CBB NEWS

President Clinton To Open Fourth Annual Clinton Global Initiative University Meeting at the University of California, San Diego on Friday, April 1, 2011
President Clinton to Discuss Innovation with Chad Hurley at Opening Plenary Session Friday Night; Additional Program Participants Will Include Drew Barrymore, Nnamdi Asomugha, Raquel "Rocsi" Diaz, Jose Reyes Ferriz, Lorena Garcia, Van Jones, Mandy Moore,
and Sean Penn

Approximately 1,000 Students Expected to Attend, Representing 349 Schools, 90 Countries, and All 50 States

CGI U's Commitment Challenge Bracket Allows Anyone to
Vote for Their Favorite Commitment

Contact: press@clintonglobalinitiative.org

New York, March 31, 2011 - President Clinton will open the fourth annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U) by announcing innovative student projects that will improve health care in Africa, help children around the world go to school, and increase understanding between American and Middle Eastern college students.

More than 1,000 students will attend CGI U this year, and each one has created a Commitment to Action - a concrete plan to address an issue within CGI U's focus areas: Education, Environment & Climate Change, Peace & Human Rights, Poverty Alleviation, and Public Health. This year, students and student groups have made 950 new commitments. In addition, more than 59 leaders from National Youth Organizations will attend, and they have made 38 commitments.

"Young people today have more power to effect change than any generation that has come before," President Clinton said. "Since CGI U was founded in 2008, students and organizations have made more than 3,000 commitments which have improved the lives of thousands of people around the world. These students are taking action to solve the great global challenges of our time - and they are inspiring others to make a difference as well."

Students attend the CGI U meeting to turn their ideas into action by learning about issues, networking with nationally-known leaders, and gaining inspiration from their peers. The meeting will feature sessions on topics including college affordability, LGBT rights, poverty along the U.S.-Mexico border, and ocean pollution. Students will also participate in hands-on workshops designed to improve their understanding of fundraising, marketing, and community engagement.

This weekend, while there will be tremendous attention paid to athletic accomplishment at the NCAA "Final Four" men's and women's basketball championships, CGI U will celebrate its students' commitments with its inaugural "CGI U Commitments Challenge." Beginning today, everyone will have the chance to vote for their favorite CGI U 2011 commitments at cgiu.org/bracket.

Votes will be tallied and posted in real time and those not at CGI U can follow the action at CGIU.org. Updates will be given at each plenary session and the winning commitment will be announced at the CGI U closing session by President Clinton on Saturday, April 2. The winner will receive a new Dell laptop.

On Friday, the Opening Plenary panel discussion, "What's the Big Idea? Powering Innovation on Campus and Beyond," will feature President Clinton; Chad Hurley, co-founder of YouTube; Shirley Ann Jackson, president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Greg Lucier, chairman and CEO of Life Technologies; and Jessica O. Matthews, co-founder and CEO of Unchartered Play and co-inventor of sOccket. The session will also feature opening remarks by Paul E. Jacobs, chairman and CEO of Qualcomm Incorporated and Marye Anne Fox, chancellor of the University of California, San Diego.

The student commitments that will be announced on Friday are:

The School Fund

Student: Matthew Severson

School: Brown University

Worldwide, there are 115 million children who do not go to school, and 75% live in South Asia or Sub-Saharan Africa. In 2008, Matt Severson made a CGI U commitment to create the School Fund, a website that connects people who want to make micro-grants to individual students who need education funding. After funders make grants, they can communicate via the website with the students they are helping to support. School Fund donors have now fully funded 100 secondary students at 19 schools in Tanzania, Kenya, and Haiti. This year, Matt and his team commit to expand the School Fund to recruit an additional 800 funders for 500 students. The School Fund will also work with students in new countries, including Ethiopia, India, Madagascar, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Uganda, and Zimbabwe.



Dorm Room Diplomacy

Students: Corey Metzman & Jacob Blumenfeld-Gantz

School: University of Pennsylvania

Corey and Jacob, who have both studied Arabic, recently formed Dorm Room Diplomacy, which commits to establish an intercultural dialogue between American and Middle Eastern college students through videoconferencing. Dorm Room Diplomacy will facilitate weekly two-hour videoconferences between American college students and students from the Middle East. Topics will include: cultural stereotypes, American foreign policy, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, women's rights, the role of new media outlets, and freedom of speech. At the end of each semester, Dorm Room Diplomacy plans to have students take the Implicit Association Test-an online test developed at Harvard-in order to measure how the participants' perceptions of each other have changed.



