage commercially viable information technology to impact education, healthcare, commerce, governance and communication. He plans to raise $50 million over 5 years from contributors in the US, India, and around the world interested in developing IT solutions that empower the poor. He hopes to leverage 10 times this among from foundations, development and aid agencies, local governments, etc.
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Sustainable
Resources 2004 > Presenters
