Ted Turner, the Atlanta, Ga. media mogul known for such cable television innovations as Cable News Network (CNN), takes a homogenous approach to spending his accumulated wealth.
Turner has given more than $237 million to United Nations programs such as wildlife preservation, birth control, minefield clearance, Guinea worm eradication and polio vaccination efforts, making good on his 1997 promise to give $100 million a year for 10 years, the Dallas Morning News reported.
"With our economy, we've got billionaires on every street corner. I'm one of them," Turner told the newspaper. "A billion dollars is a lot more money than you can spend intelligently, so why not spend it for children dying of preventable diseases?"
Turner has worked out a system to make sure his donations are not simply funneled into other programs: United Nations agencies send project ideas to Secretary General Kofi Annan, who then approves various projects and forwards them to the United Nations Foundation.
Turner is the foundation's chairman, but deciding what project will be funded requires a majority vote of the nine-member board of directors. Other board members include Ruth Cardoso, the wife of Brazil's president; Graca Machel, wife of Nelson Mandella; former U.N. ambassador and current Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young; and Muhammad Yunus, founder of a Bangladesh bank that gives microloans to poor women.
On March 27, the foundation announced it had completed its sixth round of funding and will provide $17 million to various projects, including relief efforts in Mozambique, curbing the spread of HIV/AIDS in South Africa and improving the lives of adolescent girls in Bangladesh.
The foundation has provided $37 million in grants, including those announced Monday, for reproductive health efforts and family-planning education, and has funded programs to stop minors from smoking.
Turner's charity efforts have even inspired another famous billionaire -- Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates. Gates, the world's richest man, has given $50 million of his own money to further work on polio eradication through the United Nations Foundation.
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