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UNITED NATIONS | It has been a week of inspiring ideas and action plans at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. I met with a number of world leaders, including Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. We talked about the importance of creating jobs for ex-combatants, the pressing need for more energy sources, and more. You can hear my thoughts on our meeting in the video below.
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We arrived in New York on Sunday after having just started a global conversation on this question: #whatwillittake to end poverty? In the last few days, we’ve helped launch a number of initiatives with that goal in mind. Here’s a snapshot:
- Sustainable Energy for All, which the World Bank Group is co-chairing with the UN. Among the initiative’s goals: Universal access to electricity and clean household fuels, as well as a doubling of renewable energy as a share of global energy production.
- Equal Futures Partnership, led by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and supported by many countries, to push for women’s rights around the world.
- Education First, headed by the UN -- with former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown as special envoy -- which seeks to elevate efforts to improve education in the developing world.
In addition, at an event celebrating the second anniversary of the Every Woman Every Child Initiative, we announced that we will establish a special funding mechanism that allows donors to increase support toward reducing maternal and child mortality.
And I participated in a great event hosted by the Clinton Global Initiative and moderated by former President Bill Clinton. The discussion addressed several critical questions, including why the world should continue to invest in developing countries at a time of global economic uncertainty.
We’ll be looking to build on the ideas we examined at the UN as well as the solutions coming in from #whatwillittake as we turn our attention to the IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings in Tokyo in October.
Dr. Jim Yong Kim is president of the World Bank Group.
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