Wonder in a complex world: Day 4 of TED2026

What does it take to find hope when everything feels fractured? Day 4 of TED2026 leaned into the messy, meaningful work of creating a better world, one connection at a time. Hear from the speakers who rose to the top of the TED Idea Search and the thinkers, artists and dreamers who refuse to accept the world as it is. Watch what happens when we dare to imagine differently.

Day 4 of TED2026 included talks curated by curator, connector and creative producer Kelly Stoetzel, TED’s YouTube manager Kelli Hsu, psychologist and happiness expert Dan Gilbert, TED’s head of media and curation Helen Walters and TED’s digital curator Ikey Ajavon.

Watch TED2026 on TED Live, check out more photos from the event and learn more about attending a future TED conference.

Whose voices get heard — and whose get lost? Political scientist Joaquin Navajas has a surprising answer: in a world of polarization, everyone’s voices are heard. The very engine of democracy only works when there is a diversity of voices. But what about the voices that never make it into the room? Musician Gabriella Di Laccio says that nearly 90 percent of the music we hear was written by men. Not because women weren’t composing, but because no one was keeping track. Researcher and author Sukriti finds the same erasure in fashion: the cotton that cooled pharaohs, the bandana that symbolized the American West — all rooted in Indian textile tradition and yet stripped of their origins along the way. And some voices are missing from the conversation itself. Photographer Jessica Irwin was born with cerebral palsy, making her unable to speak. People talk over her, talk down to her and mistake silence for simplicity. She asks us to reconsider what intelligence looks like — and to remember that the inability to speak does not mean the inability to think. The question is whether we’re willing to listen. Journalist Joshua Johnson has a place to start: park your opinions, get closer and learn their story

Real change doesn’t wait for permission. Technologist Li Hongyi grew tired of the government’s habit of solving problems no one actually had — so he rebuilt it from the ground up, sending small teams into schools, hospitals and fire stations to find the real ones. In Nigeria, engineer Vincent Egoro discovered why solar panels were failing across the continent: no one knew how to fix them. His solution isn’t more panels — it’s building the human infrastructure to keep them running. Entrepreneur Fiori Zafeiropoulou Fronimopoulou takes that same logic into the factory. As AI handles repetitive work, humans get the chance to become authors, designers and storytellers. That same impulse drove mountaineer Nelly Attar to found a dance class in a culture where women’s bodies are rarely given space to move. By sneaking women into a warehouse after hours, she built a sports “move”-ment. And in the laboratory, chemist Tim Cernak is asking why the tools of modern medicine stop at the human body. He’s applying them to endangered species, rewriting what conservation can look like.

Music that follows inspiration, not rules. In a performance equal parts disorienting and transcendent, musician Reggie Watts reminds us that music needs no category. Part beatbox, part opera, part something entirely his own, he reminds us that music requires nothing more than sound and the courage to follow it anywhere.

Where our most important decisions begin. Behavioral scientist Nicholas Epley learned this on a morning commute when he decided to talk to a stranger wearing a red hat — a choice that launched decades of research into why we avoid connection despite craving it. He reveals that our instinct to stay silent, skip the compliment and avoid the deeper conversation is a measurable mistake. Purposeful prankster Gabriela Navarro Moynihan takes that idea further, sharing why she spent her college spring break donating a kidney to a stranger she’ll never meet — and why it’s worth crossing an ocean for other people.

A moment of connection can ripple across an entire lifetime. Author Ann Patchett traces her path from a chance encounter with a Hare Krishna in a Chicago airport to opening one of America’s most beloved independent bookstores — making the case that reading, like generosity and conversation, is an invisible thread that binds humanity. Lawyer, poet and Freedom Reads founder Reginald Dwayne Betts walked into prison at sixteen with nothing but survival on his mind. In solitary confinement, he discovered small acts of transformation — and a mentor who showed him how to hold onto hope. Years later, he walked out and built 600 prison libraries across America.

We build ourselves through the worlds we create — with partners and machines. Author, podcaster and relationship researcher Eli J. Finkel reveals that common interests and physical attraction aren’t what make or break a relationship: it’s the thousands of tiny interactions that construct deeply personal shared experiences — what he calls “lovemotifs”. Human nature decoder Paul Bloom makes a counterintuitive case that AI companions may be able to cure loneliness, at a cost. He explains that the discomfort of feeling socially disconnected is not a flaw to be engineered away but a signal that drives us to grow, which AI might help you recognize. Digital anthropologist Jennifer Cearns shares surprising evidence from the field: people interacting with AI are not retreating from their humanity but discovering it, using machines as a space to practice grief, compassion and care.

What AI can and can’t do. Neal Katyal has argued 52 cases before the Supreme Court, and the one that may matter most — defending US businesses in the case against Trump’s tariffs — asked the justices to do something they’d never done: strike down a sitting president’s signature initiative. His secret weapon was an AI system trained on 25 years of Supreme Court questions that predicted, almost verbatim, what the justices would ask him. But the case wasn’t won by the machine: it was won by the human skills AI can’t replicate — the ability to listen, to read a room and to connect with another person. His argument for all of us: stop asking whether AI will replace you and start going deeper into the thing that’s irreducibly, unmistakably human about what you do.

You survived. Now what? Growing up in poverty in Robbins, Illinois, multihyphenate entertainer Keke Palmer became her family’s breadwinner as a child actor — and built an entire identity around staying useful, staying alert and never stopping. The problem? Survival strategies that can save you can also quietly trap you, running long after the emergency has passed. It took watching her exhausted toddler fight sleep in a parking lot for Palmer to finally understand the difference between performing a life and actually living one.

The Audacious Project reveals its 2025 cohort and $1B catalyzing change

The Audacious Project, the collaborative funding platform within TED, is thrilled to announce its newest cohort of grantee innovators. This new cohort extends the vital on-the-ground work of Audacious grantees on key global issues, including reducing the flow of plastics to rivers and oceans, improving reproductive care, preventing homelessness and investing in low-income and first-generation college students. 

Since 2018, The Audacious Project has invited visionary social entrepreneurs to propose their boldest ideas to solve the world’s greatest challenges, and collaborated with them to transform their ambitions into achievable and audacious, multi-year plans. 

Audacious has reached new heights — with more than $1 billion committed by the Audacious community at the end of 2025 to provide the flexible, long-term funding to launch and scale these bold ideas.

Audacious has also launched a reinvestment pilot program, providing a secondary funding round to previous grantees that demonstrated significant results after their initial five years of funding. The Audacious donor community has committed nearly $50 million in total follow-on funding to three selected organizations to scale their work and sustain their impact. This pilot demonstrates a commitment to flexible, long-term funding — and to the value of providing a longer runway for organizations creating transformational change. 

The 2025 Audacious cohort includes:

• Arc Institute, led by Silvana Konermann: Creating the world’s first high-utility virtual cell, an AI model accelerating medical breakthroughs toward cures for intractable diseases
• Braven, led by Aimée Eubanks Davis: Closing the college-to-career gap for low-income and first-generation college students in the United States by partnering with higher education and employers to prepare students for the workforce
• Imagine Worldwide, led by Rapelang Rabana: Scaling solar-powered, offline edtech learning solutions to reach students across Malawi, Sierra Leone and Tanzania
• Ipas, led by Anu Kumar and Jean-Claude Mulunda: Preventing unsafe abortion in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and South Asia by removing systemic, legal and social barriers to care
• Plastic Solutions Fund, led by Nicky Davies: Reducing plastic production and fostering a reuse-based, circular economy in partnership with the #BreakFreeFromPlastic movement.
• Pure Earth, led by Drew McCartor: Protecting children from lead poisoning by helping 22 low- and middle-income countries implement proven approaches to prevent exposure and reduce health risks
• Destination: Home’s “Right at Home,” led by Jennifer Loving: Stopping homelessness before it starts by scaling a proven prevention model across the country, redefining how the United States responds to the housing affordability crisis
• Solutions for Our Climate, led by Joojin Kim: Transforming maritime trade into an industry  that drives global decarbonization
• The Ocean Cleanup, led by Boyan Slat: Stopping plastic from flowing into our oceans by intercepting and removing the waste accumulating in rivers
• Tiko, led by Serah Malaba: Empowering and protecting girls across Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Africa and Burkina Faso from HIV, unintended pregnancy and sexual violence by connecting them to free care and services

The Audacious Project reinvestment organizations include: 

• Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT), led by Rebecca Firth: Establishing an Open Mapping Marketplace that connects trained and certified local mappers with decision-makers needing high-quality geospatial data to strengthen livelihoods and planning
• Last Mile Health, led by Lisha McCormick: Saving the lives of women and children across the African continent by partnering with governments to train community health workers to deliver cost-effective primary care and transform health financing  
• Thorn, led by Julie Cordua: Hardwiring child safety into the fabric of the internet by equipping technology companies and law enforcement with AI-driven tools to combat child sexual abuse, protect children at scale and outpace emerging threats

“This year’s cohort represents what happens when humanity’s toughest problems are met with courage. It is also a declaration of what they imagine is still entirely possible. Whether they are charting paths to plastic‑free oceans, unlocking access to life-saving health services for women and girls globally or harnessing AI to prevent disease, the breadth and depth of these interventions is awe-inducing,” said Anna Verghese, executive director of The Audacious Project. “We’re humbled yet again by what the Audacious community makes possible.”

“Daring ideas matter most when they become achievable,” said Chris Anderson, founder of The Audacious Project and TED chairman. “These grantees prove what’s possible when we come together to dream big, take risks and build a more hopeful future.”

Through its unique model, The Audacious Project brings together dedicated philanthropists to give in community with one another, allowing funders to connect with groundbreaking projects that aim to solve humanity’s biggest challenges. 

“The world’s problems are huge — they require audacious thinking and people willing to work together to solve them. I feel a real responsibility to give back and to support some of these immense issues through philanthropy. The Audacious Project helps me do that by connecting me with organizations that have big, bold plans and the vision to actually pull them off,” said Reed Hastings, founder and chairman of the board of Netflix and CEO of Powder. “What makes it unique is how it brings together diverse partners with serious, flexible capital to back the most visionary leaders out there. It’s an honor to be part of this community driving real systemic change.”

“Audacious brings together a community of grantees and funders who are optimistic, hopeful and believe that change is possible. As funders, we have a responsibility to be good stewards of philanthropic dollars, and to back grantee-led solutions to the problems that communities are facing. Amazing leaders deserve to be supported — and it’s our job to support them as future leaders of the world,” said Tegan Acton, founder and principal of Wildcard Giving.

Over the past eight years, the Audacious donor community has committed $4.6 billion in support of 70 bold projects spanning health, climate and community-led innovation, each one grounded in real-world work and designed to turn urgency into action. Audacious grantees have subsequently leveraged an additional $3 billion from other funders, catalyzing $7.6 billion in total funding. These figures point to the distinct power of collaborative philanthropy, when bold ideas and possibility are matched with a committed community that acts with purpose.

Audacious grantees have transformed educational systems worldwide, enrolling millions of girls in school, and have helped millions of people lift themselves out of ultra-poverty. They have driven medical breakthroughs — developing the world’s first computer-generated protein medicine, revolutionizing COVID-19 response systems and repurposing medicines to cure rare diseases. From developing the first whale language model to transforming how we track methane emissions, year after year, these projects redefine what is achievable in our world.

What these leaders imagine is possible. And we feel so lucky, together, to see a better future with them.

5 big ideas from day 3 of TED Countdown Summit 2025

Across the final two sessions of TED Countdown Summit 2025, experts, changemakers and dreamers explored actionable solutions to fix today’s problems, alleviate tomorrow’s and build a clean energy future. Here are some highlights from day 3:

Africa’s electric vehicle revolution is leapfrogging traditional fossil fuel transit. Electrical engineer Doreen Orishaba explores how electric bus company BasiGo is using innovative financing models and locally assembled buses to conquer Kigali’s hills, limiting environmental impact and saving operators money. With 90 percent renewable energy powering these silent electric fleets, emerging companies like BasiGo show how Africa isn’t playing catch-up in sustainable transportation — it’s poised to lead the global revolution with every green kilometer. All of those electric vehicles will need rare earth minerals that have become increasingly important across the world, which is where mining innovator Mfikeyi Makayi comes in. At KoBold, Makayi’s team is building the mine of the future through radical new AI-aided technology that can model thousands of geological possibilities simultaneously, enabling safer, more sustainable mines that maximize resource recovery while minimizing environmental impact.

Data-driven mapping is transforming the fight against deforestation. Forester-turned-data detective Tasso Azevedo reveals how collaborative mapping initiative MapBiomas has stitched together 40 years of satellite images into near-real-time, courtroom-ready evidence — turning Brazil’s once-invisible deforestation (and even secret jungle airstrips) into bright, undeniable pixels. By producing thousands of precise deforestation reports weekly, MapBiomas (with support from TED’s collaborative funding initiative The Audacious Project) has helped reduce deforestation in the Amazon by 54 percent and denied $1.5 billion in financing to properties with illegal clearing in the last two years. Now they’re expanding their scope. The goal: to map 70 percent of Earth’s tropical forests by 2030, turning the power of knowledge into protection for our planet’s lungs.

