As 2023 comes to a close, Mike wanted to say thank you for being with us for another great year at Bloomberg Philanthropies. He recorded a short message to share with you:

As Mike says, this was a year of enormous progress. Here are just a few of the highlights:

We expanded our Summer Boost education initiative to eight cities across the U.S. this year, supporting tens of thousands of K-8 students with summer courses to tackle pandemic learning loss and help them get back on track in school.

This year, New York City welcomed the Perelman Performing Arts Center, or PAC NYC, an exciting cultural venue and the final project in the recovery and rebuilding of the World Trade Center site that Mike helped lead as mayor of New York City. PAC NYC's programming, design elements, and innovative mechanics make it a facility unlike any other.

See how PAC NYC's flexible design opens new ways to create and engage with performances

To curb tobacco use in low- and middle-income countries and reduce e-cigarette use among U.S. teenagers, we committed an additional $420 million to the Bloomberg Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use — building on an effort that has seen global smoking rates drop from 22.7% to 17.5% and global cigarette sales plummet, with 750 billion fewer cigarettes sold in 2021 compared to 2012.

Our Asphalt Art Initiative expanded into 25 cities in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, with new grants to support projects that help neighborhoods improve street safety, revitalize public spaces, and engage residents. We also announced the eight winning cities of the third Public Art Challenge, which will receive grants of up to $1 million each for temporary public art projects that bring communities together around urgent civic issues. Since 2014, the Public Art Challenge has spurred more than $100 million in economic benefits for participating cities and brought people together on issues ranging from gun violence and climate change to homelessness and public health.

Artists, local leaders, and others share how the Public Art Challenge helps people and communities tackle important issues

At the first-ever Partnership for Healthy Cities Summit, local leaders from around the world came together in London to discuss proven solutions to save lives from noncommunicable diseases — including heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and chronic respiratory diseases — and injuries that cause 80% of deaths globally. The Partnership for Healthy Cities reached 73 cities worldwide when Nairobi, Kenya; New York City, U.S.A.; and Osaka, Japan joined the network earlier this year.

In our annual Countdown to COP28, we logged more than 115 actions across Bloomberg LP and Bloomberg Philanthropies to turbocharge climate progress. At COP28 itself, we brought more than 500 local leaders together for the inaugural Local Climate Action Summit, the first time that local leaders have had a formal summit at COP and been part of the official program. We also announced a range of new commitments and initiatives, including a $40 million effort to track and cut methane emissions, $65 million to accelerate local climate action, and a joint-philanthropic coalition to support ocean-based climate solutions.

Take a look back at the biggest news and events from COP28

This year we marked 10 years of CityLab, which kicked off at the newly opened Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC. We announced new initiatives to help city leaders share and implement great ideas from other cities, and to explore the use of generative AI to improve public services.

The debut of our Hands to Heritage documentary showcased master basket weavers from South Carolina and Rwanda, who came together to exchange history, culture, and techniques passed down over generations. Hands to Heritage is part of our Women's Economic Development Initiative, which has enrolled more than 724,000 women and their families in training and education programs since 2007, directly benefiting over 2.8 million of their family members.

There's much more to tackle in 2024. We wish you all the best for the holidays and the New Year!

— Bloomberg Philanthropies