Weekend Wrap-up: Focus on Housing, Health, and Social Impact
Welcome to April, readers! Here is a brief summary of news from the Center and a few on-campus events next week.
Housing Help
The sun isn’t the only thing shining on the City of Philadelphia. On Wednesday evening, Ali Velshi shined the CNN news light on the Philadelphia Residential Mortgage Foreclosure Diversion Program. This targeted outreach program was listed as one of the Models In Practice in the first section of High Impact Philanthropy in the Downturn: Focus on Housing, Health, and Hunger (A Guide for Donors), released in November 2009. We have added the video to our website in our Additional Sources and Due Diligence, which you can view here: http://www.impact.upenn.edu/our_work/DownturnDiligence.html.
Women’s Health
Just the other day, Melinda Gates announced the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s plans to increase its investments in the health of mothers and newborns, and is also stepping up its efforts to fund contraception. Additionally, the Dean of the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, Dr. Afaf I. Meleis, authored an article on the Huffington Post this week to highlight the importance of women’s health. From urban cities in the U.S., to disaster stricken, war-torn, and impoverished developing countries—all health issues and policies require awareness and action. Next week, the University of Pennsylvania and the International Council on Women’s Health are partnering to hold a 4-day conference, Cities and Women’s Health: Global Perspectives in Philadelphia. On Friday, April 9th from 3:30-5pm, Kat Rosqueta, will be speaking on a panel for Best Practices: Strategies to Achieve Impact.
Social Impact Week at Penn
Next week also marks the beginning of Social Impact Week @ Penn, sponsored by numerous internal and external organizations such as: Penn Social Entrepreneurship Mentoring (PennSEM), Wharton Ethics Program, The Joel and Lois Coleman Social Impact Lecture Series, Social Impact Consulting (SIC), United Way of Gloucester County, Penn Engineers Without Borders, Penn International Business Volunteers, Bon Apetit, Penn Career Services, Givology, and Penn Microfinance Club. Brian Trelstad, CIO of Acumen Fund, kicks it off with his talk on Life of a Social Entrepreneur: Leadership in the Private, Public, and Non-profit Sectors, Monday, April 5th at 4:30pm. The week finishes with the 4th Annual Penn Microfinance Conference: Evolution of a Solution, Friday April 9th, 10:30am-6pm.
Have a great holiday weekend!
Dear Autumn,
Thanks for this post! So glad to hear that Melinda Gates is helping to make women’s health and contraception a priority. When I lived in Indonesia, and was helping at an urban health clinic in one of the poorest of Jakarta’s slums, I asked my Director, “Can we hand out condoms too?” And he said, “Do you want to die?”
We handed out antibiotics, diagnosed skin diseases and helped people get hospital treatment if they needed it. The most important thing we did was help people get clean water, which helps improve dental health, and intestinal health.
Because of systemic oppression of women and religion, it is a very tricky thing in a lot of third world communities, to get contraception as part of the health agenda. But it is needed.
Mazarine
http://wildwomanfundraising.com
Hi Mazarine! What a lovely name! Thank you for taking the time to comment on our blog. It’s good to be able to view women’s issues from a global perspective in order to find ways to work within the established cultural and religious boundaries while still thinking of alternative ways to help.
Autumn 🙂
I recently subscribed to Bill and Melinda’s facebook page
http://www.facebook.com/billmelindagatesfoundation?ref=ts
Its a bit disconcerning that they only have 75000 fans, other pages have millions of fans and they certainly do not provide the same type of help that Bill and Melinda are providing.
Read their most recent post about to find out how a doctor and Save the Children are saving the lives of mothers and children in Bangladesh.
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/foundationnotes/Pages/gary-darmstadt-saving-infant-lives-in-bangladesh-100608.aspx
Thanks
Jake