Advanced microbes, the potential of geothermal — and how to finance it all. Microbe wrangler Karsten Temme’s gene-edited soil microbes have reactivated nitrogen-fixing genes designed help farmers replace their synthetic fertilizer, opening up the potential to cut environmental harm while raising yields from Michigan to Kenya. Drawing on the spirit of turning legacy know-how into climate solutions, geothermal trailblazer Cindy Taff is redeploying oil-and-gas drilling tools to tap the energy stored in the “deep, hot, dry rock that exists everywhere,” creating 24/7 geothermal power and subsurface heat batteries without waiting for another century of R&D. Scaling living fertilizer factories and next-generation geothermal fields will take capital, which is why finance innovator Riddhima Yadav urges investors to drop purity tests and mobilize the extra $2.5 trillion a year the transition still lacks so ideas like Temme’s and Taff’s can move from promising pilots to the standards of global infrastructure.

Bold strategies to pay for — and stop — the damages of climate change. Economist Esther Duflo asks a blunt question: Why don’t we tax the world’s richest people in order to pay for climate damages? She proposes a publicly funded redistribution system, financed by taxes on billionaires and large multinational companies, to pay for the costs of climate change on developing countries and provide direct cash transfers to the people affected. She says this “grand bargain” is within reach — one where the rich world compensates the poor, sparking a cycle of global climate action. Climate justice litigator Melinda Janki approaches climate action from a different angle, using the power of law to protect nature and Indigenous communities. She describes how legal victories against ExxonMobil in her home country of Guyana have set powerful precedents that make drilling harder and costlier. Oil companies may seem invincible, she says, but they are legally vulnerable. With courage, persistence and the strategic use of law, people can fight back and win.

Systemic change in all forms, from empowering young people to tapping into ancient wisdom. For social entrepreneur Anshul Tewari, what began as a personal blog became a movement of change-making stories. He shares how Youth Ki Awaaz, a platform for Indian youth to write, share and speak out on social issues, harnesses the power of young voices. The platform has expanded into climate advocacy, proving that making impact can be a daily, accessible habit for young people everywhere. Ecological futurist Tariq Al-Olaimy also helps people rise to their best selves, but in a different way: by turning to spiritual wisdom. He explores how faith communities, often overlooked in the climate movement, offer powerful tools for navigating environmental collapse with moral courage, resilience and a spiritual compass.

The Audacious Project reveals its 2024 cohort

The Audacious Project supports big ideas to foster change around the world’s most urgent challenges. Today, this innovative funding initiative, housed at TED, is announcing its new cohort of projects for 2024, which are as bold as ever — from an idea to repurpose generic drugs en masse to reach the 300 million people globally who lack viable treatments to a new initiative that will evaluate AI systems for dangerous capabilities before release.

The Audacious Project encourages the world’s greatest changemakers to dream bigger than they can imagine — then helps shape their ideas into viable multi-year plans and launch them alongside some of the biggest names in philanthropy. Cumulatively, more than $725M has been raised to support these projects, which now have the resources to begin the work. 

The 2024 cohort includes:

• Equipo Argentino de Antropología Forense (EAAF), which will build lasting forensic systems to help identify victims of human rights violations, including missing migrants and victims of wars and authoritarian regimes.
• Every Cure, which will use the power of AI to unlock new uses for generic and off-patent drugs, democratizing access to safe and effective treatments for the 300 million people that currently lack them.
• Food4Education, which will help African schoolchildren learn, grow and thrive by providing cost-effective, locally sourced and nutritious meals to one million students daily in Kenya and an additional two million in two other African countries through technical advisory support — while creating jobs for the local communities.
• Global Methane Hub, which will coordinate stakeholders worldwide to lower emissions of this dangerous greenhouse gas by 35% by targeting the three sectors responsible for 95% of human-caused emissions globally: energy, agriculture and waste.   
• The Great Barrier Reef Foundation, which will begin large-scale coral restoration across vital reefs in Australia and the Pacific, using new seeding techniques to deploy heat-tolerant corals in oceans more efficiently and with inclusion of Traditional Owners. 
• Inkomoko, which will unlock the talent and potential of more than 300,000 forcibly displaced persons by offering them financing, training and connections to the markets they are typically isolated from — demonstrating that entrepreneurship can be a pathway out of poverty for millions of displaced people.
• MapBiomas, which will map and monitor 70% of the world’s tropical forests across 20 countries, helping to stop activities like slash-and-burn farming and illegal logging, which damage forests and release the carbon they store.
• Project Canary, a collaboration between METR and RAND, which will develop and deploy rigorous safety evaluations for frontier AI systems to address potential dangers before release.
• Scaling Safety, a joint venture by the Community Based Public Safety Collective (CBPSC) and the Alliance for Safety and Justice (ASJ), which will provide much-needed support to resident-powered prevention programs that break cycles of violence, demonstrating that these programs are an essential part of public safety.
• Transcend, which will transform schools across the US by supporting school communities to identify, develop and implement new approaches to school — ultimately, leading to extraordinary and equitable outcomes for their students.

“This new cohort will present their ideas and visions onstage at upcoming TED conferences — including TED Next, TED2025 and TED Countdown — with their TED Talks released online thereafter,” said Anna Verghese, Executive Director of The Audacious Project. “They join The Audacious Project’s existing portfolio of 49 projects, where since 2018, more than $5.9 billion dollars has been catalyzed to support these projects’ visions.”

“It’s so exciting to see these inspiring visions achieve funding at this scale,” said Audacious cofounder and head of TED Chris Anderson. “The brilliance and determination of these organizations combined with the generosity, vision and collaboration of our donors is the reason Audacious was created. I can’t wait to see these projects come to life.”

Moving on up: Talks from day 3 of TEDWomen 2023

For the final day of TEDWomen 2023 in Atlanta, Georgia, a multidisciplinary group of experts took on the challenges and opportunities of navigating change — from reimagining migration for political power and addressing the real threats of AI to championing inclusivity, celebrating nature’s wildness and pondering life’s myriad complexities through art.

The event: Sessions 4 and 5 of TEDWomen 2023, hosted by TEDWomen editorial director Pat Mitchell, TED’s head of curation Helen Walters and activist, filmmaker and entrepreneur Maya Penn

When and where: Friday, October 13, 2023, at the Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta, Georgia

Speakers: Charles M. Blow, Sasha Luccioni, Ruha Benjamin, Melonie D. Parker, Sherrell Dorsey, Mary Ann Sieghart, Dyhia Belhabib, Rebecca McMackin, Lucy McBath, Valerie Montgomery Rice, Maira Kalman, Freada Kapor Klein, Sheila Ngozi Oparaocha, Chantale Zuzi Leader

Music: Darkwave artist Abra captivated the TEDWomen audience with her signature blend of gothic, R&B and electronic music.

Societal progress often feels like two steps forward, one step back — how do we change that? New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow calls for a peaceful, reverse migration of Black Americans to southern US states, to write over legacies of oppression and wield political power to change history.

We’ve all heard it recently: “AI could kill us all.” Instead of catastrophizing, AI ethics researcher Sasha Luccioni wants to address AI’s more pressing risks — like carbon emissions, copyright infringement and biased data — by creating tools and legislation that promote transparency.

In the era of superintelligent AI, are health care and housing for all really beyond reach? From the outcry against Atlanta’s “Cop City” to tech-driven democracy in Barcelona, researcher Ruha Benjamin imagines a future where tech and people-power work in tandem, not in opposition.

How can we create safe and inclusive work cultures for all? Google’s chief diversity officer Melonie D. Parker joins journalist and host of the TED Tech podcast Sherrell Dorsey in a nuanced conversation about creating a sustainably inclusive company where every employee can thrive.

We still take women less seriously than men, says author, journalist and broadcaster Mary Ann Sieghart. She explains how we can tackle what she calls the “authority gap” by questioning our biases against women’s intelligence (like judging a woman by the pitch of her voice) and actively promoting female experts.

Criminal groups use sophisticated technology to perpetrate crimes on the ocean: drug smugglers pilot autonomous submarines; pirates use satellites to detect ships they plan to capture and ransom. Maritime crime fighter Dyhia Belhabib introduces Heva, a tool that uses AI to aggregate international criminal records with the goal of detecting and stopping maritime crime.

Ecological horticulturist Rebecca McMackin explores the beauty of letting your garden run wild, surveying the success she’s had increasing biodiversity on the piers of Brooklyn Bridge Park and offering tips for creating wildlife-friendly habitats at home.

Following the death of her only son, US Congresswoman Lucy McBath was elected to office with one major goal: pass comprehensive gun safety legislation. She shares the power of a personal story to bridge divides and make real, impactful change.

“There are challenges and fears that catapult us to become the greatest versions of ourselves, to become great leaders,” says health equity advocate and president and CEO of Morehouse School of Medicine Valerie Montgomery Rice. She shares three lessons in leadership and shows how they can guide anyone hoping to break through fear, stand up for what’s right and build opportunity for all.

Multidisciplinary artist Maira Kalman delivers a delightfully wry, sneakily profound reflection on time, death, work, art, family, dreams and more. Backed by her wise, witty illustrations, her talk seems to embody the entirety of life itself, in all its absurd glory.

Impact investor Freada Kapor Klein is building fairness into the core of tech companies. Her VC fund, Kapor Capital, only invests in businesses that commit to hiring diverse teams, fostering inclusive workplaces and creating products and services that close opportunity gaps.

The dominant narrative of energy transition has a problem, says energy equity expert Sheila Oparaocha: it ignores the billions of people without energy access. For just and inclusive climate solutions, Oparaocha says we must empower women and prioritize universal access to sustainable energy.

After surviving devastating violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Chantale Zuzi Leader found safety in the US. She urges everyone to consider the problem of displacement with curiosity and compassion — and offers refugees like her a powerful message of hope: “It is possible to break through.”

More than $1B catalyzed for 2023 Audacious Projects

Today, The Audacious Project, a collaborative funding initiative housed at TED, announced that more than one billion dollars has been committed to its newest cohort of projects. This is a significant funding milestone in the initiative’s five-year history and comes at a critical time on key issues such as climate change, migrant rights and criminal justice reform.

The 2023 Audacious Project grantees are:

• CAMFED: Helping girls in Sub-Saharan Africa thrive in school — and beyond
• Canopy: Scaling the use of next-generation pulp in key supply chains to conserve endangered forests
• Clean Slate Initiative: Clearing arrest and conviction records to unlock opportunity
• Global Fishing Watch: Leveraging the power of data to safeguard the ocean by making the invisible visible
• Innovative Genomics Institute: Engineering microbiomes with CRISPR to improve our climate and health
• Jan Sahas’ Migrants Resilience Collaborative: Unlocking life-enhancing benefits and services for India’s domestic migrant workers
• ReNew2030: Accelerating renewable energy for a climate-secure future
• Restore Local, A project of the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100), led by the World Resources Institute: Accelerating locally-led land restoration of Africa’s vital landscapes and forests
• Think of Us: Transforming foster care in the US through the power of lived experience
• Upstream USA: Increasing equitable access to high-quality contraceptive care across the US

“With our 2023 Audacious Project cohort, some of the most complex and challenging problems we’re facing right now – transitioning to renewable energy, increasing access to reproductive health care, transforming our foster care system and more – are being met by some incredible idea-makers,” said Anna Verghese, Executive Director of The Audacious Project. “Each one offers an approach to shift the status quo and the systems they operate in, and will hope to breathe possibility and transformation into these critical issues.”

Each year, The Audacious Project scours the globe for big, bold ideas and collaborates with social entrepreneurs and philanthropists to drive impact on a grand scale. It is an effort that goes beyond funding, pushing for transformative change, systems overhaul and collaboration across multiple sectors. This new cohort will present their big ideas onstage at TED2023, joining an existing portfolio of 39 Audacious projects. Since 2018, more than four billion philanthropic dollars has been catalyzed to support these projects’ visions.

“We started The Audacious Project five years ago as an experiment to see what could happen when we invite changemakers around the world to dream as big as they dare, and then shape their boldest ideas into viable plans,” said Chris Anderson, Head of TED. “It’s absolutely thrilling to see this much money raised for these projects. I’m in awe of the teams behind them — and of the donors who are funding them. Our experiment is gaining traction, and we believe it can achieve even more in the coming years.”

Read more about The Audacious Project and its five years of impact.

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ABOUT THE AUDACIOUS PROJECT

 

Launched in April 2018, The Audacious Project is a collaborative funding initiative that’s catalyzing social impact on a grand scale. Housed at TED, the nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading, and with support from leading social impact advisor The Bridgespan Group, The Audacious Project convenes funders and social entrepreneurs with the goal of supporting bold solutions to the world’s most urgent challenges. The funding collective is made up of respected organizations and individuals in philanthropy, including Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, ELMA Philanthropies, Emerson Collective, MacKenzie Scott, Skoll Foundation, Valhalla Foundation and more.

Each year The Audacious Project supports a new cohort. The 2023 grantees are CAMFED, Canopy, Clean Slate Initiative, Global Fishing Watch, Innovative Genomics Institute, Jan Sahas’ Migrants Resilience Collaborative, ReNew2030, Restore Local, Think of Us and Upstream USA.

Watch new TED Talks from the Audacious Project

The Audacious Project is TED’s collaborative funding initiative to put ideas for social change into action. Today, we launched eight new talks from this year’s cohort, featuring some of the world’s boldest changemakers and their ideas to solve humanity’s most pressing challenges. Collectively this group has secured more than $900 million in funding from the Audacious Project, matching their transformative ideas with catalytic resources. Learn more at AudaciousProject.org, and watch the talks at TED.com/AudaciousProject.

Watch the talks from the Audacious Project’s 2021-22 cohort:

A safe pathway to resettlement for migrants and refugees
Becca Heller, International Refugee Assistance Project

Why Indigenous forest guardianship is crucial to climate action
Nonette Royo, Tenure Facility

How ancient Arctic carbon threatens everyone on the planet
Sue Natali, Woodwell Climate Research Center

Mental health care that disrupts cycles of violence
Celina De Sola, Glasswing International

An election redesign to restore trust in US democracy
Tiana Epps-Johnson, Center for Tech and Civic Life

A transparent, easy way for smallholder farmers to save
Anushka Ratnayake, myAgro

A bold plan for transforming access to the US social safety net
Amanda Renteria, Code for America

The most powerful untapped resource in health care
Edith Elliott and Shahed Alam, Noora Health

The billion-dollar campaign to electrify transport
Monica Araya, ClimateWorks: Drive Electric

Introducing The Audacious Project’s new cohort

Communities around the globe are grappling with division and uncertainty. Lasting and transformative change on the world’s most pressing challenges will require us to work together and find common ground. At The Audacious Project, we aspire to be a lever for courageous collaboration, supporting those who are reimagining and rebuilding our systems to better meet the demands of this moment. 

This past year, the Audacious community has come together to catalyze more than $900 million for nine bold projects. Sourced from our global network, and supported by our team over the past 12 months, these projects hope to create clear pathways to a better future.

The 2021-22 Audacious Project grantees are: 

• Code for America: Harnessing technology to transform the US social safety net
• Center for Tech and Civic Life: Strengthening local election administration in the US
• ClimateWorks: Drive Electric: Accelerating the end of the polluting tailpipe and transition to clean transportation
• Glasswing International: Building critical mental health support in Central America’s Northern Triangle
• The International Refugee Assistance Project: Unlocking legal rights so that refugees can resettle safely
• myAgro: Equipping smallholder farmers with the power to invest in themselves 
• Noora Health: Training family caregivers to help their loved ones heal
• The Tenure Facility: Securing land for Indigenous peoples — for justice and our climate
• Woodwell Climate Research Center: Integrating permafrost into our global solution for climate change

These projects reflect continued collaboration between a group of global partners, philanthropic organizations and determined individuals who believe in the power of pooling significant, long-term resources in service of impact. Our hope is that this inspires others to engage in the work too.

This new cohort joins an existing Audacious portfolio of 29 projects, with over $3.1 billion of philanthropic dollars catalyzed since 2015. Four cycles into this program, the Audacious projects together reveal a powerful truth: the problems we face are not intractable, and the status quo is not inevitable.

We look forward to sharing these new projects with you next week at TED2022 during the Audacious session co-hosted by Academy Award nominee and Emmy, BAFTA and Peabody Award winner Ava DuVernay, and we very much hope you’ll join us in supporting and amplifying their work far and wide. 

With gratitude and determined hope,
Anna Verghese, executive director of The Audacious Project
Chris Anderson, head of TED

A global campaign to advance zero-emission transport gains momentum through The Audacious Project

Thanks to a coalition of climate activists, organizations and researchers — powered by philanthropy — a cleaner, healthier, more equitable transportation future is now within reach. 

For the opening session of the Countdown Summit, head of TED Chris Anderson announced, in conversation with electrification advocate Monica Araya, a catalytic funding boost of 300 million dollars to the Drive Electric campaign. 

The ambitious initiative will accelerate the transition to electric for all vehicles and set the world on the path to 100-percent zero-emission road transportation for the benefit of the climate, health and the economy. The Drive Electric network includes more than 70 partners who have already built an impressive track record in electric vehicle (EV) policy advancement. Over the next five years, they will push for all new road vehicle sales to be electric by 2040, with cars as early as 2030 and buses by 2035. This accelerated shift away from fossil fuels cuts previously estimated timelines by 20 years and will avert more than 160 billion tons of cumulative carbon dioxide emissions.

“Drive Electric partners are advancing the work we urgently need to ensure global climate stability, and what most excites me is that every achievement has a measurable impact on everyday people,” said Araya, who sits on the Drive Electric Steering Committee and is a ClimateWorks Distinguished Fellow. “This is about cleaning the air by eliminating the pollution from diesel trucks,” she continued. “This is about making cities quieter and healthier with electric buses, cars and e-bikes. And this is about accelerating investments and creating jobs for a better, more sustainable economy.”

Accelerating systems change in a multi-trillion-dollar industry like global transportation requires ambitious scale. With this funding, Drive Electric has now raised more than half of the campaign’s goal of one billion dollars to support a crucial five-year window to accelerate the transition to EVs in time to avoid disastrous climate outcomes. The Audacious Project harnessed the expertise of partners like the Climate Leadership Initiative to catalyze this historic funding towards a sector currently underrepresented in philanthropy. 

“The Drive Electric campaign represents a new and exciting model for helping speed the transitions we most need for climate,” said Anna Verghese, executive director of the Audacious Project. “To reach our climate goals, it will require a highly coordinated, multi-sector collaboration of trusted experts on the ground who know what is required. We are excited to see how these efforts could inspire other industries to reimagine change at scale.”

The Audacious coalition

The Audacious Project was formed in partnership with The Bridgespan Group as a springboard for social impact. Using TED’s curatorial expertise to surface ideas, the initiative convenes investors and social entrepreneurs to channel funds towards pressing global issues. A remarkable group of individuals and organizations make this work possible, among them: the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation; Nat Simons and Laura Baxter-Simons (Sea Change Foundation); the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation; Quadrature Climate Foundation; Oak Foundation; Chris Larsen and Lyna Lam; Laura and Gary Lauder and Family; Rick and Nancy Moskovitz (Sea Grape Foundation); Jeff and Marieke Rothschild; Ev and Sara Williams (Someland Foundation). 

Learn more about the campaign by watching Monica Araya and Chris Anderson in conversation here, and by visiting their Audacious project page.

Join the movement for 100-percent emissions-free transport and tune into the TED Countdown Global Livestream on October 30, 2021 to learn about more climate actions you can take.

Symbiotic: The talks of TED@BCG 2020

How can we make advances in technology that don’t require massive job losses? Work with nature to protect both the planet and humanity? Ensure all people are treated equitably? In a day of talks, interviews and performances, 17 speakers and performers shared ideas about a future in which people, technology and nature thrive interdependently.

The event: TED@BCG: Symbiotic is the ninth event TED and Boston Consulting Group have partnered around to bring leaders, innovators and changemakers to the stage to share ideas for solving society’s biggest challenges. Hosted by TED’s Corey Hajim along with BCG’s Seema Bansal, Rocío Lorenzo and Vinay Shandal, with opening remarks from Rich Lesser, CEO of BCG.

Music: The group Kolinga, fronted by lead singer Rébecca M’Boungou, perform the original song “Nguya na ngai” — a stunning rendition that’s equal parts music, poetry and dance.

The talks in brief:

Qiuqing Tai, video visionary

Big idea: Short-form videos — 60 seconds or less, made and shared on apps like TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram — are changing the way we work, communicate and learn.

How? More than 1.5 billion people around the world regularly watch short videos, and more than half of them are under the age of 24, says Qiuqing Tai. This bite-sized content is quickly becoming the new normal, with people turning to it not only for entertainment but also to discover new interests and skills. Meanwhile, businesses use short-form videos to find new customers and diversify their audiences. In 2019, Tai led a research study with TikTok, finding that the platform’s short-form content generated an estimated $95 billion in goods and services sold, and helped create 1.2 million jobs globally. There has also been an explosion in short-form educational content, as social enterprises and education startups experiment with 15-second videos for people who want to learn on the fly. There are valid concerns about this young medium, Tai admits — data privacy, the addictive nature of the format, the lack of contextual nuance — but, with the right investment and policymaking, she believes the benefits will ultimately outweigh the drawbacks.

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Matt Langione, quantum advocate

Big idea: If not traditional supercomputers, what technology will emerge to arm us against the challenges of the 21st century?

What will it be? For nearly a century, we’ve relied on high-performance computers to meet critical, complex demands — from cracking Nazi codes to sequencing the human genome — and they’ve been getting smaller, faster and better, as if by magic. But that magic seems to be running out due to the physical limitations of the traditional supercomputer, says Matt Langione — and it’s time to look to newer, subatomic horizons. Enter quantum computing: an emerging hyper-speed solution for the urgent challenges of our time, like vaccine development, finance and logistics. Langione addresses fundamental questions about this burgeoning technology — How does it work? Do we really need it? How long until it’s available? — with a goal in mind: to disperse any doubts about investing in quantum computing now rather than later, for the sake of lasting progress for business and society at large. “The race to a new age of magic and supercomputing is already underway,” he says. “It’s one we can’t afford to lose.”

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Ajay Banga, CEO of Mastercard

Big idea: Let’s introduce those who are un-banked or under-banked into the banking system via a mobile, digital economy.

How? Roughly two billion people don’t have access to banks or services like credit, insurance and investment — or even a way to establish a financial identity. These people must rely solely on cash, which can be dangerous and prone to fraud by middlemen (and costs about 1.2 percent of a nation’s GDP to produce). As an advocate of “financial inclusion,” Mastercard CEO Ajay Banga believes that banks, fintech and telecom companies, governments and merchants can build a new, more equitable economy that relies on digital transactions rather than cash. How would its users benefit? As an example, a grocer may not be able to afford supplies for the week if she’s paying cash, but with a mobile payment system, she could build enough of a transaction history to establish credit, and with enough credit, she could build a “financial identity.” Such identities could revolutionize everything from small business to distributing aid — all using tech that’s already in place, and that doesn’t require a smartphone.

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Nimisha Jain, commerce aficionado

Big idea: For Nimisha Jain, shopping was once an activity full of excitement, friends, family and trusted sellers. But for many like her in emerging markets worldwide, online shopping is intimidating and, frankly, inhuman, full of mistrust for unscrupulous sellers and mysterious technology. Is there a way for online sellers to build genuine human interactivity into virtual shopping, at scale?

How? Fortunately, it’s possible to combine the convenience of online shopping with a personalized experience in what Jain calls “conversational commerce,” and some companies are doing exactly this — like Meesho in India, which allows shoppers to interact with the same person every time they shop. Over time, the agent learns what you like, when you would like it and, once trusted, will fill your shopping cart with unexpected items. But this model is not only for the developing world; Jain’s research shows that customers in the West also like this concept, and it might someday transform the way the world shops. 

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Emily Leproust, DNA synthesizer

Big idea: We need to rethink what modern global sustainability looks like — and pursue a new kind of environmentalism.

How? By working with the environment, rather than against it. As it stands, nature has been adapting and reacting to the presence of human developments, just like we’ve been adapting and reacting to nature’s changing climate, says Leproust — and we must course-correct before we destroy each other. She advocates for a path paved by synthetic biology and powered by DNA. Embracing the potential of biological innovation could help across the board, but Leproust singles out three critical areas: health, food and materials. If we focus our energy on pursuing sustainable outcomes — like lab-developed insulin, engineering foods to be immune to disease and harnessing the potential of spider silk — human civilization and the natural world could thrive in tandem without worry.

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William Collis, esports expert

Big idea: We revere traditional athletic prowess, but what about the skills and talent of a different sort of athlete?

What do you mean? Video games should no longer be considered children’s play, says esports expert William Collis. They’ve grown into a multibillion-dollar sporting phenomenon — to the point where traditional sport stars, from David Beckham to Shaquille O’Neal, are investing in competitive games like Fortnite, League of Legends and Rocket League. It takes real skill to be good at these video games, reminds Collis, which he breaks down into three main categories: mechanical (much like playing an instrument), strategic (equivalent to tactical choices of chess) and leadership. Beyond that, being a pro-gamer requires adaptability, creativity and unconventional thinking. Collis’s message is simple: respect the game and the valuable traits developed there, just as you would any other sport.

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Bas Sudmeijer, carbon capture advisor

Big idea: Carbon capture and storage — diverting emissions before they hit the atmosphere and burying them back in the earth — is not new, but analysts like Bas Sudmeijer think it could both contribute to the fight against climate change and allow big polluters (who are also big employers) to stay in business. But for carbon capture to make a significant contribution to emission reductions, we must spend 110 billion dollars a year for the next 20 years.

How can we offset this enormous cost? Sudmeijer believes that “carbon networks” — clusters of polluters centered around potential underground carbon sinks — could solve the economic barriers to this promising technology, if they’re created in conjunction with aggressive regulation to make polluting more expensive. And the clock is ticking: current carbon capture operations trap only .1 percent of greenhouse gases, and we need to increase that number 100- to 200-fold in order to slow global warming. Fortunately, we have a historical model for this — the push to supply gas to Europe after World War II, carried out in a similar time frame during a period of similar economic stress.

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Mehret Mandefro, physician, filmmaker

Big idea: A robust and well-funded creative industry drives economic and democratic growth. A thriving creative industry isn’t just “a nice thing to have” — it’s a democratic necessity. 

