American Bill Gates is known around the world as the founder and formerchairman of Microsoft Corporation. He now serves as co-chair of the Bill &Melinda Gates Foundation. The private foundation is working to end deadlydiseases and poverty.
Recently, Bill Gates spoke about the importance of philanthropy – the customof giving time and money to help other people. He says philanthropy dependson innovation, or new ideas, for best results.
Mr. Gates spoke during a visit to the American Enterprise Institute inWashington. He said his philanthropic work centers on problems thatgovernments cannot solve effectively.
“There are things in terms of trying out social programs in innovative ways thatgovernment is just, because of the way job incentives work, they are not goingto try out news designs like philanthropy can, and they are not bring to havevolunteer hours coming in to leverage their resources like philanthropy can.”
Bill Gates said charitable giving is very important in America. One example is the university system. He said universities produce highly trainedprofessionals who then give financial support to universities. He also saidthat, in the United States, privately funded organizations create inventions thatgovernment cannot.
He also spoke about the March of Dimes Foundation and its campaign to endpolio. The foundation, he said, has paid for the development of two poliovaccines. Medical researcher Jonas Salk developed the first vaccine. AlbertSabin later created an oral vaccine. At the event, Mr. Gates held up one of thevaccines to show how small a treatment is.
"This is the oral polio vaccine. That’s 10 doses and this thing costs $1.30 or 13 cents per kid.”
In 2012, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave away $3.4 billion dollars. The money went to support health research, education and developmentprograms in the United States and around the world.
But Mr. Gates noted that philanthropy cannot provide the wider improvementsin areas such as public health, education, and employment. Governments, hesaid, were designed to serve the whole population.
“When you want to give every child in America a good education, or makesure they are not starving, that’s got to be government because philanthropyisn’t there day in and day out serving the entire population. It’s just not thescale or the design to do that."
Philanthropy, Bill Gates said, needs research and innovation to seek answersto society’s problems. But it is government’s part to work for a better society.
I'm Jonathan Evans in Washington.
