Hope Is A Verb - UNGA 2025 - The End of Aid?

Episode Date: October 15, 2025

Two weeks ago, Amy was on the ground in New York during the UN General Assembly and Climate Week. Attending various events, including the Clinton Global Initiative, Amy spoke with some incredible people who work on the frontlines of climate, healthcare, education and crisis response. Despite dwindling aid budgets and mounting challenges, these people are meeting this moment with big, bold ambition while quietly reshaping the future of development. From the ‘miracle drug’ for HIV to energy access for all and the rewilding project that will mend ecosystems across the heart of South America, this episode may expand what you think is possible. These are the people who are fighting for a better future every single day.  Here's who you’ll meet:Carolyn Amole, Clinton Health Access InitiativeErica Coe & Frank Aswani, Coalition for Mental Health InvestmentSandra Chukwudozie, Salpha EnergyDavid Harris, Christel HouseElpida Kokkota, MexoxoGeeta Mehta, SocialCapital CreditsEmily Benson & Melanie Joiner, Integrate HealthTjada D'Oyen McKenna, Mercy CorpsDeli Saavedra & Mario Haberfeld, Jaguar Rivers Initiative  Timecodes:03:58 - HIV 'Miracle Drug'09:36 - More funding for mental health16:38 - The shift from aid to self-sufficiency17:44 - Making solar energy accessible to underserved communities in Nigeria22:54 - Working Groups at the Clinton Global Initiative24:17 - A comprehensive education model that alleviating poverty28:03 - The group who are democratising access to education for women32:53 - The social currency that banks good acts in communities37:46 - Putting women at the centre of healthcare in Togo & Guinea42:51 - Mercy Corps, the humanitarian organisation serving 38 million people46:18 - Cross-continental conservation initiative restoring the heart of South America52:45 - Final ThoughtsThis podcast is hosted by Angus Hervey and Amy Davoren-Rose from Fix The News, with audio production by Anthony Badolato, ⁠Hear That? If you want to know more about this series or are interested in sharing it with your networks, send us an email: [e-mail] 

Welcome back to Hope is a Verb. I'm Gus, and we hope you enjoyed a shot at history, our audio documentary, which we've just completed, episodes one, two, and three. If you haven't had a chance, go and check it out in our show list. It's our first big piece of original reporting. We're really proud of it. We had a great time putting it together, and we've had some wonderful feedback from our listeners. So we're going to get back into normal programming, but not quite yet, because

Amy, you were in New York a week or two ago. I am just back from the week of craziness that is UN General Assembly, Climate Week. Once again, we're invited to the Clinton Global Initiative, but I also got the chance to step inside some other rooms with the Gates Foundation and Climate Week. Okay, the million dollar, the billion dollar, maybe the trillion dollar question. How was it? Oh, wow. Okay, so last year I found this whole experience just really heady, really inspiring. It was my first time attending one of these big global gatherings, and you don't eat or drink, you're running from one person to the next. Your mind is just getting blown, panel after panel. But this year felt really different. Amy, for those of our listeners who don't know what this week is all about, can you just paint us a very quick picture of why this feels like the centre of the world?

This really is the watering hole for the entire world this week. So because you've got the UN General Assembly and New York Climate Week, you've got heads of state, heads of government, big philanthropy, as well as a whole lot of people that are running NGOs, and all of these people come together in this one tiny city to basically talk about what's going on in the world. And this year, it would have felt really intense because the world, as we know, is kind of on fire. It is. And I felt a bit uneasy going in this year. I had a lot of doubt as to what one week could really achieve.

The world feels much messier than it did in September 2024. The way I'd say it is if last year was a big revelation, this year felt like a big revolution. You know, this was a real meeting of the moment. There were big conversations happening all around the city about everything from the future of the UN. Of course, global funding was a big topic of conversation and how are we going to move forward? It really felt like everything was up for grabs this week and that felt really unsettling at times.

So was there a through line? Did you kind of walk away with anything? Yeah, I walked away with something really unexpected. I felt this deep and profound reassurance that we're going to be okay. Oh, wow. I know, right? It's kind of plot twist. But I think it's because of all the people that I got to speak to.

And these are people who I would never meet. We would probably never hear their stories, no matter how much Googling we did. And once you start talking to these people who are boots on the ground, you realize that the challenges that we're facing, these challenges are just part of, of their job. So there's a real sense of just getting on with it, but they're also really thinking outside the box about funding, about healthcare systems, about the future of education. And what was most surprising is that for a lot of them, their response to this moment was not to shy away, but to actually go bigger and bolder. So I can say from the evidence I gathered

through this week that we've got some very safe, hard-working hands out there in the world. And there's actually a lot to be excited about. Well, I'm excited to hear more about some of these people and actually to meet them. Before we do that, though, I want to just share my excitement about the big announcement that we saw from the outside coming out of that week, which was this announcement that kicked off the Clinton Global Initiative this year. The new HIV miracle drug, Lenna Kappavir, I'm sorry. so excited about this. There's been a lot of progress in the past couple of decades in the HIV

