The Rockefeller Foundation

Today, The Rockefeller Foundation and The OpenAI Foundation launched Cities Deliver: AI Solutions for Public Services, a $50 million open call to help cities use AI to improve public health, economic mobility, and civic engagement for the residents who need it most. We have seen what this looks like already with the work we've supported: a dengue prediction tool in Cali now protects more than 2.2 million people, a pilot in Rio alerts vulnerable neighborhoods before disaster strikes, and an AI-powered engagement platform in Cape Town is reaching nearly 100,000 residents in their own language. Technological progress may be inevitable, but shared progress is not. In my latest my newsletter I explain why philanthropy and AI belong together, and how to apply for this new opportunity. Read more.

Even with so much uncertainty, 61% of people still want countries to work together. Keeping their trust means delivering results.

At the UN General Assembly, we put cooperation to work, teaming up with partners to feed more students, power more homes, and use AI for good.

Reliable energy. Healthier food systems. Stronger coalitions. Stack them up and the world stands strong.

A year ago, 19 leaders from 13 countries gathered at our Bellagio Center to focus on one belief: food is one of the most powerful, most underused tools we have to improve health. That gathering became the Food is Medicine Global Alliance. During Climate Week, the Alliance held its first major public convening, bringing together practitioners, researchers, funders, and health leaders working from Rwanda to Mexico to the United States. Since 2019, The Rockefeller Foundation has invested $100 million in this space. And the evidence keeps growing. A new study led by Kevin Volpp, MD, PhD, FAHA and the American Heart Association, in partnership with the Navajo Nation, found that culturally tailored food as medicine programs cut hospitalizations nearly in half and reduced heart failure hospitalizations by 70%. Now imagine what FIM can do for the millions of people around the world who could benefit from these interventions. That is why this Alliance matters. It gives leaders like Dr. Thaina Ange Ndizeye, advising Rwanda's Ministry of Health, and Simon Barquera, former President of the World Obesity Federation, a shared space to adapt Food is Medicine to their own health systems and cultures, not to import a single model from elsewhere. I'm incredibly grateful to Sarah Stern of The Maple Leaf Centre for Food Security for co-chairing this work, and to every practitioner and researcher in the room today building the evidence and the movement. And many thanks to Dariush Mozaffarian MD DrPH for moderating an insightful conversation.

At a time when the global landscape feels more fragmented than it has in decades, the development challenge of this century is clear: generating productive, income-generating jobs at scale. That was the throughline at the Leadership Forum for Energy Prosperity, which gathered this week on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. Connecting a household to electricity is no longer where the work ends. The real measure is whether that connection becomes a farm that produces more, a business that hires more, or a factory that runs another shift. #Mission300 has already connected more than 60 million people to electricity. The Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet's Grids of the Future initiative is bringing smarter, more reliable power to over 450 million more. And their new Energy for Prosperity Africa Strategy could turn fresh connections into 20 million new jobs. None of that happens through one government or one donor. Governments set ambition, development banks finance at scale, philanthropy takes the early risk, and private capital builds the smarter grids that carry it all. That coalition model is now the template for the next stage of this work. Turning access into full paychecks and full shifts is critical, and The Rockefeller Foundation is committed to helping this coalition make it happen. #UNGA81