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One third of the new wealthiest are from Asia, according to Royal Bank of Canada research

A million more people joined the ranks of the global super-rich last year, almost a third of them in Asia, as soaring stock markets helped bolster the fortunes of wealthy investors.

The number of "high net worth individuals" climbed by 10% in 2012, taking the total worldwide to 12m, according to research by Royal Bank of Canada and consultancy Capgemini.

Between them, these twelve million people owned assets worth $46.2tn (£29.5tn) – more than three times the entire annual output from the US economy, and a 10% increase on 2011.

A high net worth individual is defined as anyone with $1m (£641,000) or more in "investable assets". The definition excludes the value of a main home and of any "consumer durables" such as cars.

World markets were volatile in the first half of 2012, as the eurozone crisis deepened; but after ECB president Mario Draghi promised to do "whatever it takes" to protect the single currency in July, and the Federal Reserve unleashed a drastic third round of quantitative easing in September, share prices recovered strongly, boosting the wealth of those with investments.

The findings are likely to increase concerns that the benefits of central banks' radical policies to rekindle economic growth have accrued overwhelmingly to those at the top of society, while unemployment remains stubbornly high in many countries and incomes have been under severe pressure.

Britain is home to the fifth-largest group of super-wealthy individuals, according to the report, with 465,000 super-rich individuals, up from 441,000 in 2011.

The wealth report came as the latest UK inflation figures showed that with the consumer price index running at 2.7% in May wages for average British workers have now failed to keep up with prices for more than three years.

Frances O'Grady, general secretary of the TUC, said, "economic stagnation has caused incomes to fall for most ordinary families but the wealth of the super-rich just keeps on growing. Unless this inequality is tackled Britain could experience a pretty joyless recovery, with the majority of the population seeing little or no benefit when economic growth returns."

The US regained its place at the top of the league table in the report, as the home to 3.73m high net worth individuals, up by more than 11.5% on 2011, as the recovering property market helped repair the damage to wealthy investors' housing portfolios inflicted by the downturn of the past five years.

The Asia-Pacific region was just behind the US, with a population of 3.68m super-rich investors – up by more than 9% on the year.

Europe, where the economy of the single currency zone has now been in recession for 18 months, was home to 3.4m high net worth individuals, but saw a smaller rise in their number, of 7.5%, in 2012.

The researchers also sub-divide the millionaires according to their wealth. There was an increase of 11% in 2012 in the number of people classified as "ultra high net worth individuals", the creme de la creme of the super-rich. These 110,000 people are worth $30m or more, and hold assets worth more than $16tn between them.

A middle group of just over a million people, the "mid-tier millionaires", held $10tn-worth of assets between them; and a much larger group of 10.8m people, which the report refers to as the "millionaires next door", held assets worth $1m-$3m.

The data also underlines the stark geographical divide in the distribution of wealth across the world, with just 140,000 of the 12m super-rich living across the entire continent of Africa. That was an increase of almost 10% from 2011; but still fewer than in Italy, Australia or Brazil.

RBC and Capgemini's analysts forecast that the super-rich will continue getting richer, with the total wealth held by this group expected to expand by 6.5% a year over the next three years.

The super-rich emerge from the survey conducted as part of the research as a relatively conservative group. They managed their assets cautiously in 2012, while fewer than half of them said they trusted financial markets; and fewer than 40% trusted regulators.

The authors said the super-rich respondents to the survey, "exhibited a clear bias toward safety and wealth preservation, allocating nearly 30% of their financial wealth into cash and deposits." This careful approach applied to millionaires of, "all ages and wealth levels, suggesting that the overall lower level of trust in the financial markets may be playing a role."

• Investing
• Financial sector
• Stock markets
• Rich lists

Heather Stewart
guardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

More than 25 international celebrities including Paula Abdul, actor David Tennant, acclaimed writer Neil Gaiman, Vampire Diaries’ star Kat Graham, UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador, supermodel and former refugee, Alek Wek have joined the UN Refugee Agency’s (UNHCR) World Refugee Day ‘1 family’ campaign to expose the devastating impact of war on families.

