Aravind to receive $1.5 million Hilton Humanitarian Prize
Conrad N. Hilton Foundation announces jury selection of innovative eye care provider that has saved millions from blindness in India, now recognized as a low-cost model for efficient healthcare globally
Contact: Barbara Casey, Hilton Foundation
(310) 473-8090 bcasey@cswpr.com
LOS ANGELES – March 5, 2010 – Aravind Eye Care System, the world’s largest eye care provider that has developed innovative technologies allowing it to perform 300,000 eye surgeries each year – 70 percent subsidized or free for the poor – has been selected to receive the 2010 Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize of $1.5 million. The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation presents the annual award, the world’s largest humanitarian prize, to an organization that is doing extraordinary work to alleviate human suffering. More than 200 nominations are received from throughout the world, and an independent international jury makes the final selection.
There are 45 million blind people in the world, the majority in the developing world, and 12 million of these are in India. Because of extreme sun and genetics, Indians get cataracts in their 40s and 50s versus 60s and 70s in the United States. Without surgery they go blind, losing many of their productive years. Realizing that it was possible to end much of the unnecessary blindness in his country, Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy, known as Dr. V., upon his retirement in 1976 from government health service, mortgaged his home to start an eye clinic – Aravind – with 11 beds in a rented house in Madurai, Tamil Nadu.
As of 2009, Aravind has handled over 29 million outpatient visits and performed over 3.6 million surgeries. It operates five Aravind hospitals in India supported by a network of clinics, manages four others, and has well established research laboratories and a manufacturing facility producing high quality, low cost ophthalmic supplies. It is now expanding its model globally, establishing seven eye hospitals in Bangladesh with Grameen Bank and training all the staffs. It has worked with over 260 eye hospitals from India and other developing countries to expand their capacity to address eye diseases and conditions in addition to cataracts. It has participated in establishing national eye care plans for India, Rwanda and Eritrea.
“Aravind is a remarkable enterprise and its scale of impact on millions of patients is phenomenal,” said Steven M. Hilton, CEO and president of the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation. “In a 30-year quest to end blindness in India, Aravind has developed innovative technologies that are now a model for both the developed and developing world.”
“The worldwide visibility and recognition that comes with the Hilton Humanitarian Prize will allow us to bring our healthcare model to alleviate suffering in many more parts of the world,” said Dr. P. Namperumalsamy, Aravind’s chairman. “Over 80 percent of the developing world’s blindness and impaired vision is needless, causing enormous personal and family suffering and severely limiting a country’s ability to develop. Our goal is to manage 100 hospitals worldwide by 2015 to provide sight to many millions and the Hilton Humanitarian Prize will help us reach this goal.”
Inspired by the fast-food giant McDonald’s capability to replicate the same quality and efficiency anywhere in the world, Dr. V. adapted this concept to eye care, standardizing everything from systems and equipment to training. Nurses can be transferred to any Aravind facility and immediately start work. An assembly-line approach to surgery increases productivity tenfold. Nurses and paramedical staff handle routine tasks while doctors concentrate on diagnosis and surgeries. While a typical ophthalmologist might perform 250 to 400 surgeries annually, an Aravind doctor will average 2,000 or more. Equipment that typically might be used a few times a day is used 30 times a day at Aravind. The result is that Aravind runs at one-fifth the cost of similar hospitals, leading to its model being replicated in other countries and by other medical disciplines.
“Every 15 minutes a doctor at an Aravind Eye Hospital completes an operation and restores someone’s eyesight,” reported Hilton. “Yet, with this great efficiency, there is no compromise on quality or care. Aravind is so respected for its unique model that students from Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Yale and the University of California at San Francisco come to India for training.”
Aravind also has developed a cost-effective revenue model in which only 30 percent of patients pay and the remaining 70 percent are treated free or almost free. It depends on volume and efficiency to keep its low-cost structure, establishing eye camps in remote villages that bring in about half of its patients. Many are treated on-site with even prescription glasses dispensed in rural camps.
When intraocular lenses were introduced, Aravind sought to use them but, at $200 each, they were too costly. So Aravind set up Aurolab to manufacture these lenses which now cost as little as $2 on average and are currently supplied to 120 countries, commanding 8 percent of the global market. Aurolab also manufactures other supplies such as ophthalmic drops, sutures and lasers for treating diabetic retinopathy. Aravind has accomplished all of this without assuming debt and with minimal charitable contributions.
