Ben Affleck

         

          

          Benjamin Géza Affleck-Boldt (born August 15, 1972), better known as Ben Affleck, is an American actor, writer, producer, and director. He began his career as a child actor, starring in the PBS educational series The Voyage of the Mimi (1984, 1988). He later appeared in Dazed and Confused (1993) and various Kevin Smith films including Chasing Amy (1997) and Dogma (1999). Affleck began to explore the possibility of becoming more actively involved in philanthropy in 2007 and was drawn to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof's coverage of human rights abuses in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

He made numerous trips to the region to educate himself through meetings with "academics, philanthropists, people at NGOs, people who work on the ground, survivors."During two 2008 trips, Affleck reported on the humanitarian crisis for ABC News Nightline and directed a short film, Gimme Shelter, for the UN Refugee Agency.

He spoke at the Combating Global Poverty event during the 2008 Democratic National Convention. In 2009, he wrote an essay for Time and spoke at the Global Leadership Awards. Affleck also served as the executive producer of the HBO documentary film Reporter (2009), which focused on Kristof's work in the Congo. After five visits to eastern Congo between 2007 and early 2010, Affleck developed "a clearer sense of what I wanted to do ... A lot of NGOs were doing fabulous work there [but] there was no US-based group working with strictly community-based organizations in eastern Congo ... It seemed to me that there was a tremendous power in the ability to change one’s life if you’re part of the community, if you have skin in that game."

In 2010, Affleck and Whitney Williams co-founded the Eastern Congo Initiative.Investors include Howard Graham Buffett, Google, Laurene Powell Jobs and Cindy McCain. ECI supports "Africans finding solutions to African problems" by acting as a grant maker for Congolese-led, community-based organizations. ECI, with two employees in the US and 12 in the Congo, makes grants and offers capacity-building support to over 20 charities involved with supporting survivors of rape and sexual violence, reintegrating child soldiers into their communities, promoting economic opportunity, increasing access to health care and education, and promoting community-level peace and reconciliation. One ECI grantee, Green House, offers training and resources to Congolese farmers. In 2010, ECI partnered Green House-supported cacao farmers with Seattle-based company Theo Chocolate. As of 2014, Theo is the biggest sourcer of cocoa beans in the Congo and donates a percentage of their profits to ECI. In 2013, ECI collaborated with TOMS shoes to provide footwear for Congolese school children. ECI has hosted high-profile fundraising events in the US, in collaboration with the Clinton Foundation and Matt Damon's Water.org.[268][269][270]

ECI also aims to increase focus on the issues impacting eastern Congo among policymakers and the media in the US and Europe.\ In an effort to achieve this goal, ECI has released a number of publications including a white paper and a USAID-supported landscape analysis. Affleck has made nine media-documented trips to Central Africa since 2007 and has discussed ECI's work in many television interviews. In 2010, he wrote a column for The Washington Post, contributed an essay to The Enough Moment and appeared as a panelist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. In 2011, Affleck and Cindy McCain, an ECI board member, testified before the House Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health and Human Rights. Also in 2011, Affleck was a speaker at the Global Philanthropy Forum.In 2012, he spoke alongside Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at Washington's Child Survival: Call to Action Forum and alongside Senator John McCain at the Sedona Forum.  He wrote op-eds for The Washington Post and Politico. During the Kony 2012 campaign, Affleck wrote an essay for The Huffington Post. While welcoming increased awareness of the issue of child soldiers, he warned that Western 'saviours' are "ineffectual at best and deadly at worst" and stressed the importance of funding "remarkable local organisations." Later in 2012, Affleck testified before the House Armed Services Committee and met with members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

In 2013, Affleck introduced the Orchestre Symphonique Kimbanguiste at a TED conference and began developing an Africa-set action film which Deadline has described as "an examination of the moral ambiguities of how philanthropy and foreign assistance veers into modern-day neocolonialism." Also that year, President of Rwanda Paul Kagame was photographed arriving at Affleck's Los Angeles home; Affleck had testified before Congress in 2012 about the Rwandese government's support of rebel groups in eastern Congo. In early 2014, he and US Special Envoy Russ Feingold testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and met with Secretary of State John Kerry. Affleck also spoke at the Hillary Rodham Clinton Awards, where Denis Mukwege was honored.

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