National Basketball Association Global Ambassador and 8-time NBA All-Star Dikembe Mutombo takes a shot over the block of Tamar Manuelyan Atinc, World Bank Vice President for the Human Development Network. Atinc played basketball in her undergraduate days at Harvard University. Mutombo and Atinc were taking part in a live event Wednesday at World Bank headquarters called Close the Gap: Safety Nets Work, a special program on how safety nets have changed lives in middle- and low-income countries. More than half of the 137 poorest countries have weak safety nets or none at all.
Photo: Simone D. McCourtie / World Bank
Audience members at the event were invited to take part by holding up different colored balls to help illustrate the proportion of people in the developing world without access to safety nets.
Photo: Edita Andreis / World Bank
Panelists at the event: From left, Robert B. Zoellick, President, The World Bank; Corazon “Dinky” Juliano Soliman, Secretary of the Department of Social Welfare and Development, Philippines; Romulo Paes de Sousa, Vice Minister of Social Development and Fight Against Hunger in Brazil; Michael Elliott, President and CEO, ONE; Dikembe Mutombo, NBA Global Ambassador; Maurice "Mo" Evans, Washington Wizards.
Photo: Simone D. McCourtie / World Bank
Safety nets are a critical component of the Bank’s new, 10-year Social Protection & Labor Strategy. You can replay the webcast of the Safety Nets event, find more photos, view an infographic on how safety nets work around the world, watch a video from Brazil and Ethiopia and learn more about the call to Close the Gap on global inequality.
Follow #wblive and visit live.worldbank.org for more World Bank events during the 2012 Spring Meetings.
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