2008 Winner: Dave Eggers
The author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Eggers’ passion is increasing literacy by bringing communities into closer involvement with their local public schools. His TED prize helped start a website, onceuponaschool.org, which helps connect teachers and schools with donors and sponsors to help fund projects and activities.
2007 Winner: Bill Clinton
Since leaving the White House, the Clinton Global Initiative has worked to solve problems related to globalization. His TED prize was dedicated specifically to creating a viable rural health system in Rwanda. The government of Rwanda assisted in drawing up plans for health clinics in all areas of the country, and today, thanks to the TED prize, there are new hospitals, operating rooms, medical technology, four hundred new health workers, and mental health services in areas that previously had no health facilities at all.
2006 Winner: Cameron Sinclair
Since housing is a vital concern for much of the developing world, Sinclair and his nonprofit group, Architecture for Humanity, try to find architectural solutions to humanitarian crises. They design residences for refugees, mobile health clinics for Africa, and housing for people displaced by Hurricane Katrina. The TED prize has enabled Sinclair to fund a design challenge where architects and interior designers compete to create the most functional, low-cost and sustainable buildings for people in need around the world.
2005 Winner: Bono
Among the first TED prizewinners, Bono’s wishes were to increase American activism on behalf of Africa and to increase Internet access to the African continent, specifically in the nation of Ethiopia. ONE, his nonprofit, has been fighting poverty, AIDS, and starvation, and has successfully petitioned the U.S. government to increase funding for AIDS research and prevention.
TED is all about powerful, transformative ideas and how to turn them into reality. The topics discussed at conferences provide a blueprint for the creative thinkers of today to tackle tough problems in a globally connected and interdependent world. They’re bold, audacious, and worth spreading far and wide.
