As usual, no one named Clinton can say or do anything without media outlets viewing it through the 2016 lens, so when Hillary tweeted on Christmas Eve that there was “so much to do” in 2014, a choir of carolers chanted that she was implying a run for the White House. The truth is that Hillary has a job (a few jobs, actually) that she has carved out for herself at the family foundation, and she has rolled out a few initiatives over the past year. Yesterday, the foundation released this report on its 2013 activities as a blueprint for 2014 goals. As she, herself, has said, she is off the high wire and enjoying the freedom.
The Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation today released its 2013 Year-End Report, which details the many successes of the Foundation over the past year. The Clinton Foundation convenes businesses, governments, NGOs, and individuals to build partnerships that create solutions to some of the world’s most pressing challenges.
In 2013, these partnerships and investments led to progress across the Foundation’s core areas of focus: improving global health and wellness, increasing opportunity for women and girls, reducing childhood obesity, creating economic opportunity and growth, and helping communities address the effects of climate change. Among these efforts, the Foundation launched two new initiatives led by Hillary Rodham Clinton, which focus on the health of children aged zero to five, and the full participation of women and girls across the globe.
“I am proud of the milestones our Foundation has reached this year,” said President Bill Clinton. “Now 6.8 million have access to HIV/AIDS medicine; 20,000 schools in the US have healthier food options; and 300 new commitments to action that will improve the lives of 22 million around the world were made through the Clinton Global Initiative. We continued to build on our existing work and added new initiatives that will have even more impact in the years to come.”
Highlights of this year’s report from each of the Foundation’s initiatives include:
- Alliance for a Healthier Generation: Added more than 5,000 schools to the Healthy Schools Program that serves more than 12.2 million children with healthier food to prevent childhood obesity.
- Clinton Climate Initiative: Built on the success of the HEAL program (partnering with employers and workers to make commercial and home energy efficiency upgrades), expanding from one program in Arkansas to six programs across the nation.
- Clinton Development Initiative: Expanded programs in Malawi, Tanzania, and Rwanda that help farmers generate greater harvests and more stable income; including bringing the Anchor Farm Project into Tanzania, which will increase incomes for 120,000 farmers.
- Clinton Foundation in Haiti: Facilitated $30 million in foreign direct investment in Haiti and as part of the focus on agriculture, energy, and the environment, and facilitated the planting of more than 350,000 trees.
- Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership: Opened new supply and training center enterprises in Colombia and a new distribution venture in Peru, to help open economic opportunities for small producers and businesses.
- Clinton Global Initiative: Brought together partners who have made more than 300 commitments in 2013 valued at over $12.9 billion that, when fully funded and implemented, will impact the lives of more than 22 million; held convenings of CGI America, CGI University, and CGI International.
- Clinton Health Access Initiative: Provided access to 6.8 million people in over 70 countries with more affordable HIV/AIDS medicine, while reducing prices for medicine and vaccines. In five years, worked to increase the number of infant HIV diagnostic tests from 80,000 to over 1 million.
- Clinton Health Matters Initiative: Expanded community transformation health and wellness programs in four markets in the United States; generated partnerships with national and local partners that represent more than $100 million in investments in health and wellness programs that benefit more than 25 million across the country.
- Clinton Presidential Center: Hosted a symposium on intelligence and presidential policymaking; developed exhibits on the Northern Ireland peace process and Oscar de le Renta while marking over three million visitors to the Little Rock Center since 2004.
- Too Small to Fail (new in 2013): Released a strategic roadmap to help improve the health and well-being of children aged zero to five, including a public awareness campaign and a call to action for private sector partners.
- No Ceilings: The Full Participation Project (new in 2013): Begun laying the framework for strategic partnerships that will assess progress made on participation by women and girls in the global community in the twenty years since the UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing
- Day of Action: Since it was founded in 2012, the Day of Action has held eight events which have mobilized 2,400 volunteers donating more than 12,600 volunteer hours.
These are just a few highlights from these initiatives’ progress. The full report is available at http://www.clintonfoundation.org/files/2013year-endreport.pdf.
Today, Next Generation, with which Hillary’s Too Small to Fail initiative is associated, tweeted the link to this article. The simple graph tells a powerful story about time and shared space. Parents who must work two and in some cases three jobs to feed a family clearly do not have the time to occupy the same space as their small children to engage in these important activities. Among possible solutions are raising the minimum wage, reducing the need for parents to work multiple jobs, and providing affordable child care that can supplement parental contact with children ages 0-5.
Time has its “Person of the Year.” Amazon has its books of the year. Pretty Much Amazing has its mixtapes of the year. Buzzfeed has its insane-stories-from-Florida of the year. And Wonkblog, of course, has its graphs of the year. For 2013, we asked some of the year’s most interesting, important and influential thinkers to name their favorite graph of the year — and why they chose it. Here’s Hillary Clinton’s.
I used to sing to Chelsea when she was a baby — until she was old enough to gently tell me that I couldn’t carry a tune. This graph shows us that about two thirds of our youngest children are fortunate enough to have a family member tell them a story or sing to them regularly, and about half are read to by a family member. That’s a great start. We’ve known for years that singing, reading, and talking to our children helps their brains grow and develop. Now new research is telling us even more about how important this is for our kids as they build vocabularies and prepare for school. Seven hundred new neural connections are formed every second, laying the foundation for learning, behavior, health. What happens to children’s brains in the earliest years shapes the adults they become, the successes they achieve and the contributions they make to our economy and our society.
The bottom line is that Hillary Clinton has more imagination than than she is credited with by some folks. She can actually think of ways to make contributions to society and occupy her time other than running for office. People stuck in that 2016 mode might assist her causes by getting on board with her initiatives rather than spending their time insisting that she change course and run. In 2014 we should give her that space and support and address the 2014 mid-term elections and current problems (as the most fascinating person told Barbara Walters) rather than pushing the 2016 issue. Hillary is too busy to pay attention to all of that clamor anyway. Give the lady some space and time. Perhaps some of the time spent harassing her to run might be better spent singing and reading stories in spaces occupied by little people.
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Hillary Clinton
