Three Powerful Wishes

Goldie Hawn on the TED stage last week in Monterey. The session was entitled – “I have a dream.”

Three TED prize winners for 2007 talked to us about their vision, their dream.

Jeff Bezos had the honor of introducing former President Clinton to the TED stage, who followed infamous photojournalist James Nachtwey and EO Wilson.

This is how it works: each prize winner gets a ‘wish.’ James Nachtwey wants to break a story he feels the world ‘needs to know about.’ In order to do this, he needs to gain access to a place in the world where a critical situation is occurring and document it with photography.

A man passionate about nature, EO Wilson wants to create the Encyclopedia of Life to help inspire preservation of the Earth’s biodiversity. This encyclopedia would be open to allow scientists to contribute to the site and in doing so, make the world aware of the importance of this initiative.

He is looking for a major website design combined with a powerful search technology that can aggregate existing biological information and make it easily accessible to everyone.

Clinton’s wish revolved around Africa, more specifically, Rwanda and its rural healthcare system. He is asking people to support the Clinton Foundation and Paul Farmer’s Partners in Health Organization who are already on the ground in Rwanda.

Part of their efforts is to provide free primary healthcare access and education for the poor, including AIDS prevention and treatment. Funding for this initiative is not cheap, perhaps as high as $4 million or higher a year for the next five years.

In addition to funding, he is looking for transportation solutions, generators, solar panels and rainwater collection systems.

Says Clinton, “Poverty is worse than corruption in third world countries, but the systems are not in place for drugs to reach people who need them. We need to develop a model for rural healthcare in the developing world, a model that can be implemented in other third world countries, one which can sustain itself without any foreign donors after 5-10 years.”

After the session, Clinton shakes hands and says hello to TEDsters both on and off the stage.

Clinton with other prize winners on stage immediately following the award presentation: