By Jennifer and Peter Buffett, NoVo Foundation Co-Chairs

As posted in the Economic Times 

Start with the last girl.

Imagine if someone gave you one billion dollars with one condition: use the money to create positive change in the world.  What would you do? That’s exactly what happened to us in 2006, when we received a fax that changed our lives. Peter’s father, Warren Buffett, had decided to award our small foundation with a pledge valued at approximately one billion dollars with that one, simple, enormous requirement.

As we determined where to focus our giving, we were reminded of Warren’s own investment philosophy: invest in companies that are undervalued in the marketplace but which have great potential for growth.

Adolescent girls—who are profoundly undervalued but have enormous potential—clearly met this standard.  Girls worldwide are less educated, less healthy and offered less opportunity than their male peers. But if given a chance, they will improve their own lives – and the lives of those around them.
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For Immediate Release

The new NoVo Foundation Endowed Chair in Social and Emotional Learning to be invested at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) this Thursday, the first of its kind, represents an exciting strategic development in one of the most promising initiatives in education today.

Dr. Roger P. Weissberg, professor of psychology and education at UIC, will assume the chair with a lecture addressing recent efforts to establish the approach as an educational priority in Chicago and across the United States. Weissberg is president of the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), a nonprofit organization, and heads the UIC SEL Research Group, an interdisciplinary team focused on addressing social and emotional learning research and assessment, practice, and policy development.

Based in the department of psychology, the chair will oversee ongoing research on social and emotional learning, a method of proactively developing children’s ability to identify, manage, and discuss their own emotions and to modify their behavior in pro-social ways. Students trained in these skills are better prepared to succeed in school and in subsequent careers than their untrained peers.
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By: Jennifer Buffett, President and Co-Chair of the NoVo Foundation

Link to Jennifer’s blog on Huffingtonpost.com

At the NoVo Foundation, we know that prioritizing girls and women is one of the most fundamentally sound methods of changing our world for the better. We’ve learned that helping girls and women help themselves raises living standards for everyone.

Each year a girl stays in school boosts her future income by 10 to 20 percent. And since girls and women are likely to invest 90 percent of their income in their families — as opposed to a man’s 30 to 40 percent — the education and empowerment of girls and women has an impact that ripples across a society.

So what happens to girls early in their life makes a huge difference. On a learning trip to Ethiopia, where 49 percent of girls are married before they are 18, I came face to face with one of the biggest challenges that holds back the world’s female population and keeps countries mired in poverty: child marriage.
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New CGI Commitments Turn Spotlight on a Neglected Issue that Affects Hundreds of Millions of Girls and Women

www.GirlsNotBrides.org

NEW YORK: 20 September 2011 – A new global effort to end child marriage was announced today at the 2011 Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting, turning the international spotlight on a harmful traditional practice that affects the lives of 10 million girls in dozens of countries around the world every year.

Girls Not Brides: The Global Partnership to End Child Marriage was announced at CGI by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Mary Robinson of The Elders; Ford Foundation President Luis Ubiñas; and NoVo Foundation President and Co-Chair Jennifer Buffett.

Archbishop Tutu described child marriage as “a practice that robs millions of girls of their childhood, their rights and their dignity. I find it astounding that this issue does not receive far greater attention. Together, we and our partners commit to working together to end it.”

Child marriage affects millions of children, predominantly girls, every year. In the developing world, one in three girls is married before the age of 18, one in seven before she is 15.
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NoVo Foundation’s Social and Emotional Learning Initiative, along with SEL Action Network Steering Committee partners, developed the SEL Action Network White Paper, to be distributed at the 2011 Clinton Global Initiative in New York City. The white paper is intended to be a spark plug for conversation around the many applications of SEL and a call to action throughout the network and CGI.

