Look To The Stars News: Bill Gates

Bill Gates Publishes Annual Letter Covering Health And Education

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Bill Gates has released his annual letter from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, in which he speaks candidly about his work at the foundation and outlines what needs to be done in terms of global health and education.

“Throughout my careers in software and philanthropy—and in each of my annual letters—a recurring theme has been that innovation is the key to improving the world,” he writes. "When innovators work on urgent problems and deliver solutions to people in need, the results can be magical.

“The G20 conference itself was a microcosm of the challenges that leaders face, with the Eurozone crisis taking a lot of their time. I was impressed that the leaders took 90 minutes to discuss my report and related issues, and I hope they will set aside time for development when they meet in Mexico for next year’s summit.

Stars Create Bookprints To Help Children In Need

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 15:30:00 +0000

A new campaign, ONE MILLION BOOKPRINTS FOR ONE MILLION BOOKS, kicked off yesterday, inviting readers of all ages to create a “Bookprint” at the online community, youarewhatyouread.com.

For every Bookprint created, Scholastic Book Clubs will donate a new book to a child in need (up to one million books). Books will be distributed through the national school readiness initiative Reach Out and Read.

What’s a “Bookprint”? The five books that most impact someone’s life comprise their Bookprint. They can be children’s or adult books and Bookprints can change over time. On the “You Are What You Read” website, more than 200 “Names You Know” from entertainers to authors to journalists and even two U.S. presidents have shared their Bookprints. The donation launches with 20,000 books – one book for each of the 20,000 Bookprints created by users already on youarewhatyouread.com.

LTTS Book Review: Philanthrocapitalism

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 13:40:00 +0000

For anyone interested in the charity work of the rich and the famous, Philanthrocapitalism by Matthew Bishop and Michael Green is – in the words of Bill Clinton – “an important book.”

With a foreword by Clinton and featuring interviews with the movers and shakers of the charity world – including Bono, Bill Gates, Angelina Jolie and Richard Branson – Philanthrocapitalism is a highly readable and thoroughly researched study of who is doing what to tackle the big issues facing humanity today. It gives in-depth accounts of where the world’s wealthiest entrepreneurs and business leaders are spending their money and exactly what effect their efforts are having – both negative and positive. Even the most skeptical reader will get an insight into how money is being used to bring new solutions to age-old problems.

Bishop and Green give a well-rounded and in-depth view of the changing face of philanthropy in today’s world, detailing the history of charity to the dark ages and beyond. Their research studies the reasons behind the giving of Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Ted Turner and their super-rich friends, and the effects they have on their chosen causes. In the process, it shows how the fame and status of big names such as Bono and Angelina Jolie play a useful part in making the world a better place – as Angelina says, “people take my calls.” This book shows us exactly how giving can save the world.

Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation Commits $20 Million To Premature Baby Research

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 12:00:00 +0000

Thirteen million babies are born prematurely every year, but new funding announced today will allow for pioneering research into the causes of preterm births and the development of solutions so they can be prevented.

The Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity and Stillbirth (GAPPS), an initiative of Seattle Children’s, announced a new Grand Challenges in Global Health program that will seek to discover and develop interventions to prevent preterm birth and stillbirth by limiting infection and improving nutrition. The program, called the Preventing Preterm Birth initiative, is supported by a commitment of US$20 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the organization set up by Bill Gates to support health and education around the world.

Globally, prematurity is the leading cause of death for newborns, every year taking the lives of one million babies before their first month of life. The Preventing Preterm Birth initiative will mobilize the scientific community to discover the reasons behind prematurity and support research into novel technologies and approaches that provide real-world solutions. The initiative was announced at a joint session of the Annual Grand Challenges Meeting and the Keystone Symposia Conference, in New Delhi, India.

Bill Gates Addresses G20 Summit On Maintaining Aid During Economic Crisis

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 19:00:00 +0000

Bill Gates has addressed the G20 Summit in France, urging leaders to protect aid budgets and lending his support to a Robin Hood Tax.

“Leadership from the G20 is critically important, especially in these tough economic times,” he said. “The world will not balance its books by cutting back on aid, but it will do irreparable damage to global stability, to the growth of the global economy and to livelihoods of millions of poor people.”