DoseRight Syringe Clips in Swaziland

Students: Cindy Dinh, Benjamin Lu, Qing Lina Hu and Amanda Gutierrez

School: Rice University

Swaziland, a landlocked country in southern Africa, has been devastated by the AIDS epidemic. More than a quarter of adults between the ages of 15 and 49 are infected with the virus, and the average life expectancy in the country is 37. Spoons or measuring cups are commonly used to take HIV/AIDS medication, but they often result in inaccurate dosing of antiretroviral medication, which limits the efficacy of the drugs and can lead to viral resistance. Cindy, Benjamin, Qing, and Amanda launched Team DoseRight to distribute DoseRight syringe clips in Swaziland. DoseRight is a simple, inexpensive plastic clip that attaches to an oral syringe and ensures accurate medication dosage by stopping the syringe plunger after the right amount of medication has been dispensed. The DoseRight syringe clip was successfully field-tested during the summer of 2010. Now, Team DoseRight is collaborating with both the Clinton Health Access Initiative and the Swaziland Ministry of Health to help distribute the clips.



Use of Emerging Media in Reducing Maternal & Neonatal Mortality in Kenyan Slums

Student: Aggrey Otieno

School: Ohio University

In sub-Saharan Africa, a woman's risk of dying of preventable complications from pregnancy and childbirth is 1 in 16, as compared to 1 in 2,800 in the industrialized world. Aggrey grew up in the Korogocho slums in Kenya, and has seen the devastating effects of this problem firsthand. He commits to a two-year initiative to reduce maternal and neonatal mortality in the Korogocho slums. He will choose a group of volunteers from the slums-pregnant women and their partners-who will send regular, free text messages about their own health, as well as the health of other mothers and babies in their communities. Aggrey will use a software program to aggregate and map the information. Traditional birth attendants will be trained to monitor and add to this map so they can report patterns to local medical practitioners and NGOs. Aggrey will also mobilize youth to create weekly community radio programs and videos about maternal and neonatal health.

On Sunday, April 3, the program will culminate in a service project, in which CGI U attendees and volunteers will work alongside 100 local veterans at the San Diego Food Bank. The San Diego Food Bank provides food to over 340,000 individuals monthly, while also advocating for the hungry and educating the public about hunger-related issues. Participants will sort, inspect, package, and distribute food for low-income military and non-military families, and help with beautification projects. In total, they will contribute more than 2,500 hours of service for the Food Bank.

CGI U is sponsored by the Dell Social Innovation Competition, Joan and Irwin Jacobs, Laureate Education, Life Technologies, mtvU, Andy Nahas and The Prospect Fund, Qualcomm Incorporated, and U.S. Global Investors.



About CGI U

The Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U) challenges college students to address global issues with practical, innovative solutions. CGI U members do more than simply discuss problems - they take concrete steps to solve them by building relationships, creating action plans, participating in hands-on workshops, and following-up with CGI U as they complete their projects. Previous CGI U meetings have taken place at Tulane University, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Miami, and have convened more than 2,500 students from 575 schools in 99 countries and all 50 states. To learn more, visit CGIU.org.



About the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI)

Established in 2005 by President Bill Clinton, the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) convenes global leaders to devise and implement innovative solutions to some of the world's most pressing challenges. Since 2005, CGI Annual Meetings have brought together nearly 150 current and former heads of state, 18 Nobel Prize laureates, hundreds of leading CEOs, heads of foundations, major philanthropists, directors of the most effective nongovernmental organizations, and prominent members of the media. These CGI members have made nearly 2,000 commitments, which have already improved the lives of 300 million people in more than 170 countries. When fully funded and implemented, these commitments will be valued in excess of $63 billion. The 2011 Annual Meeting will take place Sept. 19-22 in New York City.

This year, CGI will also convene a meeting focused on driving job creation and economic recovery in the United States. The meeting, CGI America, is the first CGI event solely dedicated to U.S. issues, and will take place in Chicago June 29-30.

The CGI community also includes MyCommitment.org, an online portal where anybody can make a Commitment to Action, and CGI Lead, which engages a select group of young CGI members for leadership development and collective commitment-making. For more information, visit www.clintonglobalinitiative.org.