Move to End Violence will Strengthen the National Movement to Address Root Causes of Violence against Girls and Women in US

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Pamela Shifman, Director
Initiatives for Women and Girls, NoVo Foundation
(212) 808-5400

This week, the NoVo Foundation kicks off its Move to End Violence initiative, a groundbreaking, 10-year, $80 million initiative designed to strengthen the movement to end violence against girls and women in the United States.  The program is designed as a series of five cohorts, each on a two-year cycle. Over the life of the initiative, Move to End Violence will engage over 100 individuals and as many organizations, establishing a powerful infrastructure of sophisticated leaders and organizations to lead the effort to end violence against girls and women in the United States.

“Many have expressed shock at IMF leader Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s arrest in connection with a sexual assault here in New York,” said Jennifer Buffett, President and Co-Chair of the NoVo Foundation. “But given the epidemic of sexual violence against girls and women, we shouldn’t be surprised. Thanks to the tireless work of countless activists we have made progress, but staggering rates of violence remain worldwide. Powerful, systemic forces persist and perpetuate it. Our goal with Move to End Violence is to prevent violence against women before it starts, and to create a culture where powerful men—and all boys and men— don’t think they have the right to abuse women.”

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By: Rahim Kanani

Link to article on World Affairs Commentary website

Today through Friday April 15th, the 2011 Global Philanthropy Forum takes place Redwood City CA, for which I interviewed Pamela Shifman, Director of Initiatives for Women and Girls at the NoVo Foundation. Shifman discussed the evolution of the NoVo Foundation, the status and progress of women and girls around the world, risk and philanthropic investment, her advice to President Obama, and much more. This interview is part of a series with participants at the 2011 Global Philanthropy Forum, which can be found here.

Rahim Kanani: What motivated the NoVo Foundation to explicitly focus on the advancement of women and girls around the world?

Pamela Shifman: The NoVo Foundation was founded with the overall mission of creating a more just and balanced world.  Jennifer and Peter Buffett, founders and Co-Chairs of NoVo created the NoVo Foundation with the understanding that our current social environment is out of balance—discrimination, inequity and violence are preventing individuals and society from reaching their full potential.  As they determined where NoVo would focus its resources, Jennifer and Peter felt strongly about entering a field that was both under-resourced and had significant potential for impact. They saw that girls and women in particular are undervalued and mistreated—but hold untapped potential for creating positive, lasting change in the world.
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Program Receives US$100,000 Grant from NoVo Foundation

Media Contact: Nicole Brown
Communications Manager, LCIF

Lions Clubs International Foundation (LCIF) has been awarded a US$100,000 grant from the NoVo Foundation to support LCIF’s Commitment to Action through the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI). LCIF has committed to expand Lions Quest across one entire United States school district by 2013. Expansion of Lions Quest, the kindergarten through 12th grade life skills and youth development program, will ensure even more students benefit from the values of social and emotional learning.
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By Alicia Morga

Link to article on Huffington Post Website

The movie, Waiting for “Superman”, laid blame for our broken K-12 public school system with teacher unions. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan suggested teachers should come from the top third of their graduating classes. President Obama in a recent speech at TechBoston called for more reform and more money. Theories abound for fixing our schools, but the debate ignores an underlying current. The root of our failing education system from K-12 all the way through college is a lack of one basic skill: the ability to manage our emotions.

According to Daniel Goleman, the author of Emotional Intelligence, emotional management, the ability to identify, appropriately express and manage our emotions, forms the foundation for learning and making decisions. It is the platform on which other essential skills, like reading, writing, math, even social skills are built. As it is a skill, it has to be taught and continually practiced.
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A $2 million donation to the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Liberal Arts and Sciences from the NoVo Foundation will support ongoing research in social and emotional learning.

The gift from the foundation, led by Jennifer and Peter Buffett, will establish the NoVo Foundation Endowed Chair in Social and Emotional Learning at UIC. Based in the department of psychology, the chair will oversee continuing research on social and emotional learning programs that promote children’s positive behavior and school performance.

