The Legatum Foundation’s strategy includes funding projects in its priority sectors and on influencing the development of a more efficient philanthropic marketplace. Within its sector-based approach, Legatum aims to obtain the highest possible returns on investment by allocating capital to the most effective humanitarian projects and programmes while requiring investment-grade levels of transparency and accountability from grantees.
The Foundation’s priority sectors are:
Health
Legatum focuses upon funding projects that address major health issues in the developing world such as HIV/AIDS, clean water and Neglected Tropical Diseases ("NTDs"). In the past year alone, Legatum has invested in 103 projects that addressed education, prevention and care relating to HIV and AIDS.
Health: Neglected Tropical Diseases
Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) refer to a group of largely worm-based infections which represent one of the largest global economic and health burdens, affecting over 1.4 billion people across the world. NTDs are painful, disfigure and disable, and can lead to both blindness and death. The hundreds of millions who are infected are often unable to work or attend school, which prohibits them from being productive members of society and perpetuates the endless cycle of poverty and disease.
Education
Education is key to economic growth, civil society and to the advancement of peace. Nations that fail to educate their young are often characterised by stultified growth, conflict and many forms of child exploitation. Legatum therefore focuses on initiatives that help provide education to children in developing countries, with a particular emphasis on opportunities for girls and women, which we believe produce especially high social returns.
Economic Empowerment
Typically, grants are finite in that, once deployed, the capital is seldom returned or multiplied. For a community to experience sustained prosperity, however, underlying economic activity is required. In order to kick start the creation of markets and the provision of goods and services, Legatum provides modest capital to entrepreneurs to enable them to start their businesses. These grants span both geography and sector and include funds for small stores, upholstery and vocational training. Most programmes are focused on women who, in poorer communities, are often more vulnerable to physical and sexual exploitation.
Human Liberty
Human trafficking and slavery are big business in a trade that the UN has estimated to be worth $32 billion a year. Benjamin Skinner has written, “There are more slaves today than at any point in human history,” citing a recent estimate that there are 27 million people in some form of bonded labour.
Disaster Recovery
Legatum invests grant capital to alleviate human suffering caused by war, famine and other disasters. At times this amounts to funding basic needs such as shelter, food and water, but Legatum also funds projects that draw the world''s attention to ongoing crises that demand a response but suffer from a lack of media attention.
Environment
For people struggling with extreme poverty, environmental degradation and the resulting loss of natural resources can tip an already precarious scale. An estimated 80 percent of Latin America''s poor live on land of low agricultural productivity and high susceptibility to degradation - as do 60 percent of poor Asians and half of poor Africans. Loss of habitat and species diveristy significantly decreases opportunities for tourism income in places where other sources of livelihood are often not available.
These are environmental issues, but they have profound effects on quality of life for millions of people worldwide. And while these issues are global in scope, solutions lie in local communities.