2002 Annual Report - Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

E S S A Y
Toward a Different World
A child falls into an abandoned well and an entire nation holds its breath. Cable
news outlets descend upon the small town. Brave firefighters and volunteers
assemble for the frenzied dig. The frantic mother becomes a national icon. As
the rescue efforts continue, the short hours turn into long days. Yet on each
day of the rescue attempt, 15,000 children around the world die from causes
that could have been easily prevented. Each of those children has a face we do
not see and grieving parents we will never know. Their passing goes unnoticed.
The hard-wired human tendency to live in the micro—to connect with individual
people and their particular stories—both empowers and shapes our enormous
capacity for giving. This might be one reason why 98 percent of American
philanthropy ends up in America. We invest financially where we connect emotionally.
The little girl trapped in a well in the American Midwest moves us in ways
that an unseen 15,000 children simply cannot. We respond to what we see.
Or what we choose to see.
Can we choose to see that countless lives might be saved in developing countries
using techniques that have been commonplace in America for decades?
Can we choose to see that even in the most technologically advanced
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