Bruce Springsteen recorded an album of Pete Seeger songs called the Seeger Sessions in 2006. In the remake of “Pay me my money down,” he tweaked the lyrics slightly to go like this, “Well I wish I was Mr. Gates. They”d haul my money in, in crates. Pay me my money down.”
What would you do if you had as much money as Bill Gates? I bet a bunch of folks can come up with loads of stuff. Heck, I can come up with loads of stuff too, and some of it, more selfish than I care to admit.
So maybe Bill Gates should be the guy with the money, because what he does with it is spectacular.
The motto for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is “All lives have equal value.” It”s so simple and so true.
The couple is known as “impatient optimists.” Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett set overreaching grant making priorities, according to www.gatesfoundation.org, such as “improving health and reducing extreme poverty in the developing world and improving high school education in the United States. They establish high-level goals for our grant making programs.”
The foundation is organized into three main program areas, each with a specific focus. Those areas are global development, global health and United States Program. Much like the mission of Andrew Carnegie, the Gates Foundation provides support for libraries. The foundation made a commitment of nearly $3.4 million to bolster Internet connections for libraries in five U.S. states, helping to level the technological playing field for those with limited economic means. This grant installed Internet access in Lake County”s public libraries.
Global Health Strategies aims to harness advances in science and technology to save lives in poor countries.
Philanthropy is alive and well in the hearts and wallets of the intellectually and financially blessed.
Gates and Buffett are big names in big bucks.
In an article titled “The monkey and the fish,” in the Dec. 21 edition of the New Yorker, a man who made more than $200 million in the high-tech industry, Greg Carr, is featured. He spends the majority of his time living in a tent. Carr spends about every other month living and working in war-torn Mozambique.
He”s a hands-on philanthropist. He made his fortune in the 1980s and 1990s, pioneering voicemail and Internet services.
He is submerged in the act of giving.
Carr says in the article, “I didn”t want to be the philanthropist who writes a check and comes back next year and says ?What did you do with my money?””
His is one of the largest privately-funded environmental projects in Africa. He committed to spend as much as $40 million in a comprehensive, 20-year effort to restore a national park that encompasses more than 125,000 square miles of savannas and wetlands. It is called Gorongosa National Park and it is in the center of Mozambique. He meets regularly with villagers and tribal elders telling them the benefits of ecotourism as opposed to “slash-and-burn” farming and hunting.
Gorongosa National Park once had the densest wildlife in Africa, with more lions than anywhere else in the world.
Following more than a decade of civil war, the park is a mere shadow of what it once was. Soldiers and poachers raped the land, killed off many animals, villagers burned and clearcut trees to make room for farmland. When Carr first visited the park in 2002, a buffalo herd of 14,000 was down to about 50 of the majestic animals.
Carr considers Gorongosa Park “a world treasure of biodiversity.” He says, “Many of the thousands of species present have not yet been studied or named.”
In 1998, a 39-year-old man resigned from for-profit boards and became exclusively dedicated to humanitarian activities. He formed the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University in 1999. To learn more about Greg Carr and his foundation go to www.internews.org.
These are fine examples of American generosity and creativity that buck the stereotypes that are far too often perpetuated. I am inspired by the greatness of these people.
“Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.” ? Albert Einstein
Mandy Feder is the Record-Bee news editor. She can be reached at mandyfeder@yahoo.com or 263-5636 Ext. 32.
