General Council meets in Brazil

The Champalimaud Foundation’s General Council held its second annual meeting of 2008 on November 3rd in São Paulo, Brazil.

For the first time, the bi-annual meeting of the Champalimaud Foundation’s General Council has been held outside Portugal.  At the invitation of Council member and former President of Brazil, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, the General Council travelled to São Paulo, Brazil, where they convened on November 3rd. In addition to ex-President Cardoso, the Foundation’s Executive Committee was joined at this second Council meeting of 2008 by: António Coutinho, António Travassos, Daniel Proença de Carvalho, António Almeida Santos, João Raposo Magalhães, Pedro D’Abreu Loureiro, and Simone Veil, former President of the European Parliament.

During the meeting the General Council focused on the ongoing work and plans of the Foundation. In particular, the President of the Champalimaud Foundation, Leonor Beleza, took the opportunity to request a greater involvement from Brazilian organisations in the annual António Champalimaud Vision Award. Mrs Beleza announced that the objective is to have “the greatest possible number of candidates” from Brazil and South America. “We want the Award to be better known in Brazil and for Brazilian institutions to enter, which has not occurred in previous editions”, said the Foundation’s President. These sentiments were echoed by former-President Cardoso who said, “This is a valuable award and it is important that organisations become involved in order to try to obtain these resources for Brazil.”

The 2009 António Champalimaud Vision Award will recognise outstanding contributions to the alleviation of blindness and vision disorders, particularly in the developing world. With the General Council meeting taking place midway between the 2008 Award ceremony and the closing date for 2009 entries (December 31st), the members took time to consider the impact the award is having on the communities that are most in need. With an estimated 640,000 people suffering from blindness in Brazil this was of particular relevance to the hosts of this Council meeting.

The Champalimaud Foundation’s General Council will next meet in the first semester of 2009.

Leonor Beleza with Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Former President of Brazil (left), and Daniel Proença de Carvalho, General Council member (right)

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