About the Hilton Prize
The 2010 prize will be presented for the first time at the Global Philanthropy Forum’s 9th annual conference at a dinner on Tuesday, April 20, 2010, at the Hotel Sofitel in Redwood City, CA. The Hilton Prize jury includes: Princess Salimah Aga Khan, international ambassador for SOS Children’s Villages; Catherine Bertini, former executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme and professor of public administration, Syracuse University; Gro Harlem Brundtland, MPH, former director-general of the World Health Organization and former prime minister of Norway; Eric M. Hilton, director, Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, and son of Conrad Hilton; James R. Galbraith, director, Conrad N. Hilton Foundation; Olara A. Otunnu, president of LBL Foundation for Children, former UN under-secretary-general and special representative for children and armed conflict and current candidate for president of Uganda; and Professor Amartya Sen, Nobel Prize Laureate in economics and Lamont University professor at Harvard University.
Former Hilton Prize recipients are recognized leaders in the humanitarian world and include: PATH (Seattle, WA), 2009, BRAC (Bangladesh), 2008; Tostan (Senegal), 2007; Women for Women International (Washington, DC), 2006; Partners In Health (Massachusetts), 2005; Heifer International (Arkansas), 2004; International Rehabilitation Center for Torture Victims (Denmark), 2003; SOS Children’s Villages (Austria), 2002; St. Christopher’s Hospice (England), 2001; Casa Alianza (Costa Rica), 2000; African Medical and Research Foundation (Kenya), 1999; Doctors Without Borders (France), 1998; International Rescue Committee (New York), 1997; and Operation Smile (Virginia), 1996.
About the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation
The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation was created in 1944 by international business pioneer Conrad N. Hilton, who founded Hilton Hotels and left his fortune to help the world’s disadvantaged and vulnerable people. The Foundation currently conducts strategic initiatives in five priority areas: providing safe water, ending chronic homelessness, preventing substance abuse, caring for vulnerable children, and extending Conrad Hilton’s support for the work of Catholic Sisters. Following selection by an independent international jury, the Foundation annually awards the $1.5 million Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize to a nonprofit organization doing extraordinary work to reduce human suffering. Since its inception, the Foundation has awarded nearly $900 million in grants and distributed $80 million in 2009. The Foundation's current assets are nearly $2 billion. For more information, please visit www.hiltonfoundation.org.
Foundation-Financed Office in Liberia Seeks to Build and Guide Philanthropic Efforts
By Ian Wilhelm
This month about two dozen philanthropists will trek to the West African nation of Liberia to witness firsthand the deep scars left by 14 years of civil war and learn how they can play a role healing these wounds.
While visits to Africa by American donors are not unusual, what is unusual is how this trip was organized. The four-day meeting is the product of several nonprofit groups working with the Liberian Philanthropy Secretariat, a government office entirely financed by foundations. The secretariat’s goal is to coordinate philanthropic efforts in the fledgling democracy of 3.4 million people.
The office is widely considered the first of its kind in Africa, and some grant makers involved with the project hope the idea can be copied to assist other nations recovering from armed conflict.
For Liberia, the secretariat is a sign of a growing optimism about the nation’s future. The overthrow of the brutal dictator Charles G. Taylor and the 2005 election of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa’s first female president in modern history, have created an unprecedented opportunity that could benefit the whole region, say grant makers.
“There’s a hope that Liberia can be a success story on the African continent, that it can have a spillover effect,” says Mike Boyer, a spokesman for Humanity United, a Redwood City, Calif., foundation that is providing $75,000 to the secretariat and an additional $21,000 for this month’s meeting of donors. “It can be an anchor of stability in West Africa.”
Giving People a Voice
The idea for the secretariat began in earnest at the 2008 Clinton Global Initiative, the former president’s annual charity conference.
After meeting about 40 nonprofit leaders privately, Mrs. Johnson Sirleaf in a speech urged them to collaborate better in her country and elsewhere.
“If you want more bang for the buck, you’ve really got to get together,” the African president said.
Donors listened. The Daphne Foundation, Humanity United, the McCall MacBain Foundation, the NoVo Foundation, and Wellspring Financial Advisors committed money to create a project that evolved into the secretariat.
The philanthropy body opened its doors in April. With an annual budget of about $200,000, the two-person secretariat is officially part of Mrs. Johnson Sirleaf’s executive office and is overseen by Natty B. Davis, a senior adviser to the president.
Mr. Davis is quick to point out that the secretariat is a coordinating body; it does not tell foundations what to do. Grant makers “interact with my office largely to get a feel for if they are on the right track in terms of considering such-and-such project or program,” he says. “We give them feedback, but we try not to say, 'You can do this, you can’t do this.’”
