MCC 2012 – Keynote Speaker Dr. Jeffrey Sachs

By ewbexec

We hope everyone’s vacations are going well and everyone has been able to relax on this much needed break!

Looking to the future, the 2012 Millennium Campus Conference (MCC) is coming up in September. It will be held at Northeastern University on Septermber 14-15, 2012. The MCC is held as part of a greater effort by students across many universities to end extreme poverty as well as to achieve the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set forth in 2000.

Every conference has a keynote speaker. Speakers of past years have included: K’naan (poet, singer); John Legend (singer, Show Me Campaign); Dr. Paul Farmer (Partners in Health); and Adam Braun (Pencils of Promise), among many other notables. This year’s speaker has been announced as Dr. Jeffrey Sachs.

Dr. Sachs has been involved with MCC for many years on the Board of Advisors. Additionally, he is the director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University and a Special Advisor to the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon. In addition to these impressive accomplishments, Dr. Sachs has been heavily involved with the fight against extreme poverty, having served as advisor to many governments with regard to economic strategy and healthcare in developing countries, and is considered the world’s leading expert on economic development. Having worked with such people and organizations as Pope John Paul II, the African Union, the World Health Organization, Polish Financial Minister Leszek Balcerowicz, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, and Russian President Boris Yeltsin, Dr. Sachs has become a very important and influential person. Indeed, he was recognized as such, being listed twice in Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential World Leaders.

With such an impressive resume and inexhaustible drive to help ameliorate conditions in today’s developing countries, Dr. Sachs is indeed a very welcome guest at this year’s Millennium Campus Conference! It will be an interesting and enlightening experience to listen to him speak, based on his extraordinary knowledge and previous direct experiences in the developing world, and hear his views on the world and how each of us can contribute. Needless to say, we’re really looking forward to MCC 2012!

The video below details Dr. Sachs’ ideas regarding technology and connectivity and how the two can help to springboard the developing world forward. With the advent of cheaper technology, the entire world becomes accessible with just the click of a button, and within the comfort of people’s homes. Even in some of the most rural areas, its inhabitants are able to connect to the outside world through the use of a simple mobile telephone. Mobile telecom is extraordinarily cheap in developing countries, and has helped many nations to advance in that respect. This idea of communication with the outside world and the flow of information has enormous consequences.

Enter EWB BU. This is one of the things we’ve been working toward with our antenna project to extradite the results of Dried Blood Spot (DBS) tests for HIV using mobile phones and Short Message Service (SMS). We’ve definitely taken Dr. Sachs’ example as inspiration and hope that our trip to Zambia this summer will help us forward in our project and one step closer to implementation!