Forbes

By Ashlea Ebeling

Carlos Slim Helu, the world’s richest man, has donated a $2 million leadership gift to
Best Buddies International, a charity that helps disabled kids and adults with
leadership, mentoring, and jobs programs. The gift comes via Slim’s Telmex
Foundation, the corporate foundation run by phone company Telmex, which
Slim controls through America Movil.

But it’s very personal. “It didn’t happen overnight,” says Anthony Kennedy Shriver,
who founded Best Buddies in 1989 and help spread its mission to 50 countries.
When Shriver first met Slim it was alongside his mother, Eunice Kennedy Shriver,
who founded the Special Olympics. (Shriver is carrying on a Kennedy legacy to
support people with disabilities; his uncle, President John F. Kennedy founded the
first president’s Committee on Mental Retardation.)

Slim, through the Telemex Foundation, has been supporting Best Buddies for over
10 years, and Best Buddies Mexico, which officially started in 2003, wouldn’t exist
without the ongoing help of Slim and his son-in-law Arturo Elias Ayub, who runs the
Telemex Foundation and is on the board of directors of Best Buddies International, Shriver says.

Slim hosted last summer’s Best Buddies International board meeting in Mexico City (board members got a pre-opening tour
of Slim’s stunning new Soumaya Museum, designed by Slim’s architect son-in-law Fernando Romero). Shriver says he
has “hung out” at the family’s house in Acapulco.

Yet Shriver says he is careful not to mix socializing with business. He pitched the idea of a leadership gift in Slim’s office,
asking for more than the $2 million (he wouldn’t say how much more), but is happy with what he got.

The $2 million is the biggest one-shot gift Shriver’s ever drummed up. “Sometimes people give what I ask for; sometimes
people slice it in half or cut it down 20% or say ‘No,’” Shriver says. “I’m used to it.”

Best Buddies does much of its public fundraising through two big bicycling/running events, one in Hyannis Port and the
other, run by Shriver’s sister Maria Shriver, at Hearst Castle. Celebrities abound. Among the buddies: New England Patriots
quarterback Tom Brady (donors got to play ball with him), Olympic gold medalist Carl Lewis, and Glee’s Lauren Potter, a
21-year-old actress who plays high schooler Becky Jackson—and has Down syndrome. (For a poignant video featuring
Potter encouraging folks to “take action to disable bullying,” click here.

Slim’s gift, seed money in a $15 million “Momentum Campaign” to build Best Buddies internationally, is meant to help
programs that are struggling in Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Peru.

Best Buddies Mexico focuses on leadership skills (advocacy and self-sufficiency) and mentoring, pairing up disabled
youths with friends in high schools and universities. Shriver hopes one day the jobs component of Best Buddies will
blossom in Latin America too, with Slim’s backing.

“His gift will help a lot, and hopefully it will inspire others to give,” Shriver says. “If he believes in Best Buddies, maybe
they will too.”

For how Slim gives generously through his Carlos Slim Foundation, click here.