How? With a median age of about 19, Ethiopia’s youth are rapidly graduating into a labor market with an astronomical 19-percent unemployment rate and few opportunities. To create enough good-paying jobs for its expanding workforce, Mehret Mandefro says the government should expand the creative sector. She says that putting culture on the agenda could boost industries like tourism and drive the country’s overall economic growth. The creative industry also plays an important social and democratic role. In a period of strained relations and rising ethnic divisions, society must make a choice, she says: “From my perspective, the country can go one of two ways: either down a path of inclusive, democratic participation, or down a more divisive path of ethnic divisions.” For Mandefro, the answer is clear. She sees the arts as the best way for people to share in one another’s culture, where music, fashion, film, theater and design create connection and understanding between groups and strengthen democratic bonds. “One of the best ways to safeguard democracy is to expose everyone to each other’s stories, music, cultures and histories,” she says.

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Antoine Gourévitch, deep tech diver

Big idea: The next chapter in the innovation story, driving us into the future, is the potential and promise of deep tech.

How? Antoine Gourévitch believes deep tech — tangible, intentional collaboration at the crossroads of emerging technologies (think synthetic biology, quantum programming and AI) — will change the ways we produce material, eat, heal and beyond. Deep tech ventures — one of the most notable examples being SpaceX — focus on fundamental issues by first identifying physical constraints that industries often encounter, and then solve them with a potent combination of science, engineering and design thinking. Thousands of companies and start-ups like this currently exist worldwide, sharing an ethos of radical possibility. They’re governed by four rules: be problem-oriented, not technology-focused; combine, intersect and converge; adopt a design thinking approach, powered by deep tech; and adopt an economical design-to-cost approach. In understanding these guidelines, Gourévitch wants us to embrace the idea that innovation requires rethinking, and that this cross-disciplinary approach could offer a revolution in making what seemed impossible, possible. 

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Tilak Mandadi, empathy advocate

Big Idea: Empathy training should be part of workplace culture. Here are three ways to implement it. 

How? After the trauma of losing his daughter, Tilak Mandadi’s decision to return to work wasn’t easy — but his journey back ended up providing unexpected support in processing his grief. At first, he was full of self-doubt and sadness, feeling as if he was living in two completely different worlds: the personal and the professional. But over time, his coworkers’ friendship and purpose-driven work helped transform his exhaustion and isolation, shedding light on the role empathy plays in a healthy work culture — both for people suffering with loss and those who aren’t. Mandadi offers three ways to foster this kind of environment: implement policies that support healing (like time away from work); provide return-to-work therapy for employees who are dealing with grief; and provide empathy training for all employees so that they know how to best support each other. Empathy can be a learned behavior, he says, and sometimes asking “What would you like me to do differently to help you?” can make all the difference. 

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Olivia Arthur, documentary photographer

Big idea: Across the world, people are merging technology with the human body in remarkable ways, sparking radical meditations on what it means to be human.

How? Through photography, Olivia Arthur intimately examines the intersection of humanity and technology, capturing the resilience and emotional depths of the human body. In her latest project, she collaborated with amputees who have integrated technology into their bodies and researchers who have invented robots with strikingly human traits. Inspired in part by photographer Eadweard Muybridge, Arthur focused on gait, balance and motion in both human and machine subjects. These included Pollyanna, a dancer who mastered the delicate skill of balance while using a blade prosthesis; Lola, a humanoid robot who confidently navigated an obstacle course yet looked most human when turned off; and Alex Lewis, a quadruple amputee who challenges perceptions of humanity’s limitations. Arthur describes her photos as studies of our evolution, documenting how technology has catalyzed a profound shift in how we understand, enhance and define the human body. 

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Kedra Newsom Reeves, wealth equity strategist

Big idea: We need to narrow the racial wealth gap in the United States. Financial institutions can help.

How? As last reported by the US federal government, the median wealth for a white family in the United States was 171,000 dollars, and the median wealth for a Black family was just 17,000 dollars — a staggering tenfold difference. During a global pandemic in which inequities across finance, health care, education and criminal justice have been laid bare, Kedra Newsom Reeves says that we must make progress towards reducing this gap. She tells the story of her great-great-grandfather, who was born into slavery, and how it took four generations for her family to accumulate enough wealth to purchase a house. Along the way, she says, a range of policies purposefully excluded her family — along with marginalized communities across the country — from building wealth. Now, financial institutions can help undo that damage. She offers four critical actions: ensure more people have bank accounts; increase awareness of checking and savings accounts specifically made for low-income communities; find alternative ways to establish creditworthiness, and then lend more credit to marginalized groups; and invest, support and promote Black-owned business, particularly by increasing the amount of venture capital that goes to Black founders.

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Ishan Bhabha, constitutional lawyer

Big idea: Debate can broaden perspectives, spark creativity and catalyze human progress, so instead of censoring controversial speech, private entities should create pathways for productive discussion.

Why? In the United States, the First Amendment guarantees the right to free speech but only protects citizens against censorship by the government — not by private entities. But just because a conference center, university or social media platform can ban speech on their own turf doesn’t mean they should, says Ishan Bhabha. When faced with the decision to allow or prohibit meritless speech, he argues that more often than not, more speech is better. Instead of restricting speech, groups should err on the side of allowing it and work to create an open dialogue. “Ideas that have little to no value should be met with arguments against it,” he says. Private groups should protect against hate speech that can cause lasting damage or even violence but should respond responsibly to other ideological speech and mediate discussion, which can promote productive disagreement and lead to a valuable exchange of ideas. Universities, for instance, can offer students mediated discussion groups where they can openly try on new ideas without the threat of sanction. Twitter now responds to unsubstantiated posts on their platform by flagging content as either misleading, deceptive or containing unverified information and provides links to verified sources where users can find more information. Bhabha argues that these practices add to a rich and vigorous discussion with the potential to improve the arena of debate by raising the standard.

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Johanna Benesty, global health strategist

Big idea: Discovering an effective COVID-19 vaccine is just the first step in ending the pandemic. After that, the challenge lies in ensuring everyone can get it.

Why? We’ve been thinking of vaccine discovery as the holy grail in the fight against COVID-19, says Johanna Benesty, but an equally difficult task will be providing equitable access to it. Namely, once a vaccine is found to be effective, who gets it first? And how can we make sure it’s safely distributed in low-income communities and countries, with less robust health care systems? Benesty suggests that vaccine developers consider the constraints of lesser health care systems from the outset, building cost management into their research and development activities. In this way, they can work to ensure vaccines are affordable, effective across all populations (like at-risk people and pregnant women) and that can be distributed in all climates (from temperature-controlled hospitals to remote rural areas) at scale. It’s the smart thing to do, Benesty says: if COVID-19 exists anywhere in the world, we’re all at risk, and the global economy will continue to sputter. “We need all countries to be able to crush the pandemic in sync,” she says.

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Rosalind G. Brewer, COO of Starbucks

Big idea: When companies think of DEI — diversity, equality, inclusion — they too often think of it as a numbers game that’s about satisfying quotas instead of building relationships with those who have traditionally been excluded from the corporate conversation. Rosalind G. Brewer believes that the current moment of racial consciousness is an “all-in” opportunity for hidebound leadership to step out of their comfort zones and bring real, grassroots racial changes to boardrooms and communities alike.

How? With Black Lives Matter in the headlines, the pandemic illuminating inequalities in health care and income, and so many brands engaging in “performative justice” PR campaigns, it’s a crucial time to not only include more BIPOC in the corporate workplace, but also to listen to their voices. As brands like Starbucks diversify and absorb the stories of their new partners, Brewer believes they will do far more than satisfy quotas — they will nurture future leaders, open minds and bring ground-up change to communities.

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Kevin Roose, technology journalist

Big idea: By leaning into our creativity, empathy and other human skills, we can better collaborate with smart machines and “future-proof” our jobs.

How? Artificial intelligence has become smarter, faster and even more integrated into our lives and careers: algorithms have been trained to write financial articles, detect diseases and proofread legal documents at speeds and scales dramatically faster than any individual human could. But this doesn’t necessarily mean robots will inevitably replace us at work, says Kevin Roose. While an algorithm may be able to scan exams and detect disease faster than a human, a machine can’t replace a doctor’s comforting bedside manner. Instead of trying to compete with smart technologies at what they do best, we need to invest in developing the skills that machines aren’t capable of — creativity, compassion, adaptability and critical thinking.

The Audacious Project expands its support of pandemic relief and recovery work

The Audacious Project, a funding initiative housed at TED, is continuing its support of solutions tailored to COVID-19 rapid response and long-term recovery. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to develop, The Audacious Project is committed to targeting key systems in crisis and supporting them as they rebuild better and with greater resilience. In this phase, more than 55 million dollars have been catalyzed towards Fast Grants, an initiative to accelerate COVID-19 related scientific research; GiveDirectly, which distributes unconditional cash transfers to those most in need; and Harlem Children’s Zone, one of the pioneers in neighborhood-specific “cradle-to-career” programs in support of low-income children and communities in the United States.

“Accelerating our scientific understanding of COVID-19 and providing immediate relief to communities hardest hit by the virus are just two of the myriad challenges we must address in the face of this pandemic,” said Anna Verghese, Executive Director of The Audacious Project. “With our COVID-19 rapid response cohort, we are supporting organizations with real-world solutions that are actionable now. But that aid should extend beyond recovery, which is why we look forward to the work these organizations will continue to do to ensure better systems for the future.” 

Funding directed toward these three new initiatives is in addition to the more than 30 million dollars that was dedicated to Partners In Health, Project ECHO and World Central Kitchen for their COVID-19 rapid response work earlier this year.

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Announcing three new projects in the Audacious COVID-19 response cohort

Fast Grants

The big idea: Though significant inroads have been made to advance our understanding of how the novel coronavirus spreads, and encouraging progress is underway in the development of vaccines and treatments, there are still many unknowns. We need to speed up the pace of scientific discovery in this area now more than ever, but the current systems for funding research do not meet this urgent need. Fast Grants is looking to solve that problem. They have created and are deploying a highly credible model to accelerate funding for the development of treatments and vaccines and to further scientific understanding of COVID-19. By targeting projects that demand greater speed and flexibility than traditional funding methods can offer, they will accelerate scientific discovery that can have an immediate impact and provide follow-on funding for promising early-stage discoveries.

How they’ll do it: Since March, Fast Grants has distributed 22 million dollars to fund 127 projects, leveraging a diverse panel of 20 experts to vet and review projects across a broad range of scientific disciplines. With Audacious funding, they will catalyze 80 to 115 research projects, accelerate timelines by as much as six to nine months and, in many cases, support projects that would otherwise go unfunded. This will accelerate research in testing, treatments, vaccines and many other areas critically needed to save lives and safely reopen economies. They will also build a community to share results and track progress while also connecting scientists to other funding platforms and research teams that can further advance the work. 

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GiveDirectly

The big idea: The COVID-19 pandemic could push more than 140 million people globally into extreme poverty. As the pandemic hampers humanitarian systems that typically address crises, the ability to deliver aid in person has never been more complicated. Enter GiveDirectly. For nearly a decade, they have provided no-strings-attached cash transfers to the world’s poorest people. Now they are leveraging the growth in the adoption of mobile technologies across Sub-Saharan Africa to design and deploy a breakthrough, fully remote model of humanitarian relief to respond to the COVID-19 crisis.

How they’ll do it: Over the next 12 months, GiveDirectly will scale their current model to provide unconditional cash transfers to more than 300,000 people who need it most. GiveDirectly will enroll and identify recipients without in-person contact, first using the knowledge of community-based organizations to identify and target beneficiaries within their existing networks, and second by leveraging data from national telephone companies to target those most in need. GiveDirectly will also systematize the underlying processes and algorithms so that they can be deployed for future disasters, thereby demonstrating a new model for rapid humanitarian relief.

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Harlem Children’s Zone

The big idea: In the United States, the coronavirus pandemic is disproportionately affecting Black communities. Not only are Black people being infected by the virus and dying at greater rates, the effects of the economic crisis are also hitting hardest vulnerable communities that were already facing a shrinking social safety net. At the onset of the pandemic, Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ), one of the leading evidence-based, Black-led organizations in the US, pioneered a comprehensive approach to emergency response and recovery. The model is focused on five urgent areas: bridging the digital divide, preventing learning loss, mitigating the mental health crisis and providing economic relief and recovery.

How they’ll do it: Based in Harlem, New York, HCZ is leveraging deeply rooted community trust and best-in-class partners to deploy vital emergency relief and wrap-around support, including: health care information and protective gear to keep communities safe from the virus; quality, developmentally appropriate distance-learning resources, while developing plans for safe school reentry; and the provision of cash relief. They are also equipping backbone organizations across the US with the capacity to execute on a community-driven vision of their model nationally. They will be working side-by-side with leading, anchor institutions in six cities — Minneapolis, Oakland, Newark, Detroit, Chicago and Atlanta — to supercharge efforts to address Black communities’ most urgent needs and support recovery.

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To learn more about The Audacious Project, visit https://audaciousproject.org.

Hope, action, change: Notes from Session 5 of TED2020

Daring, bold, systems-disrupting change requires big dreams and an even bigger vision. For Session 5 of TED2020, the Audacious Project, a collaborative funding initiative housed at TED, highlighted bold plans for social change from Southern New Hampshire University, SIRUM, BRAC, Harlem Children’s Zone, Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT), Project CETI and One Acre Fund. From aiding the ultra-poor to upending medicine pricing to ensuring all communities are visible on a map, these solutions are uniquely positioned to help us rebuild key systems and push the boundaries of what’s possible through breakthrough science and technology. Learn more about these thrilling projects and how you can help them change the world.