Paula Abdul for UNHCR - What Would You Take?

See their photo series here.

More: http://www.looktothestars.org/news/10355-stars-join-world-refugee-day-campaign

A number of celebrities attended the “Disrupting Slavery” charity event benefiting the Somaly Mam Foundation sponsored by Akvinta Vodka and Don Benito Tequila on Thursday, June 13th at 41 Ocean in Santa Monica, CA.

Daryl Hannah looking fierce at the "Disrupting Slavery" charity event benefiting the Somaly Mam Foundation
Credit/Copyright: Pivotal Public Relations

Among the stars were AnnaLynne McCord, Daryl Hannah, Rachel McCord, Pia Toscano, Eva Amurri Martino, Beth Behrs, Lisa Ling, and many more.

More: http://www.looktothestars.org/news/10354-stars-attend-disrupting-slavery-event

The Women’s Forum of New York will present The 3rd Annual Elly Awards Luncheon benefitting The Education Fund of the Women’s Forum on Tuesday, June 25 at The Plaza Hotel in New York City.

The awards, named for Women’s Forum founder Elinor “Elly” Guggenheimer, will honor outstanding women leaders.

The Elly Award Recipients (both in attendance) will be:

More: http://www.looktothestars.org/news/10353-glenn-close-to-present-elly-award

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Dead Patriot Films presents “Assaulted: Civil Rights Under Fire” – a 79-minute, PG-13 documentary narrated by Ice-T that brings audiences to the center of the controversy over an issue that is dividing our nation – gun control.

The film takes a step back from the public discourse on limiting magazine capacity and defining assault rifles. Instead, “Assaulted” offers a unique historical perspective on the Second Amendment’s significance, taking a critical and objective look at the current gun laws, and the effect on civil rights and liberty.

Created by Emmy winning producer and writer Kris Koenig (“400 Years of the Telescope,” the upcoming “Fight for Space”) and produced by Eric Katzenberg (“Secrets of Navy SEALS,” “American Guns”), the film is narrated by critically acclaimed rapper and actor Ice-T (“Something from Nothing: The Art of Rap,” “Law and Order: SVU”).

More: http://www.looktothestars.org/news/10352-ice-t-narrates-gun-control-film-focusing-on-civil-rights

Speakers at NCVO's Evolve 2013 said that charities could make better use of crowdfunding, targeted marketing and skills sharing

The gaming industry, crowdfunding, targeted marketing and skills sharing can be much further exploited to allow the sector to thrive, said speakers at the NCVO's annual event yesterday.

In one of the busiest break-out sessions of the day - Karl Wilding, director of public policy at NCVO, said that while crowdfunding raised $1.1 million through a handful of sites in 2011, last year it generated $2.7 billion dollars across 600 platforms.

On gaming, Helen Goulden director of Nesta's Innovation Lab, said that nearly six billion hours of time was spent on popular online game World of Warcraft every year. That $2.5 billion dollars was spent on buying virtual items in games last year.

She said: "We've invested in Playmob, where people can buy virtual objects and the money goes to a relevant charity (buy a virtual tractor online and money goes towards farming equipment in Africa, for example).

Delegates were asked about how they were using technology innovatively, but few of the 160 or so in the room were able to give examples. "Think about what you can do with what's out there. For example, Age UK teamed up with skills and goods sharing site Ecomodo, for older people to offer their talents and engage in society more," said Goulden.

She believes that thinking innovatively about the sharing economy and creating initiatives such as Casserole, which encourages people to cook for their elderly neighours, or Good Gym, which sees people jogging to volunteering jobs, can enable the sector to do more for service users with less resources.

She also said that charities had to assume that "no one was searching for them online, and to look at behavioural targeting to increase awareness of their cause".

The most popular search items last year were handbag, cheap holidays, the apprentice and the budget. The numbers for donations and charities were right at the other end of the scale, said Goulden."Assume no one is looking for you. (Traditional) marketing and advertising can only take you so far. Business knows this and is exploiting the technology market using targeted advertising."

She said Nesta was investing in a technology called Re:act, which works by popping up with relevant volunteering suggestions when users are searching. For example, those looking online for gyms, might get a Good Gym pop up.

