Social Good Summit: Day 1 Recap

 

The UN Foundation's and Mashable's 2011 Social Good Summit opened to a packed auditorium at New York City's 92Y. Here are highlights from the first day of the four day summit.

 "We have to work together like never before. It is no longer you or me. It is you and me." Ted Turner

UN Foundation's founder and media mogul, Ted Turner, opened the summit with a very witty chat with Mashable Editor Adam Ostrow. Aside from keeping the audience in stitches, Ted Turner pointed to important goals to work towards including disarming nuclear weapons, reducing climate change, and providing easier access to electricity. This being UN Week, Turner also added that the UN is still very relevant with the many issues that the world needs to tackle currently.

"The UN is getting better at telling the story, but we need the public to share the story."  Valerie Amos, UN Under-Secretary-General

Monique Coleman, a singer and philanthropist, and Valerie Amos, the UN Under-Secretary-General, led a discussion on engaging youth in humanitarian action and focused on the power of connectivity. Coleman stated "Technology is a tool to get us somewhere" but also asked how should we take online interaction among youth and convert it to offline, tangible efforts.

"If you want to expedite education, leverage the children themselves." Nicholas Negroponte, Founder of One Laptop per Child Foundation

One Laptop per Child founder Nicholas Negroponte aims to tackle universal education through technology. Already the organization has gained success in Uruguay, where every single child between the ages of five and fifteen have a laptop. But to achieve universal education, Negroponte argues that building schools and training teachers are not enough. In fact, he points out that many teachers in the developing world are illiterate themselves (shocking stat: 25% of teachers in Afghanistan are illiterate). He believes that children can learn on their own. The organization will be testing this notion out.

"It is our time to use technology innovatively and socially to affect change." Michael Teoh, a youth ambassador with One Young World

 The next two presentations highlighted the power of younger generations. David Jones, the founder of One Young World, claimed that the young generations of today are the most unique as they are the most knowledgeable, responsible, and powerful generation. "Eighty-four percent of the world’s young people believe it is their duty to change the world for the better. Eighty-two percent believe they can do so," Jones added. He also said that today's leaders are failing and they should listen to the younger generations to find solutions to global problems. 

Nancy Lublin's presentation was short but captivating. (She also opened her talk with getting the audience to sing Whitney Houston's Greatest Love of All!) As CEO of Do Something, she knows how important it is target the younger generation. Her tactic: texting. Texting has a 100% open rate and only a 0.4 percent opt-out rate among youth.

"We are on the cusp of a huge wave of deaths in the Horn of Africa. But it doesn’t have to be that way." Raj Shah, USAID Administrator

With the famine crisis in the Horn of Africa still ongoing, the organizers of the summit were wise to devote some time to speaking on possible solutions. Raj Shah stated that the USAID launched a new online initiative in response to the crisis - FWD (Famine War Drought). "The FWD campaign is our attempt to make our world smaller, to connect people with the clear knowledge and understanding of exactly what is happening in the Horn and giving them a powerful way to respond," Shah said. The new campaign provides live and accessible real-time, open source data as well as online citizen engagement.