Mayor Kasim Reed joined President Bill Clinton to announce that the Clinton Global Initiative will hold its sixth annual CGI America meeting in Atlanta in June 2016. The announcement was made at the 2015 CGI America meeting in Denver, Colorado. 

CGI America is an annual working meeting that encourages leaders to collaborate across sectors to create Commitments to Action: new, specific, and measurable plans to address a pressing challenge. Since its establishment in 2011, CGI America participants have made more than 500 commitments, which have improved the lives of nearly 2.4 million people. As a result of these commitments, 920,000 people have benefitted from professional skills training; more than 500,000 children have gained access to improved quality of education; nearly $1.2 billion of new capital has been invested or loaned to small and medium enterprises; and nearly 4.1 million of metric tons of greenhouse gasses have been avoided.

"Atlanta is an exciting and vibrant city with a long history of people working together for the common good, a record which has only increased under Mayor Reed’s leadership,” said President Clinton. “As with our previous meetings, the 2016 CGI America Meeting will continue developing cross-sector Commitments to Action focused on key issues, including social mobility, infrastructure and energy development, job creation, and workforce development.”

Since CGI America first launched in 2011, numerous business leaders and local NGOs have made CGI America Commitments to Action targeting Atlanta, Georgia, and the region more broadly. Commitments tackle critical challenges, including empowering young men and women of color as entrepreneurs, building a sustainable infrastructure and workforce, and inspiring more students into STEM education and careers. Read examples of Commitments to Action already impacting the Atlanta community here.

To build on existing progress, local leaders are working to mobilize Georgia’s robust network of businesses, nonprofits, philanthropies, and others to bring the meeting to Atlanta, where together with hundreds of community and business leaders from across the country, they can help to develop solutions for economic growth, long-term competitiveness, and social mobility in the United States.

“I want to thank President Bill Clinton for choosing the City of Atlanta as the home of CGI America in 2016,” said Mayor Kasim Reed. “As the capital of the Southeast, Atlanta is proud to host this global meeting. I look forward to sharing the successes we’ve had in Atlanta and working collaboratively with leaders in the business, government and nonprofit sector to generate innovative solutions that will address domestic and global issues.”

Over the past four years, mayors and other elected officials, private sector and labor leaders, and national experts have utilized the CGI America platform to advance infrastructure development goals across the U.S. These meetings, combined with a CGI America commitment made in 2011 by the AFL-CIO, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), other unions, and the Center for American Progress to encourage the investment of over $10 billion into the reconstruction of America's infrastructure, led to the awareness that there was a need to connect available resources to willing recipients - mayors and cities.

For more information, visit cgiamerica.org.