Join a bicycle ride from Boston to Montreal to New York to help reduce suffering in developing countries through women's empowerment, education, and health care. The D.R.E.A.M. (Development, Relief, Education, Aid, and Mobilize) Ride will take place from August 3-17, 2007.

The William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan is hosting a Base of the Pyramid Conference, September 9-11.  This conference will bring together leading thinkers and practitioners in the field of international development.

Keynote speakers include C.K. Prahalad and Stuart Hart.

Tourism Cares, a nonprofit charity supported by the tourism industry, administers the Worldwide Grant Program to support tourism-related nonprofits working to preserve, conserve, and restore the world’s natural, cultural, and historic treasures.

Primary consideration is to fund projects and programs whose goal is capital improvements that serve to protect, restore, or conserve sites of exceptional cultural, historic, or natural significance; or the education of local host communities and the traveling public about conservation and preservation of sites of exceptional cultural, historical, or natural significance.

Grants of up to $100,000 are made to both US and non-US recipients.

Deadlines: June 1 and October 1, 2007.

A program of the Proteus Fund, the Colombe Foundation seeks to create a peaceful world through changes in American policy. The fund supports efforts working toward the elimination of weapons of mass destruction, a shift from war to conflict prevention and resolution, and a shift from military spending to investments in programs addressing poverty, environmental degradation, and other root causes of violence. The foundation currently makes grants to organizations in the US only.

Deadline: September 3, 2007

The Jennings Randolph Program for International Peace awards Senior Fellowships to enable outstanding scholars, policy makers, journalists, and other professionals from around the world to conduct research at the US Institute of Peace on important issues concerning international conflict and peace.

Priority is given to proposals that promise to make a timely contribution to the understanding and resolution of ongoing and emerging international conflicts.

USIP is especially interested in proposals addressing problems of the Muslim world, post-war reconstruction and peacebuilding and stability operations in Iraq and elsewhere, and responses to terrorism and political violence. Fellowships are open to citizens of any country.

Deadline: September 17, 2007.

In the year 2000 Victoria Hale launched the Institute for OneWorld Health, a nonprofit pharmaceutical company that develops drugs and vaccines for diseases that primarily affect developing countries. Although infectious diseases account for only 10 percent of deaths in developed countries, they cause 60 percent of deaths among the world's poorest people. OneWorld intends to bring drugs to market at costs affordable to poor people and countries.

It has set up a manufacturing and marketing collaborative to begin production of its first drug, which will treat visceral leishmaniasis, a fatal tropical disease transmitted by insect bites that currently afflicts 1.5 million.

Learn about her story in this episode of Uncommon Heroes. If it gets enough votes it will be broadcast on their TV channel. You know what you have to do: vote!

ACCION International is pleased to announce the release of the following publication:
 
ACCION InSight No. 22: Microfinance Cracking the Capital Markets II By Rekha Reddy
 
Investment in microfinance, particularly cross-border investment, is booming.  Who is investing? What are the latest deals?   What types of advances need to occur to build a healthy infrastructure for debt and equity investments into microfinance? How do we manage the risks investors face?  These questions were discussed as part of the second Microfinance Cracking the Capital Markets conference, hosted by ACCION International and sponsored by Credit Suisse.

The conference, which took place in New York on March 19-20, 2007, brought together more than 300 fund managers, emerging markets specialists and intermediaries to consider these questions.  It highlighted the growth in microfinance investment, innovations in structured deals and ways in which microfinance institutions (MFIs) and investments need to develop to integrate more fully into the capital markets. 
 
This publication is available for download free-of-charge.


 

The Ford Motor Company International Fellowship of the 92nd Street Y is accepting applications for the 2008 program.  Applicants must be citizens and residents of the following countries:
 
 
This annual fellowship is funded by the Ford Motor Company and organized by the 92nd Street Y to provide education and support to community leaders engaged in the nonprofit sector.  To date, 156 individuals from 41 countries have received the Ford Fellowship, which is now in its seventh year.
 
A successful applicant must demonstrate that he or she:
- is a community leader engaged in the nonprofit sector, either professionally or as a volunteer;
- is successfully addressing issues that affect the community’s well-being; and
- would benefit from an intensive three-week nonprofit management training course in New York.
    
The residency takes place June 6-June 25, 2008 in New York City. Airfare, accommodation, food, transportation, instruction, and other program-related expenses are included in the fellowship, and participants receive a small stipend upon arrival.
 
During the intensive three-week residency, Ford Fellows take classes in areas including nonprofit management strategy and leadership training at Columbia University’s Picker Center for Executive Education.  The academic curriculum is complemented by visits to model nonprofits in New York City and meetings with academic, business, and government leaders.  The experience is enhanced by Fellows’ residency at the 92nd Street Y, a community and cultural center founded in 1874 that now serves over 300,000 people annually.

Deadline for applications: June 30, 2007.