The eight semifinalists in the MacArthur Foundation’s $100 million grant challenge want to change the way orphanages work, educate refugee children, provide virtual access to medical specialists and deliver digital access to millions more books.
Those are among the solutions proposed in the Chicago-based foundation’s competition meant to inspire bold ideas and provide the money to make meaningful change happen.
When 100&Change was announced last June, MacArthur officials said it would be their largest individual grant by a factor of three and a unique prize in the field of philanthropy.
The eight semifinalists include some well-known organizations, such as the Internet Archive, the Carter Center and the Sesame Workshop. They will be winnowed to five in September, and then the finalists will present their ideas at a live event in December.
The semi-finalists are:
Catholic Relief Services, which wants to change the way society cares for children in orphanages; HarvestPlus, which would fortify staple crops to eliminate “hidden hunger” in Africa; Himalayan Cataract, which would wipe out preventable blindness in Nepal, Ethiopia, and Ghana; Human Diagnosis Project, which would serve underserved U.S. patients with virtual access to medical specialists; Internet Archive, which would deliver free digital access to 4 million books; Rice University, which would combat infant mortality in Africa Sesame Workshop and International Rescue Committee, which would educate refugee children; And The Carter Center, which would eliminate river blindness in Nigeria.
“These eight ambitious proposals exemplify the passion, range, and creativity of the hundreds of applications,” said MacArthur President Julia Stasch, in a statement. “We hope that the competition inspires individuals and organizations to be bold and think big, because solutions are possible.”
The competition was open to organizations worldwide. From 1,904 proposals submitted, 801 passed administrative review to be evaluated by expert judges on four criteria: meaningfulness, verifiability, durability, and feasibility.
The final selection was made by the directors of the MacArthur Foundation, which designed the process to be transparent at all steps. Further information about the judging and the projects is available at macfound.org.
sajohnson@chicagotribune.com
Twitter: @StevenKJohnson
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