What is the Carter Center?

Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter founded the Carter Center in 1982. They envisioned it as a place where people could come together to resolve their differences and solve problems. The Center has also initiated programs in democracy and development, human rights, global health, and urban revitalization to address the issues that cause discord. The Center has touched the lives of people in at least 65 countries for forming partnerships and fostering collaboration among individuals, other non-governmental organizations, official agencies, and corporations. By coordinating resources and avoiding duplication of efforts, the Center is helping nations and individuals remove the obstacles that negatively affect their quality of life.

The Carter Center identifies creative ways to address problems that impact the most vulnerable people--those who have access to the fewest resources. Then they seek partners to implement solutions that achieve lasting improvements. The Center is nonpartisan, so it can step in where governments and other agencies cannot go and mobilize world leaders and other eminent people to effect change. For example, areas that the Carter Center has worked in include:

• Monitoring world conflicts
• Observing elections in about a dozen countries
• Organizing a joint initiative in the region including Tanzania, Uganda and Zaire to end the violence in the area
• Undertook peace missions in North Korea, Haiti, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Sudan
• Initiated a new development aid strategy with Guyana
• Helped more than 200,000 farm families in Ethiopia and other African nations to increase grain production
• Provided strategies to advance freedom of the press in newly emerging democracies.
• In addition, to improve health in the developing world, the Carter Center is leading an international campaign that has reduced cases of Guinea worm disease by 97 percent and is helping facilitate distribution of a drug to treat and prevent river blindness in Africa and Latin America.
• It is a partner with the Task Force for Child Survival and Development, which works to protect children worldwide against preventable diseases such as measles and polio.