One rarely touched upon subject is that of education. Almost across the board globally where you see severe poverty you see much lower rates of education and much inflated rates of crime / violence.
I'd give $50 million to the Khan Academy to continue what they are doing at a much increased pace. I'd partner with SpaceX to speed up their mesh Internet satellites in space idea. Then I'd subsidize renewable energy sources such as hydro, wind, and solar electricity throughout much of the poorest parts of the world. The key would be subsidizing the hardware but teaching locals how to operate and maintain this new infrastructure themselves.
Next would be standardized teaching of teachers from local areas to provide free schooling throughout most of the poorest and unreached parts of the world. This would be in partnership with the Khan Academy (or a similar institution of nonprofit status). They could tailor the curriculums to basic education and trades that benefit the local area. Examples would be farming, skilled trades, medicine, etc. if a Kaizen approach was followed, it should slowly improve the economy and thereby the world.
The overarching goal would be self sufficiency. It allows those with no hope to build ladders by teaching others to build ladders that let them climb out of the hole (metaphorically speaking) they are stuck in.
An important factor relating to education is merely getting people engaged in doing something - allow for productivity. You of course have to have a (safe) place for people to gather, make sure those people can get there, make sure they are fed, and then they can share and learn; health is an important part too of course. Once you have these base factors then education is the best thing to fill ones time with, as opposed to letting someone's mind go stagnant or worse yet get sucked into boredom; if you can get them also productive with agriculture or other productive activities, great - however those have a larger initial capital investment (equipment and natural resources). It's more complex than this of course.
Comments
One rarely touched upon subject is that of education. Almost across the board globally where you see severe poverty you see much lower rates of education and much inflated rates of crime / violence.
I'd give $50 million to the Khan Academy to continue what they are doing at a much increased pace. I'd partner with SpaceX to speed up their mesh Internet satellites in space idea. Then I'd subsidize renewable energy sources such as hydro, wind, and solar electricity throughout much of the poorest parts of the world. The key would be subsidizing the hardware but teaching locals how to operate and maintain this new infrastructure themselves.
Next would be standardized teaching of teachers from local areas to provide free schooling throughout most of the poorest and unreached parts of the world. This would be in partnership with the Khan Academy (or a similar institution of nonprofit status). They could tailor the curriculums to basic education and trades that benefit the local area. Examples would be farming, skilled trades, medicine, etc. if a Kaizen approach was followed, it should slowly improve the economy and thereby the world.
The overarching goal would be self sufficiency. It allows those with no hope to build ladders by teaching others to build ladders that let them climb out of the hole (metaphorically speaking) they are stuck in.
An important factor relating to education is merely getting people engaged in doing something - allow for productivity. You of course have to have a (safe) place for people to gather, make sure those people can get there, make sure they are fed, and then they can share and learn; health is an important part too of course. Once you have these base factors then education is the best thing to fill ones time with, as opposed to letting someone's mind go stagnant or worse yet get sucked into boredom; if you can get them also productive with agriculture or other productive activities, great - however those have a larger initial capital investment (equipment and natural resources). It's more complex than this of course.