Pending approval of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees, Roger Weissberg, professor of psychology and education, will be appointed to the chair. Weissberg is president of the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, also known as CASEL.

“We hope that people will recognize NoVo’s endowment of the UIC chair as acknowledgment of the importance of the university’s work and contribution to the field of social and emotional learning,” said Jennifer Buffett, president of NoVo.

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As published in Education Week online

By Sarah D. Sparks

From role-playing games for students to parent seminars, teaching social and emotional learning requires a lot of moving parts, but when all the pieces come together such instruction can rival the effectiveness of purely academic interventions to boost student achievement, according to the largest analysis of such programs to date.

In the report published today in the peer-reviewed journal Child Development, researchers led by Joseph A. Durlak, a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Chicago, found that students who took part in social and emotional learning, or SEL, programs improved in grades and standardized-test scores by 11 percentile points compared with nonparticipating students. That difference, the authors say, was significant—equivalent to moving a student in the middle of the class academically to the top 40 percent of students during the course of the intervention. Such improvement fell within the range of effectiveness for recent analyses of interventions focused on academics.
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NoVo Foundation’s Pamela Shifman named as Leader Helping Victims of Abuse

(WOMENSENEWS)– Women’s eNews 21 Leaders for the 21st Century 2011 are outstanding examples of the creativity, dedication and innovation of the leadership working to improve women’s lives.

The Women’s eNews board and staff thank you, our readers, for bringing to our attention 200 nominees, all of whom should indeed be honored. It was an enormously difficult task to winnow the list to the 20 women and one man who are exemplars of the creativity, dedication, resourcefulness and commitment that it takes to improve the lives of women and girls.

Join us in congratulating those who have made 2011 a better year for all of us.

Read profiles of all 2011 21 Leaders here

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We believe a world which thrives on the safety, integrity, and equality of every body is possible and are pleased to announce the launch of NoVo Foundation’s 10-year initiative designed to strengthen our collective capacity to end violence against girls and women in the United States.  Please click here to learn more about the program.

By Bonnie Miller Rubin, Tribune reporter

Link to article on Chicago Tribune website

In Lauren Topazian’s fifth-grade classroom, the walls are covered with artifacts of ancient civilizations. But today she is asking her students to put themselves somewhere far less exotic: in their classmates’ shoes.

The youngsters are acting out scenarios that call for offering friends a little extra support — such as when a pal loses an art contest or is the target of a rumor. The role-playing speaks volumes about the culture at Cossitt School in La Grange, where thinking about how your behavior affects others is as much a part of the day as reading and math.

“You can’t just assume kids know how to show kindness or resolve conflict,” said Principal Mary Tavegia. “You’ve got to give them the tools as soon as they walk in the door.”

In 2004, Illinois became the first state in the nation to require all school districts to teach social and emotional skills as part of their curriculum and daily school life. That means students are expected to meet certain benchmarks, such as recognizing and managing feelings, building empathy and making responsible decisions.

The touchy-feely stuff doesn’t have to come at the expense of intellect. New evidence shows a strong link between interpersonal skills and academics, said Roger Weissberg, a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois, Chicago, who has studied social and emotional learning for more than 25 years.

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“The Girl Effect: The Clock is Ticking” video maps out the different paths a girl takes upon turning the age of 12, highlighting the positive ripple effect a healthy, empowered girl can have upon her community and future generations. This is at the heart of the girl effect – the unique potential of 600 million adolescent girls to end poverty for themselves and the world.

“The Girl Effect: The Clock is Ticking” reveals what a girl needs to stay on a healthy path and conversely what happens if we don’t invest, but most of all stresses the sense of urgency – it is time to act, no excuses.

Girls arrive at the age of 12 relatively healthy – a girl arrives at the age of 12 relatively healthy before entering the transitional phase of adolescence that sets the course of her adult life. For many, that path leads to irreversible consequences. That’s why the video is called “the clock is ticking.” The challenge is to ensure she is reached in time and receives schooling, healthcare and the skills to ensure she can earn herself and her family a decent livelihood.