space. We've managed to scale treatment to 30 million people living with HIV, with antiretrovirals, and that's been a huge accomplishment. But every year, there are still 1.3 million people around the world who are getting newly infected. So I think it was really exciting, this new miracle drug, which AIDS campaigners are calling the most important breakthrough in the fight against AIDS in decades. This is groundbreaking stuff. It is a twice yearly injection and it has almost a hundred percent efficacy. It's sort of the closest thing we've got to a vaccine. Yeah, it is. And a lot of people have been a bit confused thinking it is a vaccine because it is a shot. It's not a vaccine, but it is the next best thing to a vaccine. I actually got to chat with Carolyn Amol, who

was the vice president, HIV, hepatitis, and TB at the Clinton Health Access Initiative. They were one of the organizations that brokered this landmark deal to get Lena Kappavir to the lower-income countries who really need it. And we'll get into that in a minute, but here's what she said about this new drug. This is the revolution in HIV prevention that could change everything if we can get it to the people who need it. It has near perfect effectiveness in preventing HIV. As long as you keep going back every six months for your injection, you no longer have a risk of acquiring HIV. This is a breakthrough revolutionary product. We throw those words out a lot. We say them a lot. Sometimes they're true.

Sometimes they're not. In this case, it really is. Now, Amy, in 2024, science called Lennacapavir, their breakthrough of the year. So already one of the biggest stories in global health, but what makes it really big is what happened this year. Because after Gilead, the developers got FDA approval, they rapidly licensed it to become a generic. And that's what's made it possible to make it affordable for developing countries. And then the new thing that's happened is that all these donors have come on board to help get the price down even more. So both the Gates Foundation and the Clinton Health Access Initiative made separate deals. And just to give an idea of the scale of this work, we are talking about a treatment that costs $28,000 a year for the two shots

and they're going to be rolling it out for $40 per person per year in non-wealthy countries. So this is the work that Carolyn and her team have been doing behind closed doors. The fact we will have a generic product available in low and middle-income countries a year and a half after it has launched in high-income countries, it really is unheard of. It's been the result of so many different governments, communities, donors to partners to the manufacturers, coming together.

And I think we can do this and must do this with other life-saving products as well. I hope it becomes the blueprint for what the future can be like. This is one of the most hopeful stories of progress in the world right now, but I can imagine that it hasn't come easy. Anytime you do a deal like this, one of the biggest challenges is being able to say this product has incredible potential and we believe it can be scaled to millions of people. And then this all has come during a year where there have been huge shifts in funding and there is great uncertainty in what the future looks like. So there were points along this process where it was like, how can we even continue?

Do we need to pause, step back, maybe see where things shake out? And we felt we could not take our foot off the gas pedal here. We really believe this has the potential to bend the curve in the epidemic. We owe Gilead, a real debt of thanks. For the first time, we have a real shot at moving from managing HIV-AIDS to actually ending. it. After the announcement, we were backstage with President Clinton, I found myself really feeling emotional. We'd had a vision for what we could do here. It has been such a challenging year in the global health space. There have not been a lot of good news stories. And we have worked

with an incredible team of such dedicated people who have persevered despite the odds. It made me feel hopeful. It really made me feel hopeful. I think this is such an incredible example of what we can achieve when the world comes together. What is so encouraging is how quickly it happened. We had the announcement of the breakthrough in 2024 and here we are towards the back end of 2025 and we've already licensed this for generics. It's got funding. It's going to be rolling out in 2006. That has happened far quicker than any other comparable global health initiative that I can think of. It usually takes around 15 years. So we're getting better at this.

And when we talk about global health, we're often thinking about infectious diseases and non-communicable diseases. But there is another big, completely forgotten category, which is mental health. Yeah. And you caught up with a group of people who are now trying to work

to get more money into mental health around the world, which is really interesting. So I met up with the Coalition for Mental Health Investment. This was the big announcement at the beginning of CGI last year. There are five different partners involved across health research, philanthropy, the Clinton Foundation are also involved. Their mission is to close the gap in funding for mental health, which I was really shocked to learn. Gets only about 1 to 2% of global funding, right? Wow. So their goal is to have the funding match

the global need in one generation. This sounds impossible, Amy. You're talking about raising money for an underfunded part of healthcare when there's no money for healthcare. Yeah, exactly. This is why I really wanted to catch up with them. But listen to what they said. This is Erica Coe from McKinsey Health Institute and Frank Oswani from the African Venture Philanthropy Alliance. It is wonderful to have the chance to reconnect. I think the last 12 months have flown by. And you're right, the conditions continue to change in the world. if anything, the need is that much greater. And we're so glad that we formed the coalition when we did.

