Nearly 300 new commitments, valued at a total of $6-billion, are slated to be announced at this year’s Clinton Global Intiative, according to former President Bill Clinton, who welcomed guests to his annual philanthropy gathering in New York.

As Mr. Clinton described in his opening speech at the event, the Clinton Global Initiative has become a year-round event, with full-time employees who help donors and nonprofit groups find partners and shape programs throughout the year.  The meeting brings together people in business, government, and nonprofits to identify potential solutions to global problems and make commitments (of money, expertise, time, products, or human resources) to solving them.

Participants are poised today to announce 291 such new commitments and the number will likely grow in the next few days, Mr. Clinton said. He said that since the event started five years ago, 1,700 commitments have been pledged that over a decade will be worth $57-billion.

New projects and pledges announced this morning focused on disasters in Haiti, Pakistan, and the Gulf Coast, and on the environmental and social problems of trash. Among them:

• Google committed $1-million to help Pakistan recover from the recent floods. Other Pakistan-related commitments included plans to donate solar power, provide humanitarian aid, and establish a new fund for three flood-affected communities. 
• NRG Energy pledged $1-million to install solar panels in Haiti in conjunction with the Solar Electric Light Fund. Other pledges for Haiti included a multimedia curriculum on Haiti’s cultural heritage and new nonprofit programs focused on girls. 
• Commitments to the Gulf Coast included a new “citizen-journalism” program to empower 1,000 young people to write about environmental and other challenges, in conjunction with the Wallace Global Fund and Earth Echo International.
• New efforts to reduce the health problems and environmental degradation associated with trash included the “plastic disclosures project,” a commitment to encourage companies to be more transparent about about how much plastic they produce.

Mr. Clinton said that he hoped participants would come away with three main things from this year’s meeting: “a clearer idea of how you can best use your resources in this climate to promote more economic growth”; “a clearer idea of how we should respond to natural or man made disasters and how we can prevent them”; and an understanding of how to engage people who aren’t among the event’s 1,300 participants in tackling global issues.