It's been a big time for New Yorkers, with the Pope arriving just before Charlie and closing down half of Manhattan with his motorcades in a Fiat 500.

Meanwhile the other half of this 13-mile long and two-mile wide island was overrun with bomb proof black SUVs ferrying hundreds of world leaders to and from the UN General Assembly to set new Sustainable Development Goals that replace the Millennium Goals, many of which were met.

But down at the 5th Avenue Sheraton, away from the public and political pomp, the undisputed global monarch of networking – the 42nd President of the United States of America, William Jefferson Clinton, brought 1000 people together.

It seems that Bill's two-term presidency was just the warm up for something much bigger and much longer lasting. On finishing his Presidency in 2001 and armed with the best little black book imaginable, Bill Clinton set about bringing together the brightest people in the world to work on some of the planet's most difficult problems.

It's been formally up and running now for 10 impressive years as the Clinton Global Initiative – a can-do network of businesses, community organisations, government agencies and NGO's, big and small, who form into partnerships to make a serious difference.

The essential ingredient is the partnership and we could learn a lot from Clinton's approach.

Solving problems

Over the past decade the CGI, as it is known, has seen its members make over 3000 commitments to solve major problems – everything from HIV treatment in Africa to spawning hundreds of women owned business with new micro finance models. New forms of edible protein have been developed that can be farmed by villages in marginal climatic conditions and tens of thousands of people have been "bought out" of intergenerational bond labour.

And on the outbreak of the Ebola crisis in Liberia, a coalition of CGI members got the first 100 tons of aid into the country and followed up with another 400. The President of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, came to New York to thank everyone and announce that the last case was treated just as she left.

Some in the world of aid organisations are critical of Clinton. I don't know why. For instance, a quite remarkable commitment was made to help the Seychelles handle rising water levels.

True to the partnership ethos, Clinton announced that a coalition of international scientists, marine experts, philanthropists, financiers and government agencies would not only work out a plan to mediate the crisis, they also created a $100 million fund to implement it.

Increasingly CGI is seeing a boom in social enterprises to fix problems. These are real businesses that generate real profits that are put to further social benefit. And a great catalyst for these new businesses is the annual $1 million Hult prize that is awarded at the CGI annual meeting.

Challenge to students

Each year the Clinton Global Initiative in partnership with the Hult Business School issues a challenge to University students around the world.

This year the challenge was "How can we provide quality education to 10 million children under six in urban slums by 2020?"

Hult Business School took finalists through a summer school accelerator before they faced an international judging panel including micro financing guru and Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus and our former PM Julia Gillard.

And the winner was the National Chengchi University, an online Chinese university with a team including students from our own ANU and Monash.

They devised a business model for building community operated preschools with globally financed online teacher training and curricula.

Say what you like about Bill Clinton's presidency, his real legacy is a world being improved every day by partnerships of positive people.

"Three P's" says Louise. "Too much alliteration, but good sense".

We now have a handful of recent prime ministers. Let's see if they want to make a difference in the world or just cause trouble.

It's not fun being around negative people. "You mean losers?" concludes Louise.