The situation around the declining funding, as much as it's been highlighted in the last 12 months, it's been going on for the last 10 years. But I think what this has done is created a sense of urgency around the need to re-look at new ways of funding our initiatives. So this is really about educating our investors around innovative financing and thinking of themselves as catalytic investors, but more importantly for Africa, we've been asking ourselves, how do you reduce our dependence on foreign capital? And that's a conversation that's picking momentum.

These guys have also created this guidebook for investors in mental health. And one of the things that I know you'll find interesting is that they've started looking at what's working in other sectors, like conservation. So they're exploring things like debt swaps based on the success of debt-to-nature swaps. This is really interesting for me. Debtful nature swaps, it's a new kind of funding model that's gained prominence in the last five years where wealthier countries turn to middle and low income countries and they say, we will forgive a certain amount of your debt if you in turn agree to conserve nature or protect

some ocean area or enact some kind of legislation that works towards conservation. They call them debt for nature swaps. They've been super effective. And I love the idea that they're now talking about doing this for mental health, essentially turning around to a country and say, we'll forgive your debt, but here are a number of actions that we'd like you to take to start thinking about what you can do for mental health. I think that's really, really interesting. Yeah, the thing that will really bring this home for people is something that Erica was chatting with me about, and this is called the brain economy. There is growing momentum around this transition to the brain economy. When we think about our brains, what makes us uniquely human, it isn't just about

mental disorders, substance use, neurological disorders, but it's also about upside potential. So while one side of the coin is brain health, the other side is brain skills. So cognitive functioning, interpersonal relationships, creativity, resilience. And what's really interesting is these are all of the things right now that are coming under threat with the rise of AI when it isn't used with the right guardrails. And we have seen a growing number of CEOs and also a country starting to realize the importance of cognitive security and how they are investing in the brains of their young people, of their future workforces to prevent against cognitive decline. So while we want to make sure that there is as much absence of disease and mental illness as we can, every single one of us

has peak brain performance to lean into. And by thinking about the economic nature of it, this is what will make our society run. Amy, this is really interesting, but I've got to say the cynic in me is just screaming, where's the money? What about the money? Well, these guys actually announced three new commitments to action, which I can put links in the podcast notes. They announced a big investment into this community-led model for mental health care and climate-affected parts of the world. There's Pakistan's first outcomes-based financing model. And Frank's organisation launched this $100 million mental health fund in Africa that will unlock $80 million in private investment

over the next 10 years. Shocked us some people may be, that's nothing compared to what we need. This is the beginning of what we think would be a much bigger initiative. Mental health investments. People tend to generally think about patients and sick people. But actually, in our case,

we're looking at how do we invest this into driving Africa's future workforce? The future of the world is Africa in many. By 2040, 25% of the global workforce will be African. So how do we invest in that workforce? How do we help these young people develop 21st century skills of critical thinking, problem solving, analytical skills,

in a manner that they can contribute to the greater good of the world, not just a continent. And I think the next African millionaires are not going to be people doing petroleum or telecoms. They're going to be young people working in their garages and workshops and bedrooms, creating AI solutions.

So the glass is half full, not half empty. full, not half empty, and how do we fill it up? And this is the joy of being in the space we're in at the moment with the ability to contest and experiment, something which this sector hasn't been doing for a long time. The joys of also doing them in Africa is you test and try these things in extremes of conditions. And if they work in Africa, you can scale them anywhere in the world. What is the biggest thing that you have learned over the past year? That's a great question. I have learned so many things. So I have to think about what to focus on I think just the value of collaboration.

It is really hard to launch a coalition with different partners that are all around the world. And what we have been able to come up with in a short time never would have been possible if we were doing this by ourselves. Collaboration can be hard, but it is so imperative given the scale of the need that we're facing. And this challenge is too important not to be taking it on together. We're all in love with the problem we're trying to solve. So there are no egos or logos in the coalition. Everyone is really passionate about creating a better space around mental health and looking at mental health as an investment that will give significant returns

and especially for me as an African, this is super important just because of the demographic dividend that we possess as a continent. Okay, so something I noticed this week in New York is how you can start to flag these shifts in the global conversation. So last year when I was speaking with people, there was this big shift away from climate mitigation to climate adaptation. But this year I feel like with all the funding cuts, there was a lot more talk around this idea of self-sufficiency. So we heard it from Ted Ross, head of the World Health Organization, talking about how that

organization needs to find ways to become more sustainable. But there was also a lot around building more self-sufficiency and resources in Africa. So this is, again, really interesting because in the aid and development sector, this conversation has been going on. for 20 or 30 years. Yeah. This idea that we need to get away from the paternalistic model of aid, that there needs to be greater self-sufficiency.

But I think it's been really difficult to get rid of the old model. Now that old model is well and truly broken. And I don't want to get ahead of ourselves yet, but there's a great opportunity here. Yeah. It really felt like the beginning of a new chapter. And I actually sat in on a panel

where they had a whole lot of young founders from different countries who are running companies that are basically helping to build this. And when I heard Sandra, the CEO of Sulfur Energy, talk about how her organisation is using solar energy to empower people in Nigeria. Of course, the moment I heard solar, I thought of you. And I literally grabbed a few minutes with her

in the hallway in between sessions. Ten years ago, I started my career at the United Nations in New York, and it was when the SDG goals were launched. And the biggest thing on the African continent was this huge, addressable challenge of energy. Close to a billion people not having access to energy. And to me, a 23-year-old at that time, I felt what I had to do was mobilize young people to tackle what I would say is the biggest challenge of my generation, energy access.

