Ford Foundation - Working with visionaries on the frontlines of social change worldwide

In 1969, Ford joined the Carnegie Foundation and a small team of investors to back a new idea for a unique, educational TV show for children: Sesame Street. For more than 50 years, Sesame Street has remained on the air, holding a special place in everyone’s hearts and helping generations of kids become smarter, stronger, and kinder.

Muhammad Yunus came to Ford with a vision to provide Bangladesh’s low-income communities with small loans to gain financial power and security. This work developed into the Grameen Bank—which today has more than 8 million borrowers across Asia, of which 97 percent are women—and earned Yunus a Nobel Prize and Presidential Medal of Freedom.

The Center for Reproductive Rights, which Ford helped to establish in 1992, won the Supreme Court case, Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt, 579 US, prohibiting Texas from placing medically undue restrictions on the delivery of abortion services. With our support, the organization has become a formative player that has strengthened laws and policies to protect women’s rights in more than 50 countries.