The Carter Center

You may also be interested in our 2007 In Harmony with Hope® Award winner Rosalynn Carter.

The Carter Center is committed to advancing human rights and alleviating unnecessary human suffering. They invite you to join them in creating a world in which every man, woman, and child has the opportunity to enjoy good health and live in peace. They are working to prevent neglected diseases such as Guinea worm, river blindness, trachoma and malaria. And while they’re in a country helping out anyway, perhaps that country would like a little democracy with their health care. They’re in a unique position to help, not being at all affiliated with the United States government. They’ve done it in 70 countries so far, including helping with a constitution, election monitoring, and more.

“The greatest challenge we face is the growing chasm between the rich and poor.”
– Jimmy Carter

“For more than two decades, The Carter Center has worked to control and eradicate diseases that afflict the poorest of the poor. I have seen first-hand the extraordinary impact of The Carter Center’s health programs. This award is a tribute not only to the leadership of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, but also to the Center’s very competent and dedicated staff.” — Bill Gates, Sr. (2006) Presenting the Gates Award for Global Health

Malaria Initiative

The Elfenworks Foundation is proud to be the first supporter of The Carter Center’s program to combat malaria. With support from The Elfenworks Foundation and others, The Carter Center has supplied nets treated with a safe mosquito-killing insecticide to thousands of people in Ethiopia. Malaria remains the number one killer of children on this planet: in Africa, one child dies every 30 minutes from malaria. Research suggests that malaria and AIDS interact so that each disease helps the other spread faster. When people with AIDS contract malaria, there results a surge of HIV virus in their blood which makes them more likely to infect a partner. President Carter recently participated in an online chat about this initiative, and the text of that chat can be found at the Smithsonian website.

Education Program

Offering one of the premier internship programs in the country, The Carter Center provides more than 100 young people each year with a unique and tangible work experience. The Elfenworks Foundation is helping increase the exposure of this stellar program through supporting the Education Program’s recruitment efforts. Strategies to enhance the Education Program’s marketing include: advertising in publications on the internet, travel for program staff, and development of recruitment tools, and providing for additional opportunity for intern field travel. We believe that by raising their profile among the students of today, The Carter Center is also increasing these students’ awareness of the problems that the Center is working to solve, as well as fostering a sense of involvement and caring among tomorrow’s citizen-donors.

Example of Brilliant Communication: Success Defined

On page 28 of his book Our Endangered Values, President Carter writes of being asked to define success in only fifty words. His response: “I believe that anyone can be successful in life, regardless of natural talent or the environment within which we live. This is not based on measuring success by human competitiveness for wealth, possessions, influence, and fame, but adhering to God’s standards of truth, justice, humility, service, compassion, forgiveness and love.” President Carter won a 2006 GRAMMY® – Best Spoken Word for Our Endangered Values. Elfenworks is not associated with this book, but we highlight it here as an example of communication at its finest.