5) Description of initiative: Let Us Export Cluster Bombs Of Love.

The achievements of Starlight Starbright in lifting up the lives of seriously ill children and their families for twenty four years speak for themselves in the United States, UK, Australia, Canada and Japan. But we are missing a trick: our ability to contribute to the humane stability of the world.

The challenges facing our planet, our lives and all our children's lives in this new Millennium are real, of unprecedented scale and likely to curse our very existence in the near future unless we address them with diligence, enthusiasm and all the resources at hand. Starlight has things to offer we have not thought to pursue, things that take nothing away from our existing mission for ill children but rather expand and ennoble its global moral foundation of a quarter century.

6) Description of innovation: Children are the key to uniting peoples:

Grownups often hate and fear each other, especially when stirred up by malign leaders. Children less so. Adults who hate otherness rarely hate the children of the others. Sick children elicit a vast, unstoppable desire to help, a shared human compassion that is bigger than bombs. A shared willingness to do new things in new ways and to move beyond old structures to help a child in need is prevalent and well documented.

7) Delivery model: We can do this prudently, carefully and the world with help us every which way it can:

Funding is available for bridge building between countries and tribes where there is destructive tension. Grownups stand up to help Starlight almost whenever they are properly asked; I've been asking for 24 years and I count around two victories out of every three attempts. People want to say yes. Peace is less expensive than war. The challenge is one of leadership, focus and expertise, not one of money. If we lead they will follow. If we ask, they will give. But we have to exert our will to succeed; we need an affirmative business plan with the staffing and volunteer leadership necessary to export The Plans. Right now, there are a dozen powerful people in Israel who would like to see an Israeli Affiliate of Starlight. Right now there is specific willingness on the part of the Jordanian Establishment to sponsor a Starlight Affiliate in Amman. If those two Affiliates existed, what could each do for its children over time? If those two Affiliates existed, what could they do together to build bridges across the Arab Israeli divide? I talked of such a plan recently to a smart young Israeli Arab, the son of a Palestinian farmer who will graduate in May with a Harvard MBA on top of his Johns Hopkins undergraduate degree. His response was beyond excitement: he offered to take time off and act as a combined tour guide, interpreter and executive. If we lead, people will follow. If we build it, they will come.

8) Key operational partnerships: Established, establishment and entrepreneurial figures in both Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Territory. They are eager to help us bring Starlight's well-honed programs to their arena: These templates we have long honed are as good as anything America can offer. They are nationality, race, gender and religion blind. We have proven successes in welding alienated adults together through children's services across the barbed wire of their adult estrangements: In the Quebec of Rene Levesque, a total adult racial and religious meltdown between tribes came within two percentage points of suceeding from Canada to form an independent French language state in North America. Starlight however presented a rare and powerful bridge where Anglophone adults worked side by side with French speakers and always served kids of every stripe. In the Childrens Hospital in Tetah Tikva Israel, where there is a thriving Starlight Room built from our charity's blueprints, Arab children are healed by Jewish doctors with Egyptian therapists and Palestinian psychiatrists. Israeli children are healed by Lebanese Christian doctors assisted by Russian Jewish nurses and Saudi medical technicians. If your kid is terribly ill, frankly you could give a damn who does the healing or who provides the rays of hope, just so long as they do it.

9) Financial model: Existing Chapter and Affiliate models in other parts of the world.

          • Costs as percentage of income: 0

          • Financing: Long term model is locally self-sustaining in each Affiliate, as it has always been in every other part of the world. Short-term start up model will require some external support, know-how, leadership and attention.

10) Effectiveness

          • Project outcomes: $40 million raised in fiscal 2006. 2.4 million children served internationally. None in the Middle East (yet)

          • Number of clients in past year: 2.4 million.

11) Scaling up strategy

          • Stage of the initiative: Start Up stage.

          • Expansion plan: What we need:

The mandate to direct focus and some initial resources to this new outreach. A dedicated person or people on staff to drive an engine of geographical expansion. Significant high-level Board support in leadership and entrepreneurship. A crackerjack Business Plan that ever evolves as we implement it. A search to learn from analogues: Medecins Sans Frontieres, for example. Significant local leadership, entrepreneurship, volunteerism, support.

12) Origin of the initiative: To us has been given a great gift: We run a charity which is selfless, noble and dynamic. We know kids. We know that the stuff of kids in the end is all the same: they are kids after all. We know what they want. We know from years of experience how to deliver it. We know how to do this. We have the resources to do it. We have successfully exported our great American dream to Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and Japan. Those worthy, thriving Affiliates in their hearts now believe the great work of Starlight is deeply and peculiarly Australian, Canadian, British and Japanese. God bless them in their pride. .... Now we can use the same template to serve additional children in territories where we will also be building Bridges towards Peace and prosperity between warring and estranged factions, tribes, ethnicities and religions.

Contact Information:
Peter  Samuelson
CHAIRMAN
Starlight Starbright Children's Foundation
(501(c)(3) non-profit charity in USA. Chapters and Affiliates in Japan, Australia, Canada, UK, USA.)
10401 Wyton Drive
United States
Tel: 310-208-1000 x104
Email: petersam@who.net
Website: www.slsb.org