And I was saying on the panel yesterday, 500 million people are looking for access to energy for the first time. But I'm in New York, right across the river, is New Jersey, where the first incandescent light bulb was made a commercial scale. Wondering 46 years ago, why is this still the problem? It ignites a hunger in me to say 2030 is a timeline,

but we need to move faster and quicker for dues who are furthest behind. I love everything about this chat that you had, Amy. I just wish that you'd had more time with her. The bit that really stands up for me here is this idea that the first light ball was turned on in New Jersey 146 years ago and we're still trying to talk about electricity access.

Yeah, I know. Sandra left her job at the UN. She went back to Nigeria. And what's incredible about this story is that her organization isn't, just creating energy access. It's also creating jobs because it's bringing all the manufacturing for the solar grids, for the panels, back onto the continent. Clean energy is supposed to be about equity. So there should be the situation where we're upskilling people on the continent to make

their own solutions. So we built out local assembly where we design, we manufacture and then we test for quality. Part of our mission is to provide energy freedom to the customers that we have, but also the people that serve those customers, which is our team. So we have a woman in my company called Beatrice, and Beatrice is a mother of two unemployed teacher. And honestly speaking, a woman like her has no place in a high-tech factory because she didn't have the skills. So we train her to become a sales agent. And when she sees customers, what she's telling them is, listen, I'm in your community, I'm just like you. I've assembled this solution.

It works. It has worked for me and my family. So all we tried to do was reframe the idea around getting people who are seeming like the least qualified, upskilling them, that allows them see themselves as part of this clean energy transition. people realize that the sun can power lighting, their plants in their home, charge their phone, the basic things that they want, even the fan for air circulation, it's mind-blowing because it's that sense of belonging being a part of the grid. And there's a lot of safety that comes around walking down a street that is usually dark

and just having lights. That presence of light gives a sense of dignity because then you're a lot of. able to use that power, not just for your home, but you can open your shop a whole lot longer. Your kids in the house can study. The things that in the modern world we take for granted are most cherished in the developing world, and I think that is missing in many organizations today, being able to recognize that it is beyond the balance sheets, revenues, it's about people at the end of the day. Okay, so again, Amy, this is one of those conversations where you hear someone say something

that just gives you a completely different spin on language that we're all used to. We speak a lot, especially in clean energy circles, about going off the grid. But she's talking about something completely different, which is the idea of belonging to the grid. I think that's an amazing idea. I love Sandra. I love this idea. It's such a good reminder. what is true in one country or in one place is not true in other places.

And that the challenges different people face are often ones that we can't even imagine. But then again, so are the solutions. Who else did you mean? One of the biggest changes at CGI this year was that they swapped out a lot of the usual razzle-dazzle for these working groups. So these were closed-door sessions. There was no media allowed. Each one, I think it was about five or six, was around a different theme.

So there was climate, women and girls, economic empowerment. And all the people who were chosen to be in those rooms were people that were there for the week. So they're working in the sector. They're obviously leaders in their space or their boots on the ground. And they were basically given a problem. And then they met for around about three hours over those two days to come up with some real tangible solutions.

I mean, it was the 20-year anniversary of CGI this year, and so much of it actually happened inside closed doors. This was basically problem-solving in real time. I think what that tells me, Amy, is that maybe they're serious about it. Yeah, because so much is now up for grabs, because the challenges are so much bigger, so much is under threat. It sounds like the big decision makers have said, you know what, we're not putting on a show anymore.

It's time for us to get into a place where we can have a real conversation. Well, I understand that from a journalistic point of view, that's frustrating. As a human being, I find that really encouraging. Yeah, I was the same. However, I was still really curious. So one of the working groups was for education. It was a big theme at CGI this year, exploring everything from access to adapting to AI,

really digging into what schools are for and what role they're going to play in the future. And although I can't report on what happened in that education, working group, I did meet two people who were part of it. So the first one was David Harris. He is the CEO of Crystal House, and this may be the most comprehensive school initiative that I have ever heard of. Our North Star as an organization is moving kids out of poverty.