Kiah Williams, cofounder of SIRUM

Big idea: No one should have to choose between paying bills or affording lifesaving medications. 

How? Every day in the US, people must make impossible health decisions at the intersection of life and livelihood. The result is upwards of ten thousand deaths annually — more than opioid overdoses and car accidents combined — due to the high prices of prescription drugs. Kiah Williams and her team at SIRUM are tapping into an alternative that circumvents the traditional medical supply chain while remaining budget-friendly to underserved communities: unused medication. Sourced from manufacturer surplus, health care facilities (like hospitals, pharmacies and nursing homes) and personal donations, Williams and her team partner with medical professionals to provide prescriptions for conditions, ranging from heart disease to mental health, at flat, transparent costs. They currently supply 150,000 people with access to medicine they need — and they’re ready to expand. In the next five years, SIRUM plans to reach one million people across 12 states with a billion dollars’ worth of unused medicine, with the hopes of driving down regional pricing in low-income communities. “We can create radical access to medications based on a fundamental belief that people who live in one of the wealthiest nations in the world can and should have access to medicine they need to survive and to thrive,” Williams says.

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Shameran Abed, senior director of the Microfinance and Ultra-Poor Graduation Program at BRAC

Big idea: Let’s stop imagining a world without ultra-poverty and start building it instead.

How? At the end of 2019, approximately 400 million people worldwide lived in ultra-poverty — a situation that goes beyond the familiar monetary definition, stripping individuals of their dignity, purpose, self-worth, community and ability to imagine a better future. When he founded BRAC in 1972, Shameran Abed’s father saw that for poverty reduction programs to work, a sense of hope and self-worth needs to be instilled alongside assets. He pioneered a graduation approach that, over the course of two years, addressed both the deficit of income and hope in four steps: (1) supporting the basic needs with food or cash, (2) guiding the individual towards a decent livelihood by providing an asset like livestock and training them to earn money from it, (3) training them to save, budget and invest the new wealth, (4) integrating the individual socially. Since starting this program in 2002, two million Bangladeshi women have lifted themselves and their families out of ultra-poverty. With BRAC at a proven and effective nationwide scale, the organization plans to aid other governments in adopting and scaling graduation programs themselves — helping another 21 million people lift themselves out of ultra-poverty across eight countries over the next six years, with BRAC teams onsite and embedded in each country to provide an obtainable, foreseeable future for all. “Throughout his life, [my father] saw optimism triumph over despair; that when you light the spark of self-belief in people, even the poorest can transform their lives,” Abed says.

Lending her extraordinary voice to keep the session lively, singer and songwriter Emily King performs her songs “Distance” and “Sides” from her home in New York City.

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Chrystina Russell, executive director of SNHU’s Global Education Movement

Big idea: Expand access to accredited, college-level education to marginalized populations by reaching learners wherever they are in the world.

How? Education empowers — and perhaps nowhere more so than in the lives of displaced people, says executive director of SNHU’s Global Education Movement (GEM) Chrystina Russell. Harnessing the power of education to improve the world lies at the foundation of GEM, a program that offers accredited bachelor’s degrees and pathways to employment for refugees in Lebanon, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda and South Africa. Today, the humanitarian community understands that global displacement will be a permanent problem, and that traditional education models remain woefully inaccessible to these vulnerable populations. The magic of GEM, Russell says, is that it addresses refugee lives as they currently exist. Degrees are competency-based, and without classes, lectures, due dates or final exams, students choose where and when to learn. GEM has served more than 1,000 learners to date, helping them obtain bachelor’s degrees and earn incomes at twice the average of their peers. Only three percent of refugees have access to higher education; GEM is now testing its ability to scale competency-based online learning in an effort to empower greater numbers of marginalized people through higher education. “This is a model that really stops putting time and university policies and procedures at the center — and instead puts the student at the center,” Russell says.

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David Gruber, marine biologist, explorer, professor

Big idea: Through the innovations of machine learning, we may be able to translate the astounding languages of sperm whales and crack the interspecies communication code. 

How? Sperm whales are some of the most intelligent animals on the planet; they live in complex matriarchal societies and communicate with each other through a series of regionally specific click sequences called codas. These codas may be the key to unlocking interspecies communication, says David Gruber. He shares a bold prediction: with the help of machine learning technology, we will soon be able to understand the languages of sperm whales — and talk back to them. Researchers have developed a number of noninvasive robots to record an enormous archive of codas, focusing on the intimate relationship between mother and calf. Using this data, carefully trained algorithms will be able to decode these codas and map the sounds and logic of sperm whale communication. Gruber believes that by deeply listening to sperm whales, we can create a language blueprint that will enable us to communicate with countless other species around the world. “By listening deeply to nature, we can change our perspective of ourselves and reshape our relationship with all life on this planet,” he says.

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Andrew Youn, social entrepreneur

Big idea: By equipping small-scale farmers in sub-Saharan Africa with the tools and resources they need to expand their work, they will be able to upend cycles of poverty and materialize their innovation, knowledge and drive into success for their local communities and the world.

How? Most small-scale farmers in sub-Saharan Africa are women who nourish their families and communities and fortify their local economies. But they’re often not able to access the technology, resources or capital they need to streamline their farms, which leads to small harvests and cycles of poverty. The One Acre Fund, a two-time Audacious Project recipient, seeks to upend that cycle by providing resources like seeds and fertilizer, mentorship in the form of local support guides and training in modern agricultural practices. The One Acre Fund intends to reach three milestones by 2026: to serve 2.5 million families (which include 10 million children) every year through their direct full-service program; to serve an additional 4.3 million families per year with the help of local government and private sector partners; and to shape a sustainable green revolution by reimagining our food systems and launching a campaign to plant one billion trees in the next decade. The One Acre Fund enables farmers to transform their work, which vitalizes their families, larger communities and countries. “Farmers stand at the center of the world,” Youn says.

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Rebecca Firth, director of partnerships and community at Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT)

Big idea: A new tool to add one billion people to the map, so first responders and aid organizations can save lives. 

How? Today, more than one billion people are literally not on the map, says Rebecca Firth, director of partnerships and community at Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT), an organization that helps map the earth’s most vulnerable populations using a free, open-source software tool. The tool works in two stages: first, anyone anywhere can map buildings and roads using satellite images, then local community members fill in the map by identifying structures and adding place names. HOT’s maps help organizations on the ground save lives; they’ve been used by first responders after Haiti’s 2010 earthquake and in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, by health care workers distributing polio vaccines in Nigeria and by refugee aid organizations in South Sudan, Syria and Venezuela. Now, HOT’s goal is to map areas in 94 countries that are home to one billion of the world’s most vulnerable populations — in just five years. To do this, they’re recruiting more than one million mapping volunteers, updating their tech and, importantly, raising awareness about the availability of their maps to local and international humanitarian organizations. “It’s about creating a foundation on which so many organizations will thrive,” Firth says. “With open, free, up-to-date maps, those programs will have more impact than they would otherwise, leading to a meaningful difference in lives saved or improved.”

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Kwame Owusu-Kesse, CEO, Harlem Children’s Zone

Big idea: In the midst of a pandemic that’s disproportionately devastating the Black community, how do we ensure that at-risk children can continue their education in a safe and healthy environment?

How? Kwame Owusu-Kesse understands that in order to surpass America’s racist economic, educational, health care and judicial institutions, a child must have a secure home and neighborhood. In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, Harlem Children’s Zone has taken on a comprehensive mission to provide uninterrupted, high-quality remote education, as well as food and financial security, unfettered online access and mental health services. Through these programs, Owusu-Kesse hopes to rescue a generation that risks losing months (or years) of education to the impacts of quarantine. “Our answer to COVID-19 — the despair and inequities plaguing our communities — is targeting neighborhoods with comprehensive services,” he says. “We have certainly not lost hope, and we invite you to join us on the front lines of this war.”

The Audacious Project announces new efforts in response to COVID-19

In response to the unprecedented impact of COVID-19, The Audacious Project, a collaborative funding initiative housed at TED, will direct support towards solutions tailored to rapid response and long-term recovery. Audacious has catalyzed more than $30 million towards the first three organizations in its COVID-19 rapid response cohort: Partners In Health will rapidly increase the scale, speed and effectiveness of contact tracing in the US; Project ECHO will equip over 350,000 frontline clinicians and public health workers across Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America to respond to COVID-19; and World Central Kitchen will demonstrate a new model for food assistance within US cities. Each organization selected is delivering immediate aid to vulnerable populations most affected by the novel coronavirus. 

“Audacious was designed to elevate powerful interventions tackling the world’s most urgent challenges,” said Anna Verghese, Executive Director of The Audacious Project. “In line with that purpose, our philanthropic model was built to flex. In the wake of COVID-19, we’re grateful to be able to funnel rapid support towards Partners in Health, Project ECHO and World Central Kitchen — each spearheading critical work that is actionable now.”

Announcing The Audacious Project’s COVID-19 rapid response cohort 

Partners In Health has been a global leader in disease prevention, treatment and care for more than 30 years. With Audacious support over the next year, Partners In Health will disseminate its contact tracing expertise across the US and work with more than 19 public health departments to not only flatten the curve but bend it downward and help stop the spread of COVID-19. They plan to customize and scale their programs through a combination of direct technical assistance and open source sharing of best practices. This effort will reduce the spread of COVID-19 in cities and states home to an estimated 133 million people.

Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) exists to democratize life-saving medical knowledge — linking experts at centralized institutions with regional, local and community-based workforces. With Audacious investment over the next two years, ECHO will scale this proven virtual learning and telementoring model to equip more than 350,000 frontline clinicians and public health workers to respond to COVID-19. Working across Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America, the ECHO team will build a global network of health workers who together can permanently improve health systems and save lives in our world’s most vulnerable communities. 

Chef José Andrés‘ World Central Kitchen has provided fresh and nutritious meals to those in need following disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes since 2010. In response to the novel coronavirus pandemic, World Central Kitchen has developed an innovative solution to simultaneously provide fresh meals to those in immediate need and keep small businesses open in the midst of a health and economic crisis. World Central Kitchen will demonstrate this at scale, by expanding to employ 200 local Oakland restaurants (roughly 16 percent of the local restaurant industry) to serve nearly two million meals by the end of July — delivering a powerful proof of concept for a model that could shift food assistance around the world.

The Audacious Coalition

The Audacious Project was formed in partnership with The Bridgespan Group as a springboard for social impact. Using TED’s curatorial expertise to surface ideas, the initiative convenes investors and social entrepreneurs to channel funds towards pressing global issues.

A remarkable group of individuals and organizations have played a key role in facilitating the first edition of this Rapid Response effort. Among them ELMA Philanthropies, Skoll Foundation, Scott Cook and Signe Ostby of the Valhalla Charitable Foundation, Chris Larsen and Lyna Lam, Lyda Hill Philanthropies, The Rick & Nancy Moskovitz Foundation, Stadler Family Charitable Foundation, Inc., Ballmer Group, Mary and Mark Stevens, Crankstart and more.

To learn more about The Audacious Project visit audaciousproject.org/covid-19-response.

In Case You Missed It: Highlights from TED2019

If we learned anything at TED2019, it’s that life doesn’t fit into simple narratives, and that there are no simple answers to the big problems we’re facing. But we can use those problems, our discomfort and even our anger to find the energy to make change.

Twelve mainstage sessions, two rocking sessions of talks from TED Fellows, a special session of TED Unplugged, a live podcast recording and much more amounted to an unforgettable week. Any attempt to summarize it all will be woefully incomplete, but here’s a try.

What happened to the internet? Once a place of so much promise, now a source of so much division. Journalist Carole Cadwalldr opened the conference with an electrifying talk on Facebook’s role in Brexit — and how the same players were involved in 2016 US presidential election. She traced the contours of the growing threat social media poses to democracy and calls out the “gods of Silicon Valley,” naming names — one of whom, Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, sat down to talk with TED’s Chris Anderson and Whitney Pennington Rodgers the following day. Dorsey acknowledged problems with harassment on the platform and explained some of the work his team is doing to make it better.

Hannah Gadsby broke comedy. Her words, and she makes a compelling case in one of the most talked-about moments of the conference. Look for her talk release on April 29.

Humanity strikes back! Eight huge Audacious Project–supported ideas launched at TED this year. From a groundbreaking project at the Center for Policing Equity to work with police and communities and to collect data on police behavior and set goals to make it more fair … to a new effort to sequester carbon in soil … and more, you can help support these projects and change the world for good.

10 years of TED Fellows. Celebrating a decade of the program in two sessions of exuberant talks, the TED Fellows showed some wow moments, including Brandon Clifford‘s discovery of how to make multi-ton stones “dance,” Arnav Kapur‘s wearable device that allows for silent speech and Skylar Tibbits‘s giant canvas bladders that might save sinking islands. At the same time, they reminded us some of the pain that can exist behind breakthroughs, with Brandon Anderson speaking poignantly about the loss of his life partner during a routine traffic stop — which inspired him to develop a first-of-its-kind platform to report police conduct — and Erika Hamden opening up about her team’s failures in building FIREBall, a UV telescope that can observe extremely faint light from huge clouds of hydrogen gas in and around galaxies.