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The Secretary of Education isn’t the only one who thinks so. Behind the growing movement for social and emotional learning.

by Katherine Gustafson

Link to article on Yes! website

Social and Emotional Learning, SEL, focuses on teaching children the skills and strategies to recognize and moderate their own emotions and to manage conflicts with others.

In a dimmed classroom in Spanish Harlem’s P.S. 112, thirteen kindergarteners were on a journey through the Woods of Wonder. With teacher Tom Roepke they crossed over a bridge made of blocks to reach their base camp—the classroom’s carpeted corner. As the traffic of FDR Drive rushed by outside the window, its sound mixing with a soft flute on the CD player, Roepke asked quietly if anyone saw anything interesting.

“I saw lots of seashells,” whispered one boy.

“I saw a reindeer and an owl,” said another. “They had black fur and they had super eyes that see in the dark and they could even see me in the dark. I put something on the floor and he ate it and he was happy.”

“You fed the owl and he was happy,” said Roepke. “I bet he’s going to remember you! What did you see, Sophie?”

“I saw a little bird that was blue and had a flat beak and sharp claws.”

“I saw a purple salamander,” Sophie’s neighbor offered.

“I’ve been hoping to see one of those!” Roepke exclaimed. “Every time I go in those woods. I haven’t seen one yet. You are so lucky.”

Soon enough it was time to build a cellophane campfire. The children each contributed a piece of kindling to the pile and blew it into flame, which Roepke provided with the flicker of a flashlight beneath the orange cellophane. After the students had toasted imaginary marshmallows and stretched out to sleep under the stars, the night watchman reported a passing bear.

“He just spotted it in the woods over there,” Roepke told the class. “It’s not coming over here. We’re safe.”

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Presidents of the Nike Foundation & NoVo Foundation

Link to interview on PSI.org website

As presidents of two exceptional, multimillion dollar foundations, Jennifer Buffett and Maria Eitel are women with a shared passion to affect change among girls in the developing world. Ms. Buffett is President and Co-Chair of the NoVo Foundation, a philanthropic organization focused primarily on the empowerment of women and girls. She shares leadership of the foundation with her husband Peter Buffett. Maria Eitel is the founding President of the Nike Foundation, where she works to drive resources to girls through a variety of initiatives and put them on the global agenda.

In 2008, NoVo joined forces with the Nike Foundation, committing $90 million to “The Girl Effect.” This global campaign promotes the powerful social and economic change brought about when girls have the opportunity to participate. Here, Ms. Eitel and Ms. Buffett share their thoughts on investing in girls with PSI Vice President of Corporate Marketing and Communications Kate Roberts.

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Link to page on The Chronicle of Philanthropy website

Opinion: For the Gates-Buffett Challenge to Work, It Takes More Than Money

By: SUSAN WOLF DITKOFF AND THOMAS J. TIERNEY

The biggest fund-raising drive in history has just gone public.

Warren Buffett, teaming with Bill and Melinda Gates, has challenged the nation’s billionaires to give away at least half of their net worth to charity—potentially totaling $600-billion. Billionaires including Eli and Edythe Broad, John and Ann Doerr, H.F. (Gerry) and Marguerite Lenfest, and John and Tashia Morgridge have taken the pledge, ushering in a game-changing moment for philanthropy.

Philanthropists frequently aspire to be innovators and catalysts. Well, now they have a chance to step up to the challenge—by directing money toward programs that work and away from those that don’t and by being disciplined enough to hold themselves accountable for real results.

Donating lots of money is a necessary first step, but it is only the first step. The real issue is having clarity on what success looks like and how money can help create change, before springing into check-writing mode. Too many philanthropists do not have that clarity, but the good news is that at least some are humbly reassessing.