So we're no-fee private schools in Mexico, the United States, South Africa and India, and we're now, as part of this global initiative, announcing that we're expanding into Colombia and Nepal. We start in preschool and we are with our students through graduation from high school and then continue with them for another five years to help them transition into their careers. And along the way, in addition to providing an education, we're providing daily meals, health care, counseling, career coaching, and we provide support to parents, because because we know that all of those things are necessary

if we're gonna move the vast majority of our students out of extreme poverty. We wanna show people that kids from even the most dire circumstances truly have as much talent as any other group of kids. People wouldn't outwardly dispute that, but I'm not sure people really believe that, and I think that's part of why there's so much complacency

around the fact that so many kids are born into dire circumstances. I think some people look and say, can those kids really do as well? We are showing that our kids truly, truly can do as well. Amy, this is amazing. Education, you know what a big deal it is for us at Fix the News. It's such an important part of the puzzle. This sounds like a really amazing model. It sounds intense though, super resource intensive. They're with these kids for 18 years. It's so comprehensive. Does it work? Well, they have a 97% retention rate. And something that I love

is all of their administration, all of their teaching staff at the schools where they set up. They're actually from the communities where the schools are. So there's no bringing people in. And I guess the best way to answer your question is actually with a story that David shared with me of one of their students in South Africa. I'll tell the story about Mujahee George, who grew up in a community in Cape Town called Hanover Park, where gang violence is rampant, where drug abuse is everywhere, where sewage, running water, electricity isn't available. And Mujahid was born in that community,

and his life prospects were not great, just given the circumstances, nothing to do with him. He got enrolled in Crystal House and thrived, went on to university and is today a practicing dentist and is able to not only support himself and his family, but he's giving back to his community in very meaningful ways. Amy, you know what that makes me think of

is many of the conversations that we had on a shot at history that, you know, this malaria vaccine is rolling out across the African continent now and that it's going to give an opportunity to kids to make it who might be the next superstar in their area. There's some overlap there. That's really exciting. So Crystal House are doing a lot for the

the education for kids, but I also interviewed Elpita Kokota, who is working to make education accessible for a lot of vulnerable women. So places around the world where education is not a possibility. What I have discovered is that all women dream, and they come to us because they have a dream that most of the times they don't even dare to say to themselves. And that's the reason and I am a CGI. It's my third commitment, and we committed to deliver access to education to more than 300,000 women around the world.

Her organization is called MeXOXO. They've partnered with Cornwall University, and they've already delivered education to over 100,000 women in 155 countries. But something that I really loved about her story is that it highlights what can happen at these kind of global gatherings. So her whole journey with this started back in 2011

because she signed up as a CGI volunteer. And when she was here, she met Professor Mohamed Yunus and he actually agreed to be her mentor for six months. Wow. I was so inspired and was so drawn into all this. I felt the need to give back. And he told me, Lipida, you must go and do what you love. Fast forward.

In 2013, I dropped my job in Boston. And I decided to move to Tijuana, Mexico, to see with my eyes what is happening to women in vulnerable situations. Okay, so this is where things get interesting. Because when she told me about the first two women she helped in Mexico, it completely changed any ideas I have around this whole idea of an entrepreneur, which has become very much aligned with the whole Silicon Valley thing. and she is really using it as a way to empower people. They were both over 50.

They had some challenges in life and they had to go back into the workforce. And I said, why don't you start something your own that can pay the bills? It doesn't have to be something very expensive. And they did. Adriana was a chef. She was cooking very well

and she started a culinary small business where she will cook for people in their homes. and Maria did the artisan work and I saw these women growing and I saw them selling and becoming financially independent how they transformed the power of entrepreneurship how they took something that they were missing and it wasn't a very simple thing

business model canvas that was all huh it was like explaining what is your value what do you want to sell who is your customer it's not things that they do not know I helped them put the framework in their heads, and then they took it in the car, in a way. And that was when I decided that it doesn't matter where you come from, I want to help women in vulnerable situations

because I believe they can make it. And that's what my effort all this year is to break this stereotype. I am the first person in my family to graduate with a bachelor's degree and a master's degree and now PhD. So I can say that access to opportunity for me, it was education. It was the gift of education. And I think our societies and our systems need to value education more, need to make it more organic into our lives.

We have this word in Greek. It's called pedia. And it's not education. It's you learn things from your family, from your surroundings, from your community, from your school, of course, from your university. but it's a holistic word that compiles everything you learn. Amy, what I love in all these conversations that you've had around education here is that everyone involved here seems to be on a mission to expand our view of what education actually is,

which I think is a really important conversation, especially considering how much things are changing. I feel like these people that you spoke to are uphead of the curve on that front. I'm really interested. Did anything come out of the actual education working group? Yeah, they're actually exploring a pilot program that they're planning to run next year in three cities in the States to provide immigrant families with early education resources.

I don't know too many details, but it sounds like a pretty tangible outcome. There's actually another idea that I want to run past you, Gus, and this one is a little more radical. Love radical? What if the answer to our global funding crisis isn't more money? What if it's a new currency based on doing good things for your community? So like good crypto? Yeah, good crypto. It sounds too good to be true.

Yeah, I know. But this is actually something that Dr. Gita Mehta, so she's a professor of architecture and urban design at Columbia University. She actually developed this currency in 2014 and it has been rolled out in 20 communities around the world. So many problems in the world today happen because there's too much focus on financial capital. And I think there needs to be an equal focus. on natural capital and social capital. So I developed this idea of community currency, which we call social capital credits.

