Activities
Based in Portland, Oregon, the foundation has donated or committed over $140 million to support education, invention, and innovation. In addition to nurturing inventors and supporting science and technology education in the U.S., the foundation has broadened its mission to include fostering technological innovation that drives economic and social improvements in developing countries.
Over 63,000 student and grassroots inventors have received support from the Lemelson Foundation, resulting in 102 patents obtained or pending, 81 new business enterprises in the U.S. started by student innovators, and 197 products developed.
The foundation directly supports museum and education programs, most prominently at MIT and the Smithsonian Institution. Many of their programs focus on inspiring young people to pursue education and careers in science, technology, and invention. In the mid-90s the foundation seeded the creation of a nationwide collegiate organization that fosters invention and entrepreneurship in higher education. The Lemelson Foundation also supports several programs, including the African-American Male Achievers Network (A-MAN) based in Los Angeles, and Oregon MESA (Math, Engineering, Science, Achievement) that provide students in grades 6-12 with opportunities to develop creativity and skills in science, technology and engineering.
The foundation developed a framework called "Idea to Impact" to define a new funding strategy. Through grants, loans, and equity investments, the foundation supports technology projects driven by the needs and priorities of local people in the developing world. This social enterprise approach provides assistance to inventors and entrepreneurs who invent new technologies or adapt existing technologies to serve the poorest of the poor. Unlike traditional philanthropic giving to developing countries, investment in these technologies provides income-generating opportunities that can enable individuals to increase their net income by up to ten times. In Kenya, $40 million (.5% of the nation's total GDP), was generated in 2005 through technology developed and distributed by KickStart, an organization funded in part by the Lemelson Foundation. Eric Lemelson, Jerome Lemelson's eldest son and currently a director of the Foundation, notes that "Raising living standards to levels where people can think about things beyond keeping themselves and their children alive from day to day is a critical part of how to solve the sustainable development puzzle."
Like the Skoll Foundation, the Schwab Foundation, and Ashoka, the Lemelson Foundation promotes social entrepreneurship. "Rather than presenting communities with cheap versions of first world products, social entrepreneurs improve lives and create opportunities to generate income by co-developing robust and tailored innovations in collaboration with local people. Effectively, they are building a middle class from the bottom up." The Lemelson Foundation has partnered with Ashoka to support global fellows, and committed $2 million as a member of the Clinton Global Initiative "to support renewable and efficient energy technologies."
Read more about this topic: Lemelson Foundation
Famous quotes containing the word activities:
“I am admonished in many ways that time is pushing me inexorably along. I am approaching the threshold of age; in 1977 I shall be 142. This is no time to be flitting about the earth. I must cease from the activities proper to youth and begin to take on the dignities and gravities and inertia proper to that season of honorable senility which is on its way.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
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—Aaron Ben-Ze’Ev, Israeli philosopher. “The Vindication of Gossip,” Good Gossip, University Press of Kansas (1994)
“As life developed, I faced each problem as it came along. As my activities and work broadened and reached out, I never tried to shirk. I tried never to evade an issue. When I found I had something to do—I just did it.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)