International Institutions and Poverty: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

ALL LIVES HAVE EQUAL VALUE: we are impatient optimists working to reduce inequity

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is an NGO founded by the Gates in Seattle Washington twenty years ago. With a $46.8 billion (2018) endowment, this private foundation is the largest of its kind in the world. Its primary goals are to improve healthcare, reduce extreme poverty and improve access to education on a global scale. They believe not only in financial aid but also in coming up with innovative solutions to problems. The Gates couple along with the third trustee Warren Buffet help run this foundation with the hope of giving people the chance to lift themselves out of hunger and poverty and empower their lives so they can get on the path to success.

They identify poverty as the biggest barrier that prevents people from making the most out of their lives. Poverty is seen as more than just a financial problem, and by dividing the scope of the foundation into 3 main areas, it allows them to tackle the root cause of problems, as well as recognizing that there is no blanket solution for global poverty:

Global Health: pumping money into research to identify and support scientific development to accelerate discoveries and enhance the lives of those affected by epidemics. By filling the gaps in scientific knowledge, they aim to implement more affordable solutions (in terms of vaccines, drugs, and better health awareness) for preventable diseases, especially for infants and mothers. For example, the investment and development of insecticide to prevent communicable diseases spread by mosquitoes (such as dengue and malaria) and to get ahead of the resistance that these parasites develop, in countries such as India and Tanzania. HIV, Pneumonia, Tuberculosis are some of the many diseases this foundation is working toward possibly eradicating.

Global Development: They seem to focus on family planning as the main step toward global development. They have implemented programs all over the Sub-saharan African region that facilitate healthy pre-natal and post-natal care for the mother and the infant. They provide information seminars as well as advocate the importance of Polio vaccination/drops, providing them for infants in poor regions. While other organizations focus on just a healthy birth, the Gates foundation sees development as an ongoing process: teaching families the importance of nutrition and a healthy lifestyle. According to The Guardian, their work on vaccines has helped cut the infant mortality by half, contributing to saving the lives of over 122 million children since 1990.

Global Growth and Opportunity: This focuses on helping people alleviate themselves from their financial burden. By investing in sustainable agricultural practices, this helps smallholder farmers that lose out to large scale farming tycoons. They provide support and financial services to women to help close the gender gap and empower women in these poorer regions through the agro-sector.

This foundation sets the norm and example (social role) to other billionaires that those who are blessed financially must contribute to bridging world inequity in some way or another. They also are a source of reliable information (functional role), in terms of their statistic of mortality rates in Tanzania or the death toll in India due to Dengue. Their goals are flexible (functional role): by focusing on a few countries at a time, they are able to assess the progress and find solutions to implement in similarly affected areas.

This foundation is funded by grants; the beautiful thing about the foundation is that it address a plethora of issues, allowing their grantees to donate to a cause of their passion. They look for people with the right attitude who care about alleviating inequity as a key criterion in their hiring process. There are hundreds of different opportunities to be involved and do fieldwork in affected countries. One such opportunity is a Programme Officer-Access to Justice for Women in Tanzania that I think I would be interested in for the future. It requires fluency in English and Bachelors's degree (which I hope to graduate Lawrence with!); and the goal of designing, monitoring and analyzing development projects in the field of gender and human rights of women, specifically women’s access to justice, global legal frameworks on gender. This foundation focuses on their goal; evident in the variety of qualifications their staff members hold, some highly qualified in business leadership, some fluent in multiple languages, and some like me in 3 years, fresh out of college with an interest to change the world.