Emma Jane Cross, founder of Beat Bullying, said that while she herself didn't "even have a Facebook page", the young people the charity provides services to often prefer to access them online.

The organisation has built its own technology. "No agency out there understood what we needed: absolute safety, to track a person's journey and evaluate whether digital volunteering was working. So we had to built the technology," she said.

Cross said the charity was inundated with young people wanting support and saw doing this digitally as the most manageable, although it also sees young people face-toface."Grab hold of digital; it can scale us and help us provide more services to more people. I don't want the advice sector to be the HMV (of the voluntary sector). The private sector will just come in and do advice digitally. If we don't do digital, as a nation of advisers we'll die within five years," she said.

Cross said her organisation's ability to reduce bullying is up since we began embracing the use of technology to scale up. We have a success rate of getting one in four people back into education – way better than Serco. But they won't work with us.

This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. To join the voluntary sector network, click here.

• Fundraising
• Voluntary sector network blog
• Charities
• Voluntary sector

Claudia Cahalane
guardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

My charity's experience of the government's flagship payment-by-results jobs scheme has been a flop – we have had to duck and dive to find people employment outside of it

For my charity, the Work Programme (WP) has ended not with a bang, but a whimper. I don't want to stamp my feet or make a great announcement about yet another third-sector organisation pulling out of the government's flagship jobs scheme. At the Creative Society we were happy to provide training to help young people find work in the cultural sector. But referrals have gone from a dribble to a drip to nothing at all.

At the outset I was agnostic about the government's scheme. I really hoped it would work. My organisation, which was set up in 2009 to find jobs in the creative industries for long-term unemployed young people, seemed perfectly placed to provide some great opportunities. Under Gordon Brown's government's Future Jobs fund, we'd put more than 800 people back to work in theatres, film and dance companies, archives and libraries across the country.

Believe me, we tried to make it work. The WP was heralded as a great new dawn for the third sector. Released from the chains of central government, a whole new constellation of charities, businesses, social philanthropists (not to mention multinational security companies) would target the long-term unemployed. And, crucially, only be paid if they were successful. We formed a partnership to bid for a "prime" contract with a larger, not-for-profit organisation backed by a university. But, even together, we just weren't big enough to compete with the likes of A4e, G4S and Serco. When the contracts were awarded, we had to go through a further byzantine bidding process to persuade the big companies to partner with us: a huge distraction from our work with young people on the ground.

We eventually found ourselves in the supply chain of A4e and adapted a training programme we had used successfully with the Future Jobs fund. We were pretty chuffed with our training programme. Our "customers" loved it. A4e loved it – and used it as a model of good practice for providing young people with the basic interviewing, CV writing and networking skills they would need to find work. But gradually, and with huge regret, we realised there just weren't enough people coming through our doors to make the WP sustainable for us.

Ultimately, the figures speak for themselves. Under the Future Jobs fund, we put hundreds of people into jobs in a sector notoriously difficult to access for all but the most privileged young people. Under the WP, this vital work has, quite simply, dried up. We have been forced to conclude that a massive, unwieldy private-sector bureaucracy is no better, and sometimes worse, than a public-sector bureaucracy.

Like so many other employment charities, we have had to duck and dive to carry on the work we do outside the WP. Our campaign against unpaid internships has resulted in a fair access principle being written into a new Arts Council-funded scheme to put 6,500 young people into jobs. And we are using European Social fund money to find unemployed 16- to 19-year-olds jobs, education or training.

The terrible irony is that we are already mopping up after the WP. Over the past few days, charities like ours will have received calls from jobcentres telling them to prepare for people who have been through the WP and still not found a job. We will help them, of course. But there has to be a better way to get charities involved in work creation than using us as a last resort when all else has failed.

• Unemployment
• Young people
• Charities
• Voluntary sector
• Welfare

Martin Bright
guardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Texas Instruments and its brand ambassador – actress and neuroscientist Mayim Bialik – are joining 2,000 STEM leaders and visionaries in business, education and government at the U.S. News STEM Solutions National Conference in Austin, from June 17-19 at the Austin Convention Center.