It is a bit inspired by carbon credits, but the sweet sauce is that we bring communities together towards a common goal, and that's magic. So you earn social capital credits by helping your community in whatever ways the community needs, reforestation, switching to regenerative agriculture for cleaning rivers, tutoring children. I'll give you an example.

So in one area in India in Maharashtra, we worked with 500 women farmers to switch from normal paddy agriculture to SRI, which is system of rice intensification. It's a more scientific system that doubles your crop and reduces your labor. So we train these 500 women, but our ability to train thousands of people is less. So these 500 women then train the next 500 and they earn social capital credits for it, which they can then use to buy farm implements or to buy seeds, and then the next 500 will again change. So it's a cascade.

So are the things that they can buy with these credits always the same? No, which is really interesting. So the team go in, they chat with the community, they work out what the main needs are. And from those made needs, that is what dictates the kind of acts that you can do to earn the social currency are, but also what the rewards would be. So in farming communities, it might be regenerative agriculture and then you get rewarded with farming equipment. In other places, it might be some microloan, it might be access to education. This is our 26th year as an organization. But in the beginning, I would ask women, so what is your biggest asset? And they would say my community, my friends. And I said if that's their biggest asset, despite not having much money or a hard life, they are able to find this happiness. So I wanted to drill down on that. And I wanted to see, how do you leverage that? So that is how we created social capital credits.

To honor the work that women do for each other, for the environment, for the older people in the community. The thing about CGI, Gus, really for us, is about the people that you meet. I mean, these are ideas and conversations that no matter how much I researched, you just can't be bumping into someone in a hallway who tells you this idea that completely reframes things, right? I feel like I've walked away with these drop pins in my brain in so many different parts of the world that just weren't there before. Now, Amy, CGI wasn't the only show in town during the big week. You also got to meet people who were there for Climate Week, who were there

for the United Nations. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Yeah, I sure did. If anybody wants to know how to use the New York subway. I am your girl. Hit me up. I can tell you everything you need to know about the B, C, and number one line. But I want to start on the UN side of things because I feel like with all the AIDS cuts,

the urgency this year has really shifted from the climate emergency to the humanitarian crisis. I got to meet up with two organizations who are on the front lines of global health and also the humanitarian response. So first I want to introduce you to Emily Benson. She is the CEO of an organization called Integrate Health. And they have been doing incredible work in the African countries of Togo and Guinea.

I'm very aware of those of us who can be in New York and those of us who can't. Togo is on the U.S. travel ban list. And so I think recognizing who's in the room and who isn't in the room, It's a really, really challenging time in global health right now. In the countries where we work, patients are not receiving critical medication. I know personally many women in Togo who lost access to their contraceptives. And I think it's really important that we're not throwing up our hands and saying, oh my gosh, we can't solve these problems, they're too big.

And it's been amazing this week getting to share some of these stories, the work that we're doing in Guinea with the malaria vaccine, the free maternal health program in Togo. these solutions are marching forward. And so I've been using this week to show a positive way forward. As you can hear it, it's pretty noisy. We are actually sitting up the back of a very busy cafe near Rockefeller Center. And there was actually also another member of the team, Melanie,

who filled me in on how all this got started. I think our roots are fundamental to who we are and how far we've come. Integrate Health was formed out of a collaboration with Peace Corps volunteers and HIV activists in Togo 20 years ago. I actually served in the Peace Corps with the co-founders. Over time, that focus changed to primary health care. Strengthening primary care means reaching people who are often left out of the system

and making sure that health care isn't determined by where you live or how much you can afford. We are a women-led organization. We believe in gender equity being essential to universal health coverage and health equity because women often have the least access, they have the worst health outcomes. So there can be a really symbiotic relationship when we put women at the center of our health system. We have professional community health workers, predominantly

women recruited from their local community to provide doorstep care to their neighbors. Turns out we can task shift a lot of the leading causes of death of children and kids. You don't have to have gone to school for eight years to diagnose and treat these illnesses. So we can train community health workers with about a three-week training in the classroom, followed by a two-month supportive supervision where they're getting really constant support from a doctor or a nurse or midwife, and they're able to provide diagnose and treat the leading causes of death of children under five. So malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia, malnutrition, support pregnant women to make sure that they are getting their pre-nural consultations, going to the health center for a safe childbirth, and they provide

family planning in the home as well. Amy, it's so interesting. this connection with Togo, because we've actually featured Togo quite a few times in the last few years in our newsletter. And I seem to remember it was the first country ever to eliminate four neglected tropical diseases. Did they have anything to do with this? These guys have actually played a pretty big role in really helping this country strengthen the healthcare system. In 2021, the president announced that he wanted to make maternal health free nationwide. That if we wanted a healthy generation of citizens, that starts with healthy women at pregnancy, healthy babies at birth. So we got a call from the ministry, and they're like,

hey, you know, you're one of the few organizations in the country that's doing this, that's providing care for free for pregnant women. Can you tell us a bit about how you do that, how much it costs, and how we might be able to do that nationwide? Our team built this amazing investment case that gave the government a couple different options. We gave them that data so that they could make the decision that they needed to. In 2022, thanks to that effort, care is now free nationwide in Togo. Over 600,000 women have received free, high-quality prenatal care and delivery. So just to show how this is an iterative process, it takes time.

