From Africa Recovery, Vol.12#1 (August 1998), Briefs page

Board of Directors named for Ted Turner's fund

Ms. Graça Machel, Mozambique's former First Lady and Minister of Education, and author of a 1996 report on children and armed conflict commissioned by the UN General Assembly, has been named as a member of the Board of Directors of the United Nations Foundation. A non-profit entity, the Foundation was established in January to channel the $1 bn pledged to the UN last September by US media magnate Ted Turner.

The pledge is to be disbursed to UN projects and programmes in the humanitarian, economic and social fields in $100 mn installments over 10 years, and the UN Foundation handed its first tranche of awards, totalling some $22 mn, in May. Projects in Africa to benefit from the awards will focus on the eradication of Guinea worm in Central Africa; nutrition and household food security for vulnerable groups in Sierra Leone; reducing measles and vitamin A deficiency in Nigeria; demobilization of child soldiers in Sierra Leone; enhancing reproductive health in the Comoros; helping Burkinabè women in the production and marketing of butter from shea nuts; and socioeconomic reintegration of landmine victims in Angola, Mozambique and Somalia.

Other members of the Foundation's Board of Directors include Mr. Turner, as chairman; Ms. Ruth Cardoso, First Lady of Brazil; Ms. Emma Rothschild, Director of the Centre for History and Economics at King's College, Cambridge University; Mr. Maurice Strong, Executive Coordinator of UN Reform; Mr. Timothy E. Wirth, President of the Foundation; former US Ambassador to the UN Andrew Young; and Prof. Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh.

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