Connection is a superpower. If you haven’t heard of the blockbuster megahit Crazy Rich Asians, then, well, it’s possible you’re living under a large rock. Whether or not you saw it, the film’s director, Jon M. Chu, has a TED Talk about connection — to his family, his culture, to film and technology — that goes far beyond the movie. The theme of connection rang throughout the conference: from Priya Parker’s three easy steps to turn our everyday get-togethers into meaningful and transformative gatherings to Barbara J. King’s heartbreaking examples of grief in the animal kingdom to Sarah Kay’s epic opening poem about the universe — and our place in it.

Meet DigiDoug. TED takes tech seriously, and Doug Roble took us up on it, debuting his team’s breakthrough motion capture tech, which renders a 3D likeness (known as Digital Doug) in real time — down to Roble’s facial expressions, pores and wrinkles. The demo felt like one of those shifts, where you see what the future’s going to look like. Outside the theater, attendees got a chance to interact with DigiDoug in VR, talking on a virtual TED stage with Roble (who is actually in another room close by, responding to the “digital you” in real time).

New hope for political leadership. There was no shortage of calls to fix the broken, leaderless systems at the top of world governments throughout the conference. The optimists in the room won out during Michael Tubbs’s epic talk about building new civic structures. The mayor of Stockton, California (and the youngest ever of a city with more than 100,000 people), Tubbs shared his vision for governing strategies that recognize systems that place people in compromised situations — and that view impoverished and violent communities with compassion. “When we see someone different from us, they should not reflect our fears, our anxieties, our insecurities, the prejudices we have been taught, our biases. We should see ourselves. We should see our common humanity.”

Exploring the final frontier. A surprise appearance from Sheperd Doeleman, head of the Event Horizon Telescope — whose work produced the historic, first-ever image of a black hole that made waves last week — sent the conference deep into space, and it never really came back. Astrophysicist Juna Kollmeier, head of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, shared her work mapping the observable universe — a feat, she says, that we’ll complete in just 40 years.  “Think about it. We’ve gone from arranging clamshells to general relativity in a few thousand years,” she says. “If we hang on 40 more, we can map all the galaxies.” And in the Fellows talks, Moriba Jah, a space environmentalist and inventor of the orbital garbage monitoring software AstriaGraph, showed how space has a garbage problem. Around half a million objects, some as small as a speck of paint, orbit the Earth — and there’s no consensus on what’s in orbit or where.

Go to sleep. A lack of sleep can lead to more than drowsiness and irritability. Matt Walker shared how it can be deadly as well, leading to an increased risk of Parkinson’s, cancer, heart attacks and more. “Sleep is the Swiss army knife of health,” he says, “It’s not an optional lifestyle luxury. Sleep is a non-negotiable biological necessity. It is your life support system, and it is mother nature’s best effort yet at immortality.”

In Case You Missed It: Highlights from day 2 of TED2019

Here’s what happened on Tuesday of TED2019. A few news-making highlights first:

Jack Dorsey proposed a new way Twitter could work — by following topics and not individual people and brands. Hmm. Also, fun fact: If he had it to do over again, he would not have built the Like button. Watch for Jack Dorsey’s Q&A with Chris Anderson and Whitney Pennington Rodgers on TED.com today.

Digital Domain’s Doug Roble showed, for the first time outside his studio, a jaw-dropping digital animation tool mapped to a live human actor. This avatar-creating wonder tool could revolutionize filmmaking … and also your next video chat.

The Audacious Project unveiled eight ambitious projects to change the world — from a data-backed approach to fighting racist activity, to a sweeping global drive to breed plants that are better for the planet. Between them — and thanks to a good old-fashioned fund drive last night — they raised a collective $283 million, and each project now has enough seed funding to launch. But they’re only halfway to a collective goal of — wait for it — $567m.

And some larger themes emerged …

Changing, fast and slow: In Chris’s indelible image, Twitter is a ship, Jack Dorsey is the captain, and a few of the passengers have come up from steerage to ask if Dorsey might consider, perhaps, turning away from the path of the iceberg. As Chris says: “You’re showing this extraordinary calm, but we’re all standing outside saying, Jack, turn the f*cking wheel.” Jack’s response: “Quickness will not get this job done.” He’s looking for deeper, systemic change (including a few suggested moves that some Twitter users did not love). Rafael Casal had the same question — “How fast should change happen?” — after he touched off a Twitter firestorm around an issue of racial unfairness. He made one brief point on the platform; it gained traction over a weekend; and it got ugly real fast. Now, he asks: Is social media just too quick on the trigger to allow for nuanced discussion of social change? Working at another timescale altogether, Safeena Husain spoke about a deep investment in the far future — by educating young girls today, starting with the 1.4 million girls in India who never go to school. Investing now, today, in the potential of these girls could have a material effect on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, aimed at creating a better world by 2030. Why not start now?

Playing with personas: As Doug Roble demos his jaw-dropping tool to create detailed, real-time digital renderings of a person — in this case, Doug himself, plus an alternate personality named Elbor — a thought arises: Will this next-gen avatar lead to more deepfakes, more fraudulent online personalities? (The likely answer: Yes, but honestly, what won’t?) Meanwhile, from the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Roger Hanlon told us about shape-shifting cephalopods who change their skin color and texture in a blink, to hide, to mate, to blow human minds. Hanlon suggests their smart skin, and their ability to deploy it in sophisticated ways and in a flash, is an alternative form of intelligence, driven by their strange and wonderful and very, very large brains.

Service and meaning: Matt Cutts worked at Google for almost 17 years, and he took what he thought would be a six-month break to join the US government’s digital service. Three-plus years later, he’s still in government, finding deep meaning and satisfaction in solving problems that affect real people’s lives. At TED Unplugged, he makes the case to his fellow technologists that if you want to really make an impact, you should leave Silicon Valley, wave goodbye to those crazy perks and free meals, and enter a world where office furniture isn’t a given — but the impact is. Julius Maada Bio, the president of Sierra Leone, offered his own take on the meaning of service. He first took power in a military coup, but his goal, he says, was always to return the country to democratic rule. His other major goal: “Sierra Leone must be a secure, peaceful and just society where every person can thrive and contribute.” Over the past decades, he’s moved steadily toward that objective. Plant biologist Joanne Chory is committed to an equally large and far-seeing goal: developing plants that capture carbon better and for longer than common crops do now which will help mitigate our planet’s creeping carbon levels. Her vision, her sense of mission and her nothing-can-stop-me persistence are genuinely inspiring.

Curiosity makes us human: Educator Brittany Packnett meditates on confidence, the hidden skill that powers many of our other skills. Confidence is what helps you put plans into action, and what helps you keep moving even after you fail. What builds confidence? One key factor, she says, is curiosity, the desire to push beyond who you are and what you know. Mentalist Derren Brown taps into the curiosity of the audience by guessing our innermost questions (and even one guy’s password). How did he do it? He’ll never tell. Appearing via robot, David Deutsch meditates on another force that moves us: the drive for new “explanatory knowledge.” As humans, we desire to understand things and explain them and change them and make them new. As he says: “From the human perspective, the only alternative to that living hell of static societies is continual creation of new ideas, behaviors, new kinds of objects.”

Watch the first TED Talk released from TED2019: Carole Cadwalladr.

Audacity: 8 big, bold ideas for global change unveiled in Session 4 of TED2019

In the program guide for Session 4 of TED2019, “Audacity,” a group of eight mysterious figures stands silhouetted in black. That’s because the speakers in this session were a total surprise — to those in TED audience and to those tuning in via Twitter Live from around the world. These eight speakers all have big, bold ideas for global change — and they’re representing eight projects that are receiving the support of The Audacious Project in 2019. Over the next three to six years, these ideas have the potential to change broken systems and impact millions of lives in a positive way. And each needs your support. After each idea, find out how you can get involved.

The event: Session 4 of TED2019, hosted by Chris Anderson, Head of TED, and Anna Verghese, Executive Director of the Audacious Project

When and where: Tuesday, April 16, 2019, 5pm, at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, BC

Speakers: Phillip Atiba Goff, Joanne Chory, Claudia Miner, David Baker, Safeena Husain and Julie Cordua, with special videos on ideas from Ellen Agler and Mark Tercek

Music: Emeli Sandé singing three beautiful songs: “You Are Not Alone,” “Extraordinary Being” and “Read All About It Part III”

The talks in brief:

Phillip Atiba Goff, behavioral scientist and president of the Center for Policing Equity

• Big idea: In the US, Black people are two to four times more likely than white people to be targets of police force. The problem, says Phillip Atiba Goff, is that we think of racism as contaminated hearts and minds — when racism is really about behaviors. “When we change the definition of racism from attitudes to behaviors, we transform that problem from impossible to solvable,” says Goff. “Because you can measure behaviors.” Like any other organization, police departments can set goals for more equitable behavior — and hold themselves accountable to reaching them.
• The Audacious project: Goff and his team at the Center for Policing Equity work with police departments and communities, city by city, to collect data on police behavior and set goals to make it more fair. They’re building a CompStat for Justice — a data system that shows police departments where they’re going, who they’re arresting and much more. The data that CPE collects can help police chiefs develop strategies for changing their department’s behaviors, and to date, they’ve seen staggering results. So far, CPE has delivered products to 25 cities, leading to an average of 33 percent fewer force incidents. Over the next five years, the Center for Policing Equity hope to bring their tools to police departments that collectively serve 100 million people across the US, effectively reaching one in three Americans.
• Quote of the talk: “I’ve experienced the fear of seeing an officer unclip their gun, and the panic of realizing someone might mistake my 13-year-old godson as old enough to be a threat. So when a chief — or a pastor or an imam or a mother — calls me after an officer shoots another unarmed Black child, I understand the pain in their voice.” See what you can do for this idea »

Joanne Chory, plant biologist and director of the Plant Biology Laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies

• Big idea: To most of us, CO₂ is a villain, the greenhouse gas responsible for rising global temperatures. But to Joanne Chory, one of the world’s most prominent plant biologists, CO₂ is simply the thing that plants take in during photosynthesis, and convert into oxygen and sugars. For millions of years, plants have kept Earth’s CO₂ levels in check — and Chory believes they can do it now, even as human beings release more CO₂ into the atmosphere than ever before. Plants could help us fight climate change.
• The Audacious project: Chory’s team at the Salk Institute wants to train plants to sequester carbon better, and for longer. They’re developing the science to create plants with more of a natural polymer called suberin in their roots, as this cork-like substance works as a stable carbon-storage device. They’re also looking to grow plants with deeper, more robust root systems, to really amplify their sequestering ability. Salk will start by creating these traits in model plants, and then will be able to transfer them to major crop plants like corn, soybean and cotton. If these superstar plants could occupy fields around the world, they could hold massive amounts of carbon in the ground, to achieve a 20 to 46 percent reduction of excess CO₂ every year.
• Quote of the talk: “I’ve come to appreciate plants as the amazing machines they are — they literally suck CO₂ out of the air. They’ve been doing it for 500 million years, and they’re really good it!” See what you can do for this idea »

Ellen Agler, public health leader, CEO of the END Fund and author of Under the Big Tree

• Big idea: Parasitic worms have been around for thousands of years, causing disease and limiting human potential. Today, more than 1.5 billion people in the world are at risk for worms, 600 million of them in Africa. And yet worms are very easy to treat — it takes just one to three pills, given once or twice a year. Ellen Agler and her team at the END Fund know that governments across Africa want to gain traction on this problem. By amplifying work already in progress, the END Fund thinks we can be the generation that ends disease from worm infections for good.
• The Audacious Project: Over the next six years, the END Fund will deliver deworming treatment to 100 million people. But that’s really just the start. The END Fund looks at the problem of delivering deworming treatments through a systems lens, bringing together the right partners, lowering the cost of treatment, focusing on prevention, helping with monitoring and evaluation, and treating overlooked people, like young children and women of reproductive age. Every step of the way, the END Fund will support governments and nurture local leadership, creating a roadmap toward local ownership of deworming programs.
• Quote of the video: “If the World Health Organization’s 2020 goals for worm control are met, African economies would see a $35 billion boost in productivity within ten years.” See what you can do for this idea »

Claudia Miner, historian, education entrepreneur and executive director of Waterford’s UPSTART project

• Big idea: Fifty years ago, the United States achieved a watershed moment when it started bringing early education to low-income children through Head Start. Today, however, there are still 2.2 million children in the US — half of all 4-year-olds — who don’t have access to an early education program, because they live too far from one, speak another language or face a financial or logistical hardship. On day one of kindergarten, these children may already be years behind their peers. And they may not ever catch up.
• The Audacious project: At Waterford.org, Claudia Miner and her team have created a kindergarten readiness project called UPSTART that bridges these access gaps. In just 15–20 minutes a day, children without access to in-person early education engage with personalized software that lets them learn at their own pace, from home. This isn’t mindless screen time — UPSTART lessons are educational and engaging, and the program coaches parents to take on the role of their children’s first teacher. UPSTART has a 90 percent completion rate, and a longitudinal study has shown that the gains students make last well into third and fourth grade. UPSTART has been piloted in 15 states so far, and several have opted to fund it because it’s been so effective. Over the next five years, Waterford will pilot UPSTART in all 50 states, serving a quarter of a million children, and make deep inroads toward state funding.
• Quote of the talk: “Our Audacious idea is to make UPSTART available across the country — not to replace anything. We want to serve children who otherwise would not have access to early education.” See what you can do for this idea »

David Baker, professor of biochemistry and director of the Institute for Protein Design at the University of Washington School of Medicine