We need trusted partners, NGOs to be working hand-in-hand with government, and that this kind of changes is really possible. amazing yeah there was so much talk this week about building resources inside the communities and creating these relationships with government and it feels like the team would integrate health have actually just quietly been doing this for the past 20 years amy i can't tell you how many times we seem to hear the same story that we hear about this stuff when we get the headline, disease eliminated or X number of million mothers protected, but so often the teams behind this have been at this work for 20, 30 years. I really think that

speaks to that idea of quiet, hidden progress. I also caught up with Jada McKenna. Now, she's the CEO of Mercy Corps. They're a humanitarian organisation. They work in some of the hardest places on Earth. We're talking Syria, Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, and basically any area that's affected by conflict, climate change, or poverty. Jada had been part of the UN discussions, and I was really interested to hear her take on this week. This does feel like a crisis meeting. We're talking about the future of the UN and the future of international cooperation and global work together. There are a couple of times. things that are wonderful about coming together like this. It's the exchange of ideas and experiences

that are working. And in times like this where everything feels like it's on fire, it's really good to hear about situations or projects where things are working and things are looking up to remind you that there's still so much we can do and to not get overwhelmed by the negative. Now, Amy, we cross past with Mercy Corps. They were one of our charity partners at the beginning this year, we donated to one of their programs in Nigeria, which was in danger of being shut down in the immediate aftermath of the U.S. aid cuts. Yeah, I asked Jada how they had navigated the last 12 months, and here's what she said. It's been quite challenging, and when there's a crisis, we show up, we jump into action.

And in this case, it was a crisis that affected us and the work that we do. And so jumping into action in that same way was critical. There was just a heartbreak around this moment. We're at a time where we have over 350 million people who are in need of food or humanitarian assistance of some kind. Three active, large wars with Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, lots of people still suffering from weather emergencies. And so to have this happen at a time when the world's needs are greatest felt especially cruel and disruptive. The other piece that took us the back wars, a lot of things happened very suddenly. So we right away started telling stories of communities that we were no longer able to serve.

And the great thing is we had private donors who stepped up to fill the gaps. There was a group that sprung up called Project Resource Optimization that looked across all the aid projects that have been canceled and picked the ones that were the most efficient and effective and then connected them to networks of donors. And that's how we got connected to fix the news. And through your support, we were able to continue and finish that water project in Nigeria. thank you to everyone who's listening and for really being solution-oriented and showing people that there are ways to work ourselves out of different situations. There's just so much need

in the world. And I like to think of things as it's not us and them. It's just a bigger us, the bigger we. And just keeping in mind how we impact one another and the connectivity of it all. I love her take on all of this, Amy. There's a real commitment here to just keeping on, keeping on, but she talks about how important it is to celebrate the wins. And obviously that's something at Fix the News, we believe, is just not something we're doing enough of. Yeah. But you know what I was most surprised about this week was that even in the face of all the crisis, all the budget cuts, people aren't choosing defeat or retreat.

I just saw so many examples of the exact opposite, especially with this last story. So one of the highlights for me was I was invited as part of Climate Week to the launch of the Jaguar Rivers Initiative. A wonderful friends at Tompkins Conservation are part of it. Now this is aiming to restore and reconnect the Parana Basin in the heart of South America. This is a huge watershed between the Amazon and Patagonia. We are talking about 2.5 million square kilometres, which is basically the size of Western Australia. I mean, it's home to one of the largest wetlands in the world, the largest dried forests in the world,

and two different rainforests. So my name is Delis Hedra. I am biologist, and I'm the director of the Jawa Rivers Initiative. Rivers are really the highways for wildlife. There are five main rivers, but big natural areas are not connected anymore, and we need that connection so that wildlife can move from one place

or the other, but also to make sure that there's enough water and that there are enough forests because we need nature to fight climate change. So it's locally in the sense that we are going to protect areas and species, but it's global because we are going to protect a big chunk of forest. I'm Mario Haberfeld, the founder of On Safari. It's a project I started in Brazil 14 years ago, habituating jaguars to the presence of vehicle to enable ecotourism. We've been doing wildlife corridor.

in Pantanal for the last few years. The main threat we have nowadays is fires, and fires don't see the lines on the map. And neither does Jaguar and any other fauna for that matter. And I think it's important to say this project involves four different organizations, right? Together we have about 100 years of experience, and all we're doing now is putting everyone together

to work transboundary, which is a great thing. Now, it's worth pointing out that this initiative is so big, it actually spans across four countries. You've got Argentina, you got Bolivia, you got Brazil, and you got Paraguay. Countries usually use the river as a border. So when you are working in only one country, you're working only one side of the river. So you're only working half of the solution. So the idea is that we need to work transboundary, but those five main rivers are almost 7,000 kilometers or so. It's a big undertaking.

