The Rory and Elizabeth Brooks Foundation
The Rory and Elizabeth Brooks Foundation has announced the largest ever European gift to development research at a meeting of global leaders organised by former US President Bill Clinton.
At the Clinton Global Initiative meeting, in New York on 26 September 2008, Rory Brooks outlined the details of the £1.4 million award to the Brooks World Poverty Institute over three years.
The sum, which builds on previous support from the Foundation of £1.5 million, will support the work of the country’s leading bodies of development experts including Chair, Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz.
It will also fund ground-breaking partnerships between BWPI and those working with the poor to transfer BWPI’s expertise across the world.
BWPI is collaborating with BRAC, the international NGO, on issues affecting poor people from Asia to Africa to Latin America. Starting with the impact of climate change on poverty, BWPI and BRAC will work with the impoverished to help solve the global challenge of poverty.
The BWPI-BRAC programme kicked off in Bangladesh at Rajendrapur during the same month as the World Economic Forum meeting of world leaders at Davos. The Rajendrapur Conversation brought together researchers and practitioners at an event which deployed Manchester's anthropologists, architects, engineers, economists, environmentalists, hydrologists, urban planners and political scientists.
Rory Brooks said: "I am particularly pleased to be able to contribute to extending the important work of the BWPI with this partnership with the BRAC Development Initiative."
"With BRAC's reputation for successful delivery of programmes which benefit poor people and Joe Stiglitz and the team at BWPI's world-class research capability, I hope we can deliver a genuine step change in how poverty research and research into action is delivered. And, of course, encourage those with access to much larger funding resources to partner with us to use the knowledge created in order to scale up delivery of successful programmes."
Read a brief biography of Rory Brooks (opens in a new document)