• Big idea: “Proteins carry out all of the essential functions in our bodies,” says David Baker. These miniature machines digest our food, contract our muscles, fire our neurons and so, so much more. But proteins are also tricky. They’re built of long strings of amino acids that “fold up” into specific shapes that allow them to do their job. And because scientists haven’t been able to crack the code of how proteins fold, we’ve only been able to make small modifications to proteins that already exist. Being able to create new proteins would open up incredible possibility.
• The Audacious project: Baker’s research team at the Institute for Protein Design has developed the ability to design new proteins. And they want to launch the protein design revolution. Their goal is to become the Bell Laboratories of this new field, doubling their faculty and attracting top talent to train the next generation of scientists. Specifically, IPD will work toward five grand challenges: (1) universal vaccines for flu, HIV and cancer, (2) advanced medications for chronic pain, (3) protein nano-containers that bring medicines to specific cells, (4) smart protein therapeutics that recognize unhealthy cells, and (5) next-generation nanoengineering for solar energy capture. They stand to change the world of medicine and so much more.
• Quote of the talk: “Humans have only been able to harness the power of proteins by making very small changes to the amino acid sequences of the proteins we’ve found in nature. This is similar to the process that our Stone Age ancestors used to make tools and other implements from the sticks and stones they found around them.” See what you can do for this idea »

Mark Tercek, global environmental leader and CEO of The Nature Conservancy

• Big idea: Island and coastal nations need to protect their waters in order for our oceans, globally, to stay healthy. But these countries hold high debt loads and often aren’t able to prioritize ocean protection over other needs. Mark Tercek and his team at The Nature Conservancy see a way to solve both problems at once. Their idea is to buy a nation’s debt at a discount and restructure it to give them lower debt payments, in exchange for the government’s commitment to protect 30 percent of its coastal areas.
• How: The Nature Conservancy has been a pioneer in debt-for-nature conservation, working since 2001 to negotiate deals like this for the protection of tropical forests. In 2016, they tried this approach in the Seychelles, restructuring $22 million in debt in exchange for the protection of 400,000 square kilometers of ocean — an area the size of Germany. It’s been incredibly successful, but the deal took years to complete. Now The Nature Conservancy plans to build a team that can close these deals much more quickly. Over the next five years, they will negotiate deals in 20 island and coastal nations, and together create more than 4 million square kilometers of marine-protected areas.
• Quote of the video: “If you refinance your house to take advantage of a better interest rate, maybe you use the savings to insulate your attic. That’s what Blue Bonds for Conservation do, for entire coastal countries.” See what you can do for this idea »

Safeena Husain, social entrepreneur and executive director of Educate Girls

• Big idea: Working in India, Safeena Husain has met girls named Aa chuki (“not wanted”), Antim Bala (“the last girl”) because that’s what her family hoped she’d be, and Naraz nath (“angry”) because her community was so angry she was born a girl. It’s not just poverty and cultural norms that bar girls from receiving an education: it’s collective mindsets. Even though girls’ education has been shown to have a long list of positive effects — it impacts nine of the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals –many girls in the world are still barred from receiving an education. India is home to one of the largest populations of out-of-school girls, with more than 4.1 million girls outside the classroom.
• The Audacious project: Husain and her team at Educate Girls work in remote regions in India, going door-to-door to find all out-of-school girls. They do individual counseling with parents, and hold neighborhood and village meetings to change those mindsets. Their Team Balika (“team for the girl”) volunteers use an app to collect data — and their predictive model reveals that just five percent of India’s villages are home to 40 percent of the out-of-school girls. Their plan is to work specifically in these 35,000 villages for amplified impact. By doing this, they will enroll a staggering 1.6 million girls in school in the next five years. And they will work to keep them there.
• Quote of the talk: “I believe that girls’ education is the closest thing we have to a silver bullet to help solve some of the world’s most difficult problems.” See what you can do for this idea »

Julia Cordua, social entrepreneur and CEO of Thorn

• Big idea: Thorn works on a problem that isn’t easy to talk about: the sexual abuse of children in images and videos on the internet. This is clearly a human problem. But it’s also, says Julie Cordua, a technology problem. In the late 1980s, child pornography was nearly eliminated — because of tighter laws, it was too risky for abusers to trade it through the mail. But with the advent of the internet, both supply and demand skyrocketed. In 2018, there were 45 million reports of child sexual abuse content in the US alone — twice the number of reports of the year before. “Law enforcement focuses on just their jurisdiction. Companies look at just their platform,” says Cordua. “Whatever they learn along the way is rarely shared.” A unified response is necessary.
• The Audacious project: Thorn is building technology to connect the dots between the law enforcement agencies, NGOs and tech companies who are the responders in this invisible crisis. Their tools collect the hashes of known sexual abuse content — essentially, the digital fingerprint of each file — and catalog it. As they collect more and more hashes of known content, it will allow law enforcement to spot new material quickly, and swing into action to try to find the child being abused. And the system will only get smarter — when a company sees a known hash posted, for example, they can scrub that user’s account and potentially discover hashes for other unknown material. Thorn’s goal is to be able to identify new material in seconds — which will open the door to eliminating this content from the internet altogether.
• Quote of the talk: “The abusers win when we look at one piece of the puzzle at a time. … This Audacious project is a declaration of war against one of humanity’s darkest evils.” See what you can do for this idea »

And with these eight projects revealed, it’s time for the audience to get involved. Each project has a significant gap between what’s been committed to it so far and what’s needed to complete it. Anderson and Verghese called on the audience at the TED Conference and watching online to donate to the projects that most moved them, and pledges started rolling in, scrolling on the screens on stage.

Together, these eight projects will require $567 million in funding. And between presentations to donor groups earlier in the year and pledges made tonight, they have now raised $283,561,215. Each project is at least halfway funded, and will able to launch. Now … to watch them in action.

Discover 8 big ideas for global change — as they’re revealed live at TED2019

You’ve watched lots of TED Talks. But have you ever watched a full session of the TED Conference, from beginning to end?

On Tuesday, April 16, 2019, at 8pm ET/5pm PT, you’re invited to join us for a full session of talks from TED2019, beamed live to you from our theater in Vancouver, British Columbia. This session, themed “Audacity,” is a very special one — during it, we’ll be revealing the eight projects for global change that will receive support through The Audacious Project. These ideas are big: The projects and the amazing human beings who will tell you about them have been distilled from 1,500 applications, and they take on some of the toughest challenges humanity faces. We believe that, collectively, they stand to change entire systems and transform million of lives for the better.

Come join us for this session — watch on Twitter @TEDTalks and chime in on the conversation with TED fans and others around the world. Hear these powerful talks and find out how you can get involved in putting these ideas into action.

Watch the session here on April 16 at 8pm ET/5pm PT »

One year in, The Audacious Project ideas make ever-bigger waves

One year ago, TED launched The Audacious Project — an initiative to help change-makers with big, bold ideas for tackling global challenges find the support to make their visions a reality. What’s happened since has been amazing. Thousands of people in the US are awaiting trials at home rather than in jail cells now because of the work of The Bail Project … almost a million farm families are enjoying better harvests in Sub-Saharan Africa because of One Acre Fund’s efforts … and read on for more stories like these. Put simply, these seven ideas are affecting lives around the world.

Our next group of audacious ideas will be revealed at TED2019 — watch live on Tuesday, April 16, at 8pm ET/5pm PT through AudaciousProject.org to discover the change-making ideas that will achieve liftoff this year. In the meantime, enjoy the latest updates from the 2018 projects.

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4,000 bails paid — and quickly counting

The Bail Project’s bail disruptors are now working in 11 sites across the US, where collectively they have paid bail and provided pretrial support for more than 4,000 people. They are working with their clients to ensure they can return to court, get access to any social services they need, and remain with their families and communities while awaiting trial. In the video above, some of these disruptors share why this work is so meaningful to them. “After eight and a half months of sitting in jail, I decided to take a plea bargain for time served just so I could go home,” said David Gaspar, now a bail disruptor in Indianapolis. “When I found out about The Bail Project, I just remember wishing I had someone like that in my corner.”

Over the next few months, The Bail Project will launch in several new sites, including Chicago and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Check out the latest media coverage in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, which looks at the beginnings of The Bail Project in the Bronx, where one of the jails residents are sent to is New York City’s massive floating jail barge. And don’t miss the second episode of BET’s new docu-series Finding Justice, which features the joint efforts of local activists, formerly incarcerated people, and The Bail Project’s St. Louis team to close the “The Workhouse,” the city’s infamous jail.

 

MethaneSAT having impact long before liftoff

MethaneSAT, the satellite to track invisible methane emissions, is on track to launch in 2021. Technical and science advisory groups have been assembled for the project, and two leading aerospace industry companies are now under competitive contract to refine the design. The team is also moving forward on a project that will help build global consensus around the validity of the satellite’s data — by flying over areas where methane emissions are known, scientists from Harvard and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory will test and refine the algorithms MethaneSAT will use for emission detection.

But even before MethaneSAT’s launch, EDF is driving toward its goal of curbing oil and gas methane emissions. The organization is actively working with oil and gas companies to encourage them to prioritize lowering their methane emissions. With EDF’s encouragement, Shell, ExxonMobil and BP have all announced their support for stronger methane regulations and urged the Trump administration and the US Environmental Protection Agency not to weaken current restrictions as planned. “It’s the right thing to do for the planet,” said Susan Dio of BP America. MethaneSAT will be a key tool for encouraging this kind of corporate accountability, helping companies and governments take action on this dangerous greenhouse gas.

 

Living Goods + Last Mile Health focus on partnership

Living Goods and Last Mile Health’s partnership is bringing quality health care to the doorsteps of millions of people in East and West Africa who haven’t had access to traditional clinics. In 2018, the two organizations empowered 12,000 community health workers with the technology and training to deliver care to an astonishing 7.9 million people. For Last Mile Health, an area of focus was malaria, which has been the leading cause of sickness and death in Liberia. With improvements in prevention, diagnosis and treatment — including CHWs bringing care to rural areas — malaria cases have been reduced by about one-third across the country. Living Goods, meanwhile, is helping CHWs begin to provide family planning and immunization services across Uganda and Kenya, while treating common childhood illnesses and supporting pregnant mothers. They also focused on leveraging the data CHWs collect to inform government systems and policies, and optimize how CHWs are supported and supervised.

Both organizations stress the importance of working with governments to implement community health worker programs, and in 2019 they’re hoping to bring this idea to other countries too. Registration is now open for the first course of the Community Health Academy, “Strengthening Community Health Worker Programs to Deliver Primary Care.” The course is offered in partnership with HarvardX and edX. “It’s taught by a network of faculty from around the world,” Raj Panjabi said in an interview this week. “We sent film crews to Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Liberia so health systems leaders can learn from other health systems leaders. Enrollment for the course began earlier this month, and already, people from over 90 countries have signed up.”

 

One Acre Fund offering small-scale farmers choice

One Acre Fund believes in treating the small-scale farmers they work with as clients. In a blog post, they shared a bit more about what this means: giving farmers choices on what to buy for their homes and farms, giving them the credit to pay over time, and allowing them to think through how they want to diversify and build their business. This ethos shows in the video above too, with the story of Rwandan farmer Drocella Yandereye, who has chosen to invest in quality seeds and in a solar light to help her and her children move about the house in the evenings. These investments have not only helped Drocella make enough income to buy livestock, but they’ve helped her to build a new home for her family.

While One Acre Fund’s growth continues to be healthy — in this op-ed from the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Andrew Youn looks at The Audacious Project’s effect on that — there’s also reason for concern. Farmers in countries like Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Uganda are already feeling the effects of climate change that scientists predict years down the road in other regions. The organization is working to help make farmers more resilient in the face of droughts and volatile weather.

 

A third expedition to the ocean’s twilight zone

A team from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s Ocean Twilight Zone project have just returned from a mission aboard OceanX’s research vessel, the M/V Alucia, off the coast of the Bahamas. Their goal was to explore a new region of the twilight zone (previous cruises were in the Northwest Atlantic and Northeast Pacific) in order to examine how life can differ by location. Scientists conducted biological sampling, made submersible dives to observe organisms in their natural habitat, and collected water samples from various depths to perform eDNA analysis, a forensic tool that allows scientists to look at what might be in the water even if they weren’t able to physically catch the animals themselves. The team worked with OceanX to share their journey through video diaries and photographs. And Quartz Media was also on board, showing others what the twilight zone holds.

A special issue of WHOI’s Oceanus magazine is dedicated to the science, people and technology involved in its exploration of the twilight zone. Sign up for a free one-year subscription to get the special issue. As it was coming off the press, a team from WHOI attended the Second Session of the Intergovernmental Conference (IGC2) on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction at the UN. In addition to introducing delegates to the twilight zone, WHOI laid the groundwork for the twilight zone to be included in a treaty governing marine resources outside of any nation’s exclusive economic zone. When IGC3 rolls around in August, they hope to make the twilight zone the subject of a side event that will explore its importance more fully.

 

GirlTrek on the road to Selma

GirlTrek is making the final stops of its Road to Selma revival wellness tour, with events in Los Angeles on April 4 and Chicago on April 6. Over the past year, they have visited 50 cities in the US, holding teach-ins to get attendees thinking about their health, and to train them to organize walking groups in their communities. GirlTrek has reached an incredible number of women along the way. In just 10 days in February — as they made stops in Sacramento, Oakland and Atlanta — they trained nearly 1,000 new organizers.