Together they will share ideas and solutions to solve the challenge of filling the gap for a competitive STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) workforce by preparing today’s students to excel in math and science.

TI, a lead sponsor of the conference, will demonstrate how math and science technology, strong professional development for educators and classroom activities that showcase real-world applications of science and math concepts are increasing student achievement in these subjects and preparing them to pursue higher education and careers in STEM fields.

More: http://www.looktothestars.org/news/10351-big-bang-theorys-mayim-bialik-speaks-at-stem-conference

At NCVO's Evolve 2013 speakers said mainstream parties don't have a narrative for the voluntary sector

Now is the time to give the main political parties a narrative for the voluntary sector ahead of the 2015 General Election, said speakers yesterday at the NCVO's annual event Evolve 2013.

A main session on the election asked members thoughts around forming an agenda for politicians, looking at the economy and social justice, public services, support for charities, voluntary and social action. Karl Wilding, director of public policy at NCVO, said: "The mainstream parties don't have a narrative for the voluntary sector. We have to give them one. They are still looking for ideas to solve society's problems.

Influencing them is central to our thinking now. "Too often voluntary sector organisations are seen as a cost, something they have to spend public money on. We want them to think about how voluntary sector organisation can be a solution, an investment," he added.

Also speaking in the session, Philippa Newis, policy officer at Gingberbread, which supports single families, said charities and voluntary groups should dream big with their pre-election campaigning.

"Don't be constrained by costs, use this opportunity for staff engagement and brand and profile building. Dream big. Previously we've seen negative stories about single families disappear from the press for four or five months when campaigning before elections," she said.

Later in the day, in his closing speech, the head of NCVO Stuart Etherington said: "Opening up public services is a good example of where we can provide solutions. All of us want high quality and affordable services. The Work programme didn't set the bar high for standards of commission. We're watching closely to see opportunities coming up."

He said he felt the social value bill, which encourages local authorities to give more attention to social outcomes when commissioning, showed great promise, but he was worried there was a lack of momentum behind it.

He said many of society's problems were solvable with good policy, but was concerned about the government's rushed approach to consultation. "They won't know we have a solution unless we shout about it. This is not a time for cynicism," he said.

Etherington added that he hoped the sector could get its messages into the press through 'solutions-focused journalism' a practice Martin Lewis, chair of NCVO and ex-BBC broadcaster believes is lacking in the mainstream media.

Lewis is challenging newspaper editors to not just report stories negatively, but to look at the ways people are trying to solve problems. Etherington ended by praising the "marvellous campaigning from the sector this year", particularly highlighting work on child poverty, welfare and campaigning from Stonewall on equal marriage. "Continue asking questions, we'll be on your side," he said.

Jon Cruddas, who is running the Labour party's policy review, spoke about how Labour, who are bookmakers favourite to win the next election, would be unlikely to have big initiatives for the sector like Gordon Brown's 'v'. He said the government's style would be more about creating an "enabling environment" next time.

This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. To join the voluntary sector network, click here.

• Impact and effectiveness
• Voluntary sector network blog
• Voluntary sector
• Charities

Claudia Cahalane
guardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

UNICEF, the Nelson Mandela Foundation and the Peter Krämer Foundation have kicked off a new fundraising drive to raise US$80 million to help Africa’s girls, orphans, children living in extreme poverty and other vulnerable children go to school and get a quality education.

The partners signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in New York, to expand Schools for Africa which has, to date, helped benefit 21 million children. The new phase aims to raise US$80 million between 2014 – 2017 to help the most vulnerable children in Angola, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Guinea Bissau, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa and Zimbabwe.

“School attendance and quality learning remain a challenge for millions of children in Africa who live in communities where schools have difficulties in improving learning,” said Dr. Nicholas Alipui, UNICEF Director of Programmes. “In addition, these children must cope with such daily hardships as poverty and the need to work. The partnership focuses on the most marginalized, giving millions a chance for a better life.”

More: http://www.looktothestars.org/news/10350-unicef-and-nelson-mandela-foundation-kick-off-fundraising-drive