He has urged philanthropists to work with the country’s official antipoverty plan and to build an educated and informed citizenry.
We want to “strengthen people’s voices and people’s ability to be able to engage with public officials,” he says.
The office has also created a Web site, http://supportliberia.com, to introduce potential new donors to the country. “The level of need here is just staggering. There’s definitely a need for more philanthropic support,” says Dan Hymowitz, an American who is the program manger of the secretariat.
The site lists international aid charities operating in the country, projects grant makers are pursuing, and informative films and books about Liberia.
Brokering Partnerships
Foundations that work with the secretariat describe it as a handy guide through a region hobbled by rampant poverty and where shoddy roads and poor communications infrastructure make it hard for a donor to get information from people and groups working directly with Liberians.
“To his credit, Minister Davis has done a good job trying to broker partnerships while keeping the foundations doing what they do best, which is flexible, independent projects that can be quicker moving than some of the bilateral donors and government resources,” says Rory Eakin, associate director of investments at Humanity United.
Adds Yvonne L. Moore, executive director of the Daphne Foundation: “The work that the secretariat is doing is to encourage funders to stay focused on what Liberia’s goals are. It just makes sure we’re all on the same page.”
The Daphne Foundation, which was founded by Abigail E. Disney, the grandniece of Walt Disney, is providing $30,000 over three years to the secretariat. Ms. Moore says Mr. Davis and his staff members have connected the New York grant maker with worthwhile charitable ventures.
For example, after meeting the Liberian agriculture minister last year, the Daphne fund started supporting work to clean rivers and swampy lowlands from snails and leeches, which will allow farmers to grow rice again in those areas.
While the secretariat is still young and its list of accomplishments short, some philanthropy experts hope other troubled nations can learn from it.
“While our current focus is on Liberia, our objective is to test a model of philanthropy in a post-crisis setting and to see whether this model can be exported to other states emerging from crisis,” says Jane Wales, president of the Global Philanthropy Forum, an association of donors that is helping to arrange this month’s meeting in Monrovia, Liberia’s capital.
Some caution that the Liberian model may have limited possibilities beyond the country’s borders. Sudan, for example, has considered setting up a similar office, but it could just be a way of asserting control over nonprofit work there, say philanthropy leaders.
“Issues of corruption, how money might be used, and who your interlocutors are, and so forth, are issues you’d really want to vet,” says Ed Marcum, Humanity United’s director of investments. “There are some unique circumstances in Liberia that allow us to have a real high-level of comfort with it.”
Click here to read Jane Wales' blog while in Liberia.
New Web Platform Encourages Foundation Transparency in the Digital Age
Glasspockets.org
Contact:
Cheryl Loe, Communications Project Manager, The Foundation Center
(888) 356-0354 ext. 701 communications@foundationcenter.org
Janet Camarena, Director, San Francisco Office, The Foundation Center
(415) 397-0902 x100 jfc@foundationcenter.org
New York, NY — February 1, 2010. How does the foundation of the 21st century achieve transparency? Does it post a searchable grants database at its web site? Does it use Twitter or Facebook to distribute news about its program priorities? At www.glasspockets.org, a web site launched today by the Foundation Center, foundations that have taken the lead in communicating about their work, particularly using online resources and social networks, are featured along with direct links to their current initiatives. Designed to inspire greater openness among private foundations, Glasspockets encourages these organizations to tell the stories of their successes — and failures — in part by highlighting exemplary efforts of their peers. According to Foundation Center President Bradford K. Smith, the term "glass pockets" was used more than 50 years ago by then-Carnegie Corporation of New York Board Chair Russell Leffingwell, who told a McCarthy-era Congressional hearing: "We think that the foundation should have glass pockets." His comment underscored popular sentiments — still held today — that organizations receiving tax exemptions for serving the public good must be willing to clearly explain how they are doing so.
A series of such hearings inspired the creation of the Foundation Center in l956 as the "glass pockets" through which America's foundations could be made more transparent to the public. "The Foundation Center believes strongly in the kind of freedom that allows U.S. foundations to be innovative, take risks, and work on long-term solutions to the world's most vexing problems," says Smith. "To preserve this freedom, foundations must tell the story of what they do, why they do it, and what difference they make. Glasspockets will serve as a central source of knowledge that can fuel this movement toward greater transparency in philanthropy."