GirlTrek’s goal is to train 10,000 organizers to lead a movement of one million Black women walking daily. They will continue with a three-day Summer of Selma training event, taking place Memorial Day weekend 2019, in the Alabama city that’s sacred ground for the Civil Rights movement. In 2020, GirlTrek will hold the first Summer of Selma festival, with attendees retracing the historic 54-mile walk from Selma to Montgomery, then joining a three-day celebration. Last week, Vanessa Garrison appeared on Buzzfeed News’ AM to DM to talk about the event and the importance of starting with that iconic walk. “At this moment in our country, we have to recognize that we have been here before,” she said. “For us, it’s important that we remember our history and that we … pull from the power of our ancestors and our foremothers and the powerful organizers who came before us, so we can start to address the problems of today. This is nothing compared to the road we have already traveled.”

 

Sightsavers has resources to begin work in 12 countries

Over the past year, with funding from The Audacious Project and other sources, Sightsavers has raised an unprecedented $105 million to take on the ancient eye disease trachoma. In a blog post, Richard Branson shared why he’s proud Virgin Unite is a part of the effort, as it will help end blinding trachoma in 10 countries and accelerate progress in several others. “It’s a goal that’s achievable through teamwork by bringing together affected communities with governments, donors, pharmaceutical companies and international organizations,” said Branson.

UK Aid Match is also helping Sightsavers achieve this vision. Through May 15, 2019, they will be matching every pound donated to Sightsavers, up to £2 million. While the donations themselves will be used to support work wherever need is greatest, the matched funds will go toward work to prevent and treat trachoma in Tanzania, where images for the video above were taken. “Everyone who donates to Sightsavers’ End Is in Sight appeal could help us get one step closer to consigning this awful disease to the history books,” says Sightsavers head Caroline Harper.

A new year, and new progress from The Audacious Project

In 2018, TED launched The Audacious Project — a new model with the goal of changing the way that change is made. By surfacing big, bold, ambitious ideas with the possibility to change systems and affect millions of lives, and then bringing together groups of donors and the public to support them, the program is already having incredible impact. Read on for updates on the first Audacious projects and their progress last year.

Celebrating 11 sites for The Bail Project

Over the course of last year, The Bail Project opened sites in nine new locations beyond its initial two — with its latest in Spokane, Washington, and Indianapolis, Indiana. With local teams of bail disruptors at each of these sites working hard to make sure that each person bailed out has what they need to return it to court — and to ease back into their lives with dignity — the organization has freed 3,300 people, reuniting them with their families and restoring the presumption of innocence so they can make decisions about their cases from a place of freedom rather than desperation. But beyond that, founder Robin Steinberg has helmed a sea change, making more and more people recognize that cash bail creates a two-tier criminal justice system — one for the rich and one for everyone else — and sharing The Bail Project’s vision of a more equitable alternative. Check out The Bail Project on Dateline. In addition, listen to Robin’s in-depth conversation with TED curator Chris Anderson on The TED Interview, or watch her recent Q&A at TEDxKCWomen about how cash bail affects women specifically.

As climate outlook darkens, EDF takes action

In the fall of 2018, a special report from climate experts across the globe stressed that, to avoid a crisis by 2040, humanity must take action now. MethaneSAT is poised to be a key player, and last year, EDF made big progress toward launching this satellite to map and measure global methane emissions. In addition to building their leadership team and validating the satellite’s design, they secured commitments from oil and gas companies to reduce their methane leaks. And since the start of this year, they’ve announced that two leading aerospace industry companies are now under competitive contract to refine the design and decide which will actually build MethaneSAT. 2018 was a year that brought a lot of attention to methane as a key environmental issue — California committed to reducing its methane emissions, and both Canada and Mexico issued ambitious regulations to limit emissions from oil and gas companies. Check out EDF’s 2018 year in review to see how MethaneSAT fits into the organization’s larger strategy and how it will enable even more action on this front, with a goal of reducing global methane emissions from the oil and gas industry 45% by 2025.

Major new funding for trachoma elimination

Sightsavers spent 2018 building on the momentum generated by the launch of The Audacious Project. In December, they announced their Accelerate Trachoma Elimination Programme, a now-$105 million fund dedicated to their idea of ending blinding trachoma, and they shared this news onstage at the Global Citizen Festival: Mandela 100. This new program is unprecedented in scope, and will help eliminate trachoma in at least 10 countries while speeding up progress in others. Read about it in The Chronicle of Philanthropy. And check out these inspiring stories from Sightsavers’ network: Caroline Harper’s account of how taking a midlife gap year helped her find her calling, and the story of ophthalmic nurse Givemore Mafukidze, who lives in northern Zimbabwe and carries out eye health screenings.

Toward the Summer of Selma

In 2018, T. Morgan Dixon and Vanessa Garrison of GirlTrek were named Game Changers by Women’s Health magazine, had The Root applaud them for their “literal movement for Black Women,” and were featured in a NowThis video that took more than 8 million viewers along the way for their 100-mile retracing of Harriet Tubman’s path of the Underground Railroad. In every month of last year’s walking season, GirlTrek registered more than 5,000 new trekkers. At the same time, the organization kicked off a 12-month, 50-city tour called the #RoadtoSelma, holding teach-ins across the US in anticipation of 2019’s Summer of Selma. The big event will be held in late May. It will begin with a trek along the historic 54-mile path from Selma to Montgomery taken by Civil Rights Movement leaders in 1965, and will end with a three-day festival — from May 24 to 27, 2019 — that promises to be the “Woodstock of Black Girl Healing.”

New views of the ocean’s twilight zone

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) kicked off its unprecedented exploration of the ocean’s twilight zone in 2018. Its first expedition launched a new vehicle, the Deep-See, and brought back more than 22 terabytes of data plus a haul of specimens and a wealth of new information from this largely unexplored part of the ocean. Check out The New York Times’ look at some of the most interesting findings. Meanwhile, a second expedition — NASA EXPORTS — is bringing new insights into the role that the twilight zone plays in Earth’s climate system by helping transport carbon from the ocean surface, where it can contribute to global warming, to long-term storage in the deep ocean. And WHOI has lots more planned for 2019.

800,000 farmers served, and counting

In 2018, One Acre Fund worked with more than 800,000 client families, helping them achieve food security and build better livelihoods. At the same time, they made it possible for smallholder farmers to adopt 200,000 solar lights and plant 15 million trees — a big win, as trees increase in value over time, require little labor, return vital nutrients to the land and sequester carbon. In addition, One Acre Fund was featured in Forbes and called a bottom-up model of development that works by South Africa’s IOL Business Report. At the heart of their efforts: technology that meets small-scale farmers where they are, enabling them to pay for services on mobile phones and receive receipts and advice via SMS. Read more about their approach on their blog.

Big wins for community health worker programs

At the close of 2018, Living Goods and Last Mile Health were on track to digitally empowered 14,000community health workers (CHWs) in East and West Africa, which would mean more than 7.6 million people reached. Together, their community health workers delivered close to a million lifesaving treatments for children and supported more than 200,000 women through pregnancies. In addition to securing a new partnership with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, to explore how CHWs can close the immunization gap in hard-to-reach areas across the globe, the two organizations also launched an advocacy campaign, called Communities at the Heart of Universal Health Coverage, that highlights the importance of investing in community heath programs to achieve universal health coverage. And in 2019, Last Mile Health will launch the first course of its Community Health Academy.

7 big ideas gain momentum: Updates from The Audacious Project

Their ideas are ambitious, with the goal of changing outdated systems and impacting millions of lives. It’s been five months since The Audacious Project’s first class of project leaders spoke at TED2018, and each one is gaining momentum. Below, the latest news.

1,600 bails paid and counting

More than 1,600 people have now had their bail paid by The Bail Project, allowing them to await their trial from home rather than in a jail cell. In July 2018, The Bail Project opened in Detroit, working with the Detroit Justice Center — and that same week, they had their biggest-impact day so far, bailing out more than 20 people in Louisville, Kentucky. Next up for the project: California. They’ve started operations in San Diego, and are gearing up to launch in Compton, working with the UCLA School of Law and the Compton Public Defender.

The media is starting to take note. Robin Steinberg and “bail disrupters” Shawna Baldwin-Harrell and Richard Baxter were featured on NBC’s Dateline in a powerful episode that takes you inside the local jail in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to meet some of the women affected. Meanwhile, The Bail Project has gotten great coverage from The Christian Science Monitor, Michigan Public Radio, PBS NewsHour and St. Louis Public Radio. And after California passed a sweeping set of reforms that Steinberg and other activists fear will dramatically increase pretrial incarceration, she explained last week in an op-ed in The New York Times what should come after cash bail.

Two satellites take aim at methane

Earlier this month, Fred Krupp’s talk posted on TED.com, explaining the Environmental Defense Fund’s plan to slow down climate change by focusing on the greenhouse gas methane. Barely a week later, the Trump administration issued a proposal to weaken EPA rules, made in 2016, to reduce methane emissions from oil and gas companies. EDF projections show that this proposal could result in a half million additional tons of methane pollution by 2025. While they plan to fight the proposal, EDF stresses that it just strengthens the need for MethaneSAT. When oil and gas companies have data on leaks, they take action — this summer, BP, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Equinor and Shell all committed to addressing the problem of methane emissions.

Last week, Krupp attended the Global Climate Action Summit in California, where Governor Jerry Brown announced exciting news: California is developing its own satellite to measure greenhouse gas emissions. EDF is working with the state, and these two satellites will work together in tandem. While MethaneSAT will take broad, detailed measures of methane emission, surveying 80 percent of global oil and gas operations every four days, California’s system will detect medium to large leaks at specific locations. As EDF puts it on their blog, “It’s like having two camera lenses — wide angle and telephoto — that together produce a more complete picture.”

Trachoma is on the run

It was announced in June, but made official in a ceremony in August: Ghana has eliminated trachoma as a public health problem. It is the seventh country to do so in recent years, following Cambodia, Laos, Mexico, Morocco, Oman and Nepal. Sightsavers has been working since 2000 on eliminating the disease in Ghana, and getting to this milestone was a long road. Watch a video on what it took, and read an account of the final days of trachoma in Ghana, spent searching towns for the final patients, with nurses performing surgeries in teams of four.

Already, new insights on the twilight zone

The first cruise in Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s mission to explore the ocean’s twilight zone — define — left shore from Newport, Rhode Island, on August 11. The goal was to test Deep-See — a tool that’s 20 feet long and packed with broad-frequency sonars, cameras and sensors capable of capturing two terabytes of data every hour. When the cruise returned to land 10 days later, it had already generated more data about the twilight zone than almost any expedition before it. Andone Lavery, a physicist who is part of the project, said it was surprising to see organisms evenly distributed through the zone, rather than in dense layers. She told Science magazine that the new tool was “like color TV versus black-and-white.”

Meanwhile, a second cruise — funded in collaboration with NASA and NSF —  is making its way through the Pacific, looking at the role the twilight zone plays in Earth’s climate. What it finds could show us new dimensions of the carbon cycle. And this is just the beginning.

Health workers amplify vaccination efforts

Living Goods and Last Mile Health have a new partner in their project to digitally empower community health workers, to serve their neighbors in key countries in East and West Africa. Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, is joining them to make sure that community health workers can collect data and educate communities about immunizations. This work should allow nurse supervisors to vaccinate up to 8 million people by 2021. It’s exciting work, sure to have a big impact. The news comes just as a controlled study of Last Mile Health’s community health worker program was published in the American Journal of Public Health, showing that its model rapidly increases access to lifesaving care for children.

On the road to Selma, a #StressProtest

T. Morgan Dixon and Vanessa Garrison of GirlTrek are midway through a 50-city wellness tour they’ve dubbed the Road to Selma. As they travel the country and hold workshops with Black women, they’re gathering insights on how to make next year’s Summer of Selma a success. Planning for the event is underway, alongside partners at the Selma Center for Nonviolence, Truth and Reconciliation.

Over Labor Day, the GirlTrek team took a break to camp out in Rocky Mountain National Park for the second annual #StressProtest, a long weekend of self-care, hiking and nature for Black women. Dixon and Garrison spoke to Essence and Shondaland about why this is so vital. “Slowing down is the most radical thing you can do in this capitalist world that demands your work from sunup to sundown,” said Dixon. She and Garrison, recently named Women’s Health 2018 Game Changers, had an incredible time, from long hikes to conversations around the campfire. But even in this weekend of self-care, there was a bitter moment: As Garrison posted on Instagram, while driving a van full of Black women down the road after a hike, she was pulled over by a park police officer. “This man was asking me what I was doing in the park,” she writes. “Asked me while still holding his hand to his gun, despite seeing our hiking gear when we rolled the windows down.” But as Garrison powerfully writes: “I belong here. We belong here.” And she promises: “We’ll be back to the park next year. Thinking we will bring 1,000 Black women this time.”

Helping one million farmers help themselves

One Acre Fund is building capacity, and fast. By the end of the year, Andrew Youn and his team will serve more than 750,000 small-scale farmers, tracking far ahead of their goal of one million by 2020. This work is far-reaching, but its impact is personal. Six years ago, Wycklyfe Mwanje — now age 40 — was a small-scale farmer whose only source of income was his two-acre farm. Today, after working with One Acre Fund to improve his planting materials and techniques, he runs his farm, owns a mill for grinding maize and operates a popular butcher shop.