2002 Annual Report - Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

E S S A Y
Toward a Different World
nation, millions are still left on the other
side of the digital divide?
Can we choose to see that even in the
wealthiest nation, a generation of young
people are falling behind academically and
are left unprepared by their huge, bureaucratic
high schools for the responsibilities
of adulthood, work, and citizenship?
Can we choose to see how different our lives would have been had we been
born only a few times zones in one direction or another, or a few degrees closer
to the equator?
Location, location, location
You might have been born under a bad government—in a nation lacking the
simple social infrastructure of laws, freedom, fair play, and rudimentary education
that allow a culture of enterprise to develop. The very worst governments
bring political purges, ethnic cleansing, or even man-made famine.
If your birthplace is tropical, the issue becomes mere survival against a
host of conditions, including malaria, diarrhea, and others. Blessed with a
wealth of natural resources, many of these countries have the potential to
develop thriving economies. But that potential will never be realized when so
many have to fight just to survive.
Yes, the world is getting smaller, in a sense—making it easier to travel, easier
to be exposed to other cultures. But that has merely revealed the vast differences
in outcomes across the globe. The world-changing advances of the
past century—technology, medicine, communications—have only reached a portion
of the world, leaving the majority of humanity behind in a cycle of poverty,
disease, and privation. When measuring the differences between us, the world
has gotten much larger.
Viewed up close, the big statistics behind our worst problems take on a
human face. Every one of the thousands lost every day to preventable disease
is a child with a face and a family and a future that could have been great.
Every child lost is an incalculable tragedy, whether in an AIDS ward in the heart
of Africa or in an abandoned well in America’s heartland. Each demands action.
Sympathetic feelings are not enough. Good intentions are not sufficient.
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