There's no silver bullet. In some places, we're talking about translocations. wildlife. So we need to bring jaguar's other species from one area where they're still abandoned to an area where they're extinct. And we want to do this with up to 20 different species. In some areas, we need to buy land,

especially in areas that are going to be destroyed. But then in many other areas, for example in the lowlands of Bolivia, the land is already public or is area from the indigenous communities. And in many places, protected areas are paper parks. They don't have the resources. So we need to

help them to really protect those areas. because even if you see in the map with this green color, it's not happening. Improving the economy of these local communities and other tools. Also, existing is also super important because you can have animals in places where cattle rangers are shooting jowers.

So you see this is a weight array of tools to get to our big objective, which is to protect and reconnect. It's urgent to create corridors where jaguars and other animals can disperse. In the Iguasso National Park between Brazil,

Brazil and Argentina, there are jaguars there, but a lot of scientists estimate that maybe in 20 years this population could go extinct because there's a lot of in-breeding because they can't get out of these parks. To put it simply, is making sure the wildlife is running free. This idea of rivers as wildlife corridors, I love it intuitively, that seems to make sense, but I've never heard it before. Can you just help us understand a little bit more? Yeah, I was the same.

I was pretty blown away because we've been writing a lot about land-based wildlife corridors but this is the first time that I have heard about a river being used as one and it makes sense when you think about animals

that are naturally in rivers but the reason why this campaign is called jaguar rivers is because jaguas are actually watercats and they can swim around about a kilometre with their eyes open underwater and what I loved is how they inspired the project. When you're working with this kind of species, they are obliging you to thin bigger and bigger.

When the jawa was introduced in Ibera, well, it was fantastic Ibera is one million hectares. It's a huge area. But when the jowers start to disperse, they went to Paraguay, for example. So suddenly the area was not big enough. And I think that was in those moments, both in Argentina and in Brazil, where those ideas that we need to work together to make sure that we have these connections between the areas. And that was the idea to start to do something bigger because these kind of wildlife, especially jowers,

are making you to think bigger. What is most inspiring about this project, especially this week, there's been a lot of talk about lack of funding. And instead of playing it safe, which is usually what happens when the money tightens, you are actually being even more ambitious. Of course, it's true that there's a lack of funding,

but at the same time, My perception here in the Climate Week was that donors are asking, hey, guys, come with big things, big ideas, because we don't have time. Don't bring small projects here and there. We want to do things on a big scale. Crazy ideas are the ones that are going to change the world, right? We're losing the battle to deforestation, so we need something big to change this trend. I'm sure Chris Tompkins has been called crazy when she started saying that they were going to buy me.

millions of hectares in Chile and Argentina, donate to parks, and they've done it. I've been called crazy when I wanted to show jaguars to people, make a safari in Brazil, like in Africa, but we've done it. So I think it's a huge challenge. It's not going to be easy, but we really believe it's doable. If you leave nature alone, it will bounce back, but we need to give it time and a place to do it. So, Amy, that is our whirlwind tour through your week in New York. It sounded like you met so many incredible people.

And I think what comes through is that there definitely is this sense of crisis and a sense of people being lost, wondering what's next. But what's also remarkable is that every single person you spoke with this week could have looked at the funding cuts and the crisis. and the impossible odds. And they could have said, you know what, let's just protect what we've got. Let's just try and hold steady. But instead, they're launching things we've never heard of before. $100 million mental health funds, reconnecting 7,000 kilometers of rivers, making maternal health care free for entire countries.

It feels like there's this refusal to let crisis dictate ambition. You know, when everything feels impossible, when everything feels like it's falling apart, it's amazing to me that that's the moment when people are choosing to dream bigger. And you spoke at the beginning that last year was a revelation, this year is a revolution.

Well, perhaps that is the real revolution. You know, not plain it's safe when the money dries up, but instead deciding that the response to everything falling apart is to build something better from the pieces and actually ask, what if we really solve this? It makes me think we finished this episode of the podcast last year with my conversation with Dr Jane Goodall and her piece of wisdom in that moment was that if everybody did their little bit,

those millions of little bits would really add up to something much greater. What I feel like this year has done is inspired people to go, let's start putting some of those little bits together and then let's see what bigger, bolder solutions we can pull off. Thank you so much for all the work that you did in New York. It sounded amazing. It sounded hectic.

It sounded really intense. Really appreciate all your insights, Amy. Make sure you join us next week because we will be chatting with David Faganbaum. He was actually on the main stage at the Clinton Global Initiative. I met him earlier this year at TED. He is a remarkable human being, a doctor who saved his own life by Reaper. purposing a drug, and now he's using that method to save thousands, potentially hundreds of thousands of other people.

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