Visitors to glasspockets.org will find essential facts about all 97,000 U.S. foundations, illustrations of philanthropy's impact on the issues that people care about, and information on the ways in which foundations are striving to become more transparent. The site features real-time Twitter feeds to convey "What foundations are saying right now," while "Foundation Transparency 2.0" showcases the growing number of foundations that are using social media. "Who Has Glass Pockets?" provides at-a-glance profiles of individual foundations' online communication practices according to information they make public regarding their governance, finances, grantmaking processes, and performance metrics. Project manager Janet Camarena confirms that foundations are coming forward and volunteering to be put under the magnifying glass and hopes others will use what they learn on the site to conduct their own assessments and open them to public view.
Glasspockets was developed together with partners, including the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) and the Communications Network. CEP President Phil Buchanan says, "We have seen in our work a link between foundation effectiveness and clear and open communication. Glasspockets.org takes an important step towards facilitating that communication, thereby making philanthropy not just less mysterious, but also more effective." Communications Network Executive Director Bruce Trachtenberg adds, "It is so important for foundations to share — with each other and the public — information about the issues they are tackling and what they are accomplishing. Glasspockets.org serves as a window through which people can look to gain understanding about the work and relevance of institutional philanthropy, and it offers suggestions to foundations about ways they can make their work more transparent." Other partners include the Global Philanthropy Forum, Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, and the One World Trust in London.
About the Foundation Center
Established in 1956 and today supported by close to 550 foundations, the Foundation Center is the nation's leading authority on philanthropy, connecting nonprofits and the grantmakers supporting them to tools they can use and information they can trust. The Center maintains the most comprehensive database on U.S. grantmakers and their grants — a robust, accessible knowledge bank for the sector. It also operates research, education, and training programs designed to advance knowledge of philanthropy at every level. Thousands of people visit the Center's web site each day and are served in its five regional library/learning centers and its network of more than 400 funding information centers located in public libraries, community foundations, and educational institutions in every U.S. state and beyond.
For more information, please visit foundationcenter.org or call (212) 620-4230
Contact: Barbara Casey, Hilton Foundation, (310) 990-0750, bcasey@cswpr.com
Jill Freeman, Global Philanthropy Forum, (415) 293-4645, JFreeman@wacsf.org
Los Angeles, September 8, 2009 -- The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation and the Global Philanthropy Forum today announced a strategic alliance that calls for the presentation of the annual Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize to be made at the annual conference of the Global Philanthropy Forum (GPF) starting in April 2010. Steven M. Hilton, president and CEO of the Hilton Foundation, will join GPF’s Advisory Council and a Hilton representative will serve on the GPF’s Conference Steering Group.
“The Global Philanthropy Forum is the premier gathering of donors in international philanthropy and presentation of the prize at its annual conference will showcase the Hilton Prize recipient before more than 500 leading donors,” said Hilton. “This is an exceptional venue to raise visibility for the humanitarian accomplishments of our prize laureates.”
“The Hilton Prize is the humanitarian world’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize. Its prestige and renown will enhance our conference, and be a source of inspiration to our community of philanthropists,” said
The 2010 Hilton Humanitarian Prize of $1.5 million, largest in the humanitarian world, will be awarded on the evening of April 20, the last dinner of the GPF annual conference at the Hotel Sofitel in
In order to fit the timetable of the GPF annual conference, the Hilton Prize schedule for 2010 will be altered, according to Judy Miller, vice president of the Hilton Foundation and director of the Hilton Prize. Because there are only six months between the presentation of the 2009 Hilton Prize to PATH in
The Hilton Humanitarian Prize recipients are recognized leaders in the humanitarian world and include: PATH (Seattle) 2009; BRAC (Bangladesh), 2008; Tostan (Senegal), 2007; Women for Women International (Washington, DC), 2006; Partners In Health (Massachusetts), 2005; Heifer International (Arkansas), 2004; International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (Denmark), 2003; SOS Children’s Villages (Austria), 2002; St. Christopher’s Hospice (England), 2001; Casa Alianza (Costa Rica), 2000; African Medical and Research Foundation (Kenya), 1999; Doctors Without Borders (France), 1998; International Rescue Committee (New York), 1997; and Operation Smile (Virginia), 1996.
Based in
For more information, please visit www.hiltonfoundation.org.
A learning network of over 750 philanthropists from around the world, the Global Philanthropy Forum aims to build a community of donors and social investors committed to international causes, and to inform, enable and enhance the strategic nature of their work. By building, and continually refreshing a lasting learning community, the GPF seeks to expand the number of philanthropists who will be strategic in pursuit of international causes. President and co-founder
For more information, please visit www.philanthropyforum.org
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| The GPF at the Clinton Global Initiative The GPF was part of a commitment at the 2008 Clinton Global Initiative to spur post-conflict reconstruction and development in Liberia. Click here to read more. |
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The Chronicle
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