Carlos Slim, Bill Gates, “Magic” Johnson, Michael Bloomberg: Foundations that Could Have Done Better.
Much Better!
As Michael Bloomberg donated money to end poverty in New York City, the poverty rate increased. His Poverty Coalition did some good, but it missed the mark and was far from the bull’s eye. Government and foundations have failed millions of people in the Big Apple.
Carlos Slim can now decide if he made the wisest of decisions over the last decade or more.
Lebron James recently donated money so adults in Akron, Ohio could take their high school equivalency test. Now we look at some prime history.
Carlos Slim who is known around the world has at least six billion dollars committed to helping people. Before going any further, it is important to know this. Bill Gates and “Magic” Johnson collaborated years ago to help people better. They know that the money that they had spent then did not have what we call a “big bang for the buck.” In other words, much of their money was not well spent. When I started doing this work to help people, two-thirds of Mexican immigrants were dropping out of school in the United States.
I watched over a decade ago as the Inter-American Development Bank launched an effort to help Latin-America called “Yo Amo América” or I Love America. This powerful initiative used star power to reach people all over Latin-America. There was Shakira, who was probably the most popular. Ricky Martin was part of the effort and his work extended even into Brazil. There was Juan Luís Guerra, a giant among Dominicans, but well known world-wide. Juanes was part of the project. What was left out was my own educational specialty which helps the poor immensely.
People may recall that Sarah Palin’s own daughter was in a situation which was precipitated by her pregnancy. What should see do? Earn a high school diploma right away or take the alternative route through the G.E.D. test. She chose earning the high school diploma.
Baseball great Bryce Harper chose the G.E.D. at sixteen years of age, entered college for a year, and signed a ten-million dollar contract to play baseball, all made possible by his high school equivalency diploma.
Latin-America could have been greatly helped by having a similar test, a test that had helped 18 million people in the United States and accounted for about 1 out of 6 diplomas each year. The United States continues to be plagued by problems resulting from the fact that forty million or more adults do not even have a high school equivalency today. Mexico and other countries can begin to assess the damage to their own people.
Enter Carlos Slim who can do more than most multi-billionaires have done to help the education sector. Bill Gates who dropped out of high school briefly and could have been that person, but it did not happen. I cannot minimize the outstanding work that Gates has done all these years, but for the computer person armed with critical knowledge who did not finish high school, there could have been greater access to jobs by the rich combination of computers and the high school equivalency. There were a million or more adults in Puerto Rico before Hurricane Maria who never achieved a high school equivalency diploma and I would imagine that a huge portion of Mexicans and others in Latin America also need this diploma.
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, is a place where its public schools only graduated twenty-five percent from high school in those days. So much of the desperation of the people everywhere is the result of lack of diplomas and jobs. The test to obtain a diploma has gotten much more expensive in the last few years, but as a true non-for-profit initiative today that test could be given to people in Spanish everywhere for free. Carlos Slim has business in the Dominican Republic under the name Claró.
The plan of action is action is on my website for all to see. I wrote a movie treatment called CERVANTES and that can be read on the Black Lives Matter page of mygedhotline. Carlos Slim has done great work in the past, but he could have been much more aggressive and successful.
We must look back to the National Palace of the Dominican Republic several years back where a representative of mine took information to the President of the Dominican Republic. In front of the entire audience, the Secretary of Education said that the Dominican Republic has something similar and President Leonel Fernandez corrected her. He knew from his own efforts to help people that taking and passing an eight-hour test with little or no study was not the same as taking a long course that is sometimes two or three years of work.
New York and Puerto Rico have failed their people and this could have been avoided. In those two jurisdictions there was no fee for taking the test. That appeared to be great idea to the people in government, but without informing the people that great initiative turned into disaster as the governments greatly underfunded a test that helps people get jobs and enter the university and military. All types of discrimination were ended against Hispanics, but new roadblocks were created that have held people back.
Apply all this knowledge to Mexico, the Caribbean, and Latin-America and it will be a game changing initiative to save lives and make more people eligible to work in the twenty-first century. Ojalá Que Llueva Café y Educación en el Campo or That it should rain coffee and education in the countryside is the theme I developed that has not been achieved and could still be achieved.
Carlos Slim holds the key to open that door of progress. All these years Governors Pataki, Spitzer, Paterson, and Cuomo in New York have not done a good job and that applies to Mayors Bloomberg and de Blasio, both of whom I have talked to about high school equivalency. Do not follow the lead of New York City or New York State and miss the bulls eye of the target.
Carlos Slim could deliver much greater success to much of the world at a low cost. Bill Gates and “Magic” Johnson must know about my ideas. Why? When they paid for the facilitator to hold the discussion about things that the Harlem community says is needed, I happened to be there that day in the Magic Johnson Empowerment Center and I participated in the meeting. It was all recorded.
The list of Carlos Slim’s donations and efforts is monumental, but things could have been much better all these years. It is time for his family including his children who are involved with his business to learn new things. We may see a parallel with the Donald Trump family because of the children participating in business, but Carlos Slim and his children are not Twitter people and have much more to offer the world and its people. Now is the time to act!