Take, for example, Peter and Jennifer Buffett, whose lives were turned upside-down in 2006 when Peter’s father, Warren, decided to give each of his three children $1-billion for their foundations. Jennifer recounts how she was emerging from the subway and got a call from her husband. “You’d better get home.”

Peter then told her, “We got a fax, and I think our lives just changed forever.” That fax vaulted their philanthropy, the NoVo Foundation, into one of the nation’s biggest.

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George Weiner from DoSomething.org led a workshop for grantee partners on how to most effectively use their organization’s website and how social media tools and internet marketing programs can help increase visibility.  You can find the link to the presentation on social media engagement here and to the presentation on Analytics and AdWords here.

Read the letter to Congress and the Obama Administration from Riane Eisler and Kimberly Otis

Urban Institute Report Sent to President Obama and Congress

Press Release from the Center for Partnership Studies

To focus our nation on what really matters in today’s economy, a coalition of organizations and individuals representing over 30 million citizens urges the Obama Administration and Congress to adopt the recommendations of the Urban Institute’s report, The State of Society: Measuring Economic Success and Human Well-Being.

The report pays special attention to the still largely ignored, but bellwether, status of the majority of the population: women and children.

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The Ms. Foundation’s Gloria Awards honors activists and philanthropists alike.

BY SOPHIE ROSENBLUM

The Gloria Awards: A National Salute to Women of Vision were held Thursday night at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in New York City. The Ms. Foundation organizes the Gloria Awards to celebrate grassroots activists and their supporters whose vision aids in creating a just and all-encompassing democracy. Ms. Foundation President, Sara K. Gould and a co-founder of the Ms. Foundation, Gloria Steinem (for whom the awards are named), hosted the event.

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(Washington, DC) Congressman Dale E. Kildee (D-MI), Congresswoman Judy Biggert (R-IL), and Congressman Tim Ryan (D-OH) announced the introduction of HB 4223, the Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning Act, new legislation that authorizes the US Department of Education to establish programs and allocate funds to:

• Establish a National Technical Assistance and Training Center for  Social and Emotional Learning
• Provide Grants to Support Evidence-Based Social and Emotional Learning Programming
• Conduct a National Evaluation of School-Based Social and Emotional Learning Programming

“In today’s increasingly competitive economy, our children deserve more than an academically challenging environment – they need the 21st century skills of creative thinking and problem solving,” said Congressman Kildee, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education.
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Peter Buffett, the second son of Warren Buffett, and his wife, Jennifer, focus their philanthropy squarely on helping women and girls in developing nations. “If you support them, you end up having an impact in a lot of other community areas, because it’s the women who are involved in everything from fetching water to delivering health care,” says Peter. One of the Buffett’s microfinance initiatives funneled $3 million in grants to 14,000 Bangladeshi girls, helping them start businesses. read full article

Jennifer Buffett, President and Co-Chair of the Board of Directors of the NoVo Foundation, and Bob Dandrew, NoVo’s Executive Director, announced today that Bob Dandrew will be leaving the Foundation before the end of 2009 to begin a new nonprofit venture in the field of local living economies. Jennifer Buffett commented, “Bob has done an outstanding job during his four-year tenure, bringing 25 years of philanthropic and nonprofit experience to the position. Bob has helped us launch and build NoVo from a fledgling organization into a global presence, ably shepherding our strategic planning, grants management, financial operations and program development. Bob’s leadership during NoVo’s start-up period has helped to assure its success as a transformative philanthropy, and we are deeply grateful to him for the contributions he has made to implementing NoVo’s mission.” public announcement (.pdf)

The NoVo Foundation celebrates the presentation of the 2009 Clinton Global Citizen Award today to Ruchira Gupta, president of NoVo’s grantee and partner, Apne Aap Women Worldwide, a grassroots group that helps thousands of girls and women in India break the bonds of prostitution. read press release (.pdf)

