A profile in bold leadership: Deputy Mayor of Athens Amalia Zepou
August 15, 2017
If there’s one good thing to come out of the Greek financial crisis, it’s that the turmoil provoked many people throughout the country to pitch in—both to put Greece back on track and to provide each other critical services when the government was cutting back. Documentary filmmaker Amalia Zepou was one of those citizen volunteers, helping clean vacant lots in her Athens neighborhood, teaching neighbors how to recycle, and tending to a community garden. The experience opened Zepou’s eyes to the vastness of this volunteer movement—“It was a phenomenon,” she said—and to the fact that there was nothing connecting these new groups of volunteers to each other or to the city.
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A profile in bold leadership: Denver Mayor Michael Hancock
August 1, 2017
As a former community organizer, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock knows the importance of outreach and listening to different voices. It’s a principle that Hancock has committed to as the architect of Peak Academy, a city-focused program that trains employees to eliminate waste and improve the way government works rather than relying on outside consultants and experts.
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Innovators crisscross the U.S. in eight week sprint
July 31, 2017
By James Anderson, Bloomberg Philanthropies Government Innovation Team
2,000 hours of skills-building workshops, delivered to more than 3,000 municipal leaders in 300 cities across 45 states. All in eight short summer weeks.
Welcome to the first phase of the 2017 Mayors Challenge, Bloomberg Philanthropies’ flagship effort to encourage cities to generate bold responses to the urgent challenges they face.
Starting this week, Bloomberg Philanthropies and its network of innovation experts are crisscrossing the country to work with city leaders and their teams. The plan? Provide guidance on developing a bold idea for the Mayors Challenge, while also giving municipal officials cutting-edge tools to identify and tackle daunting challenges – so they can invest in innovation long after the Mayors Challenge ends.
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Meet our 2017 CollegePoint Scholars! (Part 3)
July 28, 2017
Thirty CollegePoint students from the high school Class of 2017 were selected to receive scholarships based on their stellar academic achievement and completion of key CollegePoint milestones. The scholarship, supported by the Thompson Family Foundation and Bloomberg LP employees, is a last-dollar award designed to cover unmet costs for students at their institution of choice. These students, who represent fourteen states, will be enrolling in 25 of the top college and universities nationwide this fall.
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How 40 mayors are learning to solve the world’s biggest problems
July 20, 2017
By Tenley E. Albright, MD and Bloomberg Philanthropies Board Member
I really like something Michael Bloomberg says about mayors—that they do almost everything governors and presidents do, except sign treaties. It’s a point I kept returning to this week as I attended the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative, a first-of-its-kind executive training program for 40 mayors from around the world. That’s because everything I experienced throughout the program—during lectures, group discussions, and one-on-one conversations with participants—reminded me that mayors are agents of action. And, as our cities face increasingly urgent programs, it’s our mayors who will lead us to the most promising solutions.
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Meet our 2017 CollegePoint Scholars! (Part 2)
July 14, 2017
Thirty CollegePoint students from the high school Class of 2017 were selected to receive scholarships based on their stellar academic achievement and completion of key CollegePoint milestones. The scholarship, supported by the Thompson Family Foundation and Bloomberg LP employees, is a last-dollar award designed to cover unmet costs for students at their institution of choice. These students, who represent fourteen states, will be enrolling in 25 of the top colleges and universities nationwide this fall.
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Vibrant Oceans Q&A: Fighting illegal fishing through Global Fishing Watch
July 13, 2017
The global losses due to illegal fishing and overfishing cost the world’s economy up to $23.5 billion annually. Vessels are getting away with these harmful practices by failing to report where they are fishing and what they are catching. They’re fishing in protected waters and depleting the fisheries of certain species, diminishing populations to irreparable lows, harming the livelihoods of and depleting an important source of protein for populations in many of the world’s countries.
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How Budget Advocacy is Central to Family Planning in Uganda
July 11, 2017
“Family planning is good for the health of the mother, good for the health of children, and for the welfare of the family.”
These words — true as they are — didn’t always reflect Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s position on the matter. Despite being an early proponent of large family sizes, he changed his position on family planning some years ago. And advocates across Uganda have been working diligently to make sure that other government leaders across the country follow suit — and put their money where their mouth is when it comes to investing in family planning efforts not only at the national level but also locally.
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Meet our 2017 CollegePoint Scholars! (Part 1)
July 7, 2017
Thirty CollegePoint students from the high school Class of 2017 were selected to receive scholarships based on their stellar academic achievement and completion of key CollegePoint milestones. The scholarship, supported by the Thompson Family Foundation and Bloomberg LP employees, is a last-dollar award designed to cover unmet costs for students at their institution of choice. These students, who represent fourteen states, will be enrolling in 25 of the top colleges and universities nationwide this fall.
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Public Health Team Q&A: Recent wins in tobacco control globally and in the US
June 28, 2017
Bloomberg Philanthropies has funded a global initiative to reduce tobacco use since 2007, and progress on passing evidence-based policies at country-level is expected to save 30 million lives. Currently, the Bloomberg Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use (BI) focuses on 10 priority countries (India, China, Brazil, Mexico, Viet Nam, Philippines, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Ukraine) and it supports the implementation of the WHO MPOWER policies – a set of evidence based policies such as smoke-free public places and advertising bans. Other areas of work include, holding the tobacco industry accountable, using global communications efforts to keep tobacco control on the global public health agenda, and further deepening support for tobacco taxes.
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