Foreign Policy Blogs

Solutions: Gates Funds the Unique and Unusual

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has released the results from their latest round of funding for innovative projects.  This round consists of 78 awards, of $100,000 each, and were chosen from nearly 3,000 submissions.  Reading the list was a wonder.  Winners include ideas for carnivorous plants and insecticide-treated scarves to prevent malaria, a circumcision tool for traditional ceremonies in Africa, and ultrasound as a reversible form of male contraception.  Ariel Schwartz at FastCompany has done a great roundup of the most interesting awards, and you can see the full list here.

 

Author

Cynthia Schweer Rayner

Cynthia Schweer Rayner is an independent consultant and philanthropy advisor specializing in public health, social entrepreneurship and scalable business models for positive social change. As a recovering management consultant, she spent several months living in South Africa, and later co-founded the US branch of an organization providing support to orphaned and vulnerable children. In 2009, she was an LGT Venture Philanthropy Fellow, working with mothers2mothers (m2m), a multinational non-profit organization employing mothers living with HIV as peer educators to positive pregnant women. She currently works with individuals, companies and nonprofits to finance and develop models for positive change. Cynthia has an MBA from INSEAD and a BA in English Literature from Georgetown University. She currently lives in Cape Town and visits New York frequently, where she co-owns a Manhattan-based yoga studio, mang'Oh yoga (www.mangohstudio.com).