The NoVo Foundation is pleased to announce two new multimillion dollar commitments to end targeted violence against girls and women in and around the Democratic Republic of Congo.  The commitments will each specifically fund the development of programs and resources to provide women survivors of war the tools they need to secure a pivotal role in rebuilding their countries. read press release (.pdf)

The NoVo Foundation is seeking outside assistance in developing and managing a mission related investment program for a portion of our investment portfolio.  NoVo is looking for a manager that can effectively design, build, and manage the Mission Related Investment Program in collaboration with our staff and board.  You can find the Request for Proposal (NoVo_MRI_RFP.pdf) here that outlines the scope of work for this project.  The deadline for proposals is April 17, 2009.

www.casel.org

CHICAGO: NoVo Foundation, led by Jennifer and Peter Buffett, has announced a $6 million investment in social and emotional learning (SEL) through a gift to the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL). Based in Chicago, CASEL is the world’s leading organization supporting social and emotional learning as an essential part of education from preschool through high school (Pre-K-12). The gift responds to CASEL’s recent summary of the research, which finds that social and emotional learning can significantly raise students’ scores on standardized achievement tests, build attachment to school, improve interpersonal attitudes and behaviors, and decrease negative behaviors, such as violence and substance abuse. Press_Release (.pdf)

On Saturday January 31, 2009, The World Economic Forum will host a panel discussion, The Girl Effect on Development. This event is the first-ever plenary panel on adolescent girls and is designed to create a powerful vision for the world’s future by harnessing the power of adolescent girls.

Panelists for the plenary include Gates Foundation Co-Chair Melinda Gates, World Bank Managing Director Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus, Executive Director of UNICEF Ann Veneman, Nike Inc. CEO Mark Parker, and Minister of Trade for Indonesia Mari Pangestu. It will be moderated by Helene Gayle, President and CEO of CARE.

In this era of global economic uncertainty – a critical focal point for this year’s event – a spotlight on girls is even more timely. Investing in girls today plants the seeds for solving poverty tomorrow. By investing in adolescent girls, we can ignite positive change in families, villages, cities, countries and the world.

The NoVo Foundation is proud to partner with the Nike Foundation on “The Girl Effect,” the ripple effect of development that is created by investing in adolescent girls. www.girleffect.org

Former President Clinton Recognizes Remarkable Individuals for Outstanding Leadership and Innovation in Solving Global Challenges with the 2nd Annual Clinton Global Citizen Awards.

Jennifer and Peter Buffett, Xiaoyi Liao, Julio Frenk of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Neville Isdell honored in a special ceremony tonight with appearances and performances by Maria Bartiromo, John T. Chambers, America Ferrera, Youssou Ndour, Robert F Kennedy Jr., Julia Ormond and James Taylor

New York – President Clinton recognized five remarkable individuals for their leadership and impact in improving the lives of millions around the globe at the second annual Clinton Global Citizen Awards tonight. The Clinton Global Citizen Awards ceremony concluded day two of the Clinton Global Initiative’s fourth Annual Meeting, which convenes world leaders from government, the private sector, and NGOs to create lasting, positive change across the world.

“The Global Citizen Awards are about honoring and inspiring service to humanity” President Clinton said. “Our award recipients were chosen from a pool of remarkable candidates. Their innovation, dedication and determination have changed lives, and their actions serve as models of what each of us can do to make a difference in the world.” www.clintonglobalinitiative.org

www.girleffect.org

The Nike Foundation and the NoVo Foundation have joined forces based on a shared passion for a new and extremely promising area of philanthropic investment: adolescent girls as a powerful force for change.

With a dedication to finding solutions that offer exponential returns, we are aiming to invest $100 million in unleashing the ripple effect of adolescent girls.  Together, we seek to leverage exponentially more resources from public and private sources directly to adolescent girls through advocacy, awareness and impactful programs. read more (.pdf)