Congressman Kolbe wins Commitment to Development Award

From the Center for Global Development:

Congressman Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) has been selected as the recipient of the 2006 Commitment to Development Award. Sponsored by the Center for Global Development and Foreign Policy magazine, the award honors an individual or organization from the rich world that has made a significant contribution to changing attitudes and policies towards the developing world. An expert panel selects the recipient annually.

As I mentioned when I first posted about the award, I voted for Bill and Melinda Gates. Congressman Kolbe is a smarter pick though. The Gates, Bono, Presidents Clinton and Carter, and Doctors Without Borders already get accolades for their work; giving them this award wouldn’t garner any additional attention for international development efforts. Selecting a Republican Congressmen, however, might get some headlines.

Vote for a development superstar

The Center for Global Development is accepting votes for its annual Commitment to Development Award, which “honors an individual or organization from the rich world who has made a significant contribution to changing attitudes and policies towards the developing world.”

You can vote here (I chose Bill and Melinda Gates).

Jeffrey Sachs to speak about The Millennium Villages Project next week in Washington, DC

Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and noted author on global development, Jeffrey Sachs, is speaking March 14 in Washington, DC. Sachs is a renowned economist, although The Economist, while supportive, has written that sometimes he pushes his theses too far to support his agenda. Regardless, the discussion should be interesting and worth attending.

For more information, check the Center for Global Development’s website.

And while perusing other blogs to see what people had written about Sachs, I found Sonny Khan’s excellent summary of some of Sachs’s main points. While it’s probably not good for business for an editor to stress the value of a graphic over text, “The Giving Gap” graph speaks volumes.