36 Billion Dollars

36 Billion Dollars! I don't think one realise what 36 Billion Dollars is or feels like having!?

I read somewhere...if you are the world's second richest man, who would be the best person to look after this huge amount of money? Yes you are right the RICHEST man: Mr Gates himself...El Supremo! But what I find amazing is that he put his ego aside and gave most of his money to Bill and Melinda Gates' foundation.

So this past week I was reading all about this multi billion dollars transaction and I learned a new word...Billanthropy...I then realized how little I knew about the foundation. What is it they do really? I knew they had some program on Malaria, I knew they had a program about libraries and education but that was it. So I decided to make a little research...

The foundation has different areas of activities. They concentrate on:

GLOBAL HEALTH
Aiming to accelerate the access of vaccination (they managed to reach so far 78 million children with vaccines for diseases such as hepatitis B & yellow fever and nearly 8.7 million children with vaccines for diseases like tetanus and diphtheria). In Pakistan alone, their initiative has helped prevent tens of thousands of babies from dying of tetanus.

Aiming to accelerate the access of medicine and other medical support to help fight disease in developing countries.

Aiming to support research; hoping to discover new solutions that are affordable and effective. For example Malaria vaccine research - see: www.malariavaccine.org

Aiming to educate women and protect them against HIV/AIDS. They have a program in Botswana and another one in India. In India, they help support different projects in the areas of India's national highways and 6 states where high rates of infected people are located. They manage to reach, every months tens of thousands of people who are at high risk of being infected with their prevention program by offering HIV/AIDS education, treatment of STD, they distribute clean needles and syringes and last but not least condoms. I just could not believe how many condoms were being distributed to date...4.2 million according to their website.

EDUCTION
This program appears to be aimed at US Nationals. The Foundation is dedicated and committed to raising the high school diploma / graduation rate in the US helping teenagers regardless of their race, family income, background to get an education. I recently read an article on how many kids in the US are high school dropouts. The numbers are staggering! It came close to 40%. When asked whom their 1st president was, a high number of teenagers could not answer the question yet they all expect to party like crazy on the 4th of July!

GLOBAL LIBRARIES
It aims to give the Public access to information and therefore increases access to things such as technology in low-income and or disadvantaged communities. This program is divided in two sections, the US Library Program and International Library Initiatives.
For the US program they have for example helped re-build libraries in Louisiana and Mississippi after the tragedy of Katarina.

To conclude, surely an extra 36 million dollars could make amazing things happen and a huge difference, accelerate medicine and vaccinations programs worldwide, educate people about STDs and AIDS infection, build lots of libraries, help teenage kids but with 36 extra million dollars, isn't it a huge risk they run? I guess I will ask my DH and ask him what he thinks he who has worked in Banking for so many years and was at one point the head of Risk Management in different organisations. I am intrigued of what he will say. But my fear is all is good now and all will be good until the 3 new trustees (BG, MG and WB) will die...and then what? How do we know the foundation will be managed properly? How will we know if the new management are true philanthropists? I guess only time will tell. In the meantime all I can say is:

GOOD LUCK Mr and Mrs GATES and thank you for what you are doing...helping make this world a better one for our children.

To read more about the foundation, please click on the link below:
www.gatesfoundation.org