Gates acknowledged the current economic crisis in Europe, but raised awareness of the importance of equality – that every human life in the world is worth the same, everyone deserves access to healthcare and every life is worth saving – and that a price can’t be put on humanity.

Bill And Melinda Gates Attend Malaria Forum

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 15:00:00 +0000

Three hundred leading malaria scientists, global health leaders, policymakers, government officials and advocates gathered last week at the Malaria Forum to discuss great strides in malaria control and address challenges that are impacting the long-term goal of eradication.

“We have seen tremendous success in the control of malaria, thanks to an infusion of resources, innovation, and political will,” said Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. “Worldwide, malaria deaths are down 20 percent since 2000.”

More than one million African children have been saved from malaria since 2000. New tools such as long-lasting insecticide treated bed nets and artemisinin-based combination treatments (ACTs)—along with prevention during pregnancy and indoor residual spraying—have made this recent progress possible.

Celebrity Red Noses Raise Record Amount For Charity

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 15:30:00 +0000

Comic Relief delivered another spectacular evening of top TV treats in the UK on Friday, as Red Nose Day 2011 entertained the nation while raising an incredible sum of money to help poor and vulnerable people in the UK and Africa. The TV event raised £74,360,207 (US$118 million) – the highest total reached on the night in Red Nose Day’s 23 year history.

“This is more than we ever believed we would raise,” said organizer Richard Curtis. “The generosity of the British public is staggering.”

The TV extravaganza featured appearances by Justin Bieber, Paul McCartney, David Tennant and Susan Boyle.

Bill Gates Sees A Need For Aid Generosity

Thu, 10 Feb 2011 12:30:00 +0000

“The amazing polio eradication campaign is very close to success – how tragic that would be if it failed because of lack of generosity,” says Bill Gates.

Concerned that governments, looking for places to reduce spending, will target foreign aid, Gates says, “There’s a history of some aid really making a difference – the aid for vaccines, for new seeds – and that’s the kind of aid, even as deficits are so daunting, I’d like to convince governments to keep as a priority.”

In his annual letter, Gates outlined two other benefits of widespread vaccination beyond simply saving lives. One was the reduction in sickness that contributes to disability, affects mental development, hampers human development, and exacerbates the development of economies.

Bill Gates And Warren Buffett Extend The Giving Pledge Through Asia

Tue, 08 Feb 2011 12:30:00 +0000

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett made the headlines a few times last year, asking America’s wealthiest to donate the majority of their wealth to cause/s of their choice, whether during their lifetimes or laid out in their wills. To further encourage billionaires to make such a commitment, Gates and Buffett created the Giving Pledge.

In his 2011 Annual Letter posted on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation website, Gates says that 58 people have joined the Giving Pledge so far, and top business people in China and India have also shown interest in the idea and called for meetings.

“Warren and I had the meeting in China in November,” says Gates, “and we were very happy with how many people came and how the conversation turned out.”

Bill Gates Sees Surprising Small-Farmer Progress

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 15:00:00 +0000

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been tracking the progress – and setbacks – of their 2008 grants, and the accomplishments laid out in the 2010 progress report has even Bill Gates surprised.

Supporting select nonprofit agricultural development programs with $306 million in grants for sub-Saharan African and South Asian farmers, the plan was not only to help small-plot farmers feed their families, but to invest in agriculture across the board – from seeds, soil and farm management to markets and government policies – in order to improve productivity, income and, in the end, the lives of individuals.

George Lucas Pledges Millions To Education

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 12:30:00 +0000

Warren Buffett’s Giving Pledge, which asks billionaires to donate the majority of their wealth to charity, has garnered some high-profile followers.

Among the world’s elite who have signed up include Bill Gates, Ted Turner and Star Wars creator George Lucas. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has also made a pledge worth hundreds of millions of dollars for charity.

“We’ve really just started but already we’ve had a terrific response,” said Buffett. “The Giving Pledge is about asking wealthy families to have important conversations about their wealth and how it will be used.”

Bill Gates’ Foundation Expects To Eradicate Polio

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 13:00:00 +0000

Philanthropist Bill Gates posted some positive news on his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s blog: the world is on the path towards the eradication of polio.

“In the past two decades, polio cases around the world have been reduced by 99 percent,” he says. “If we can get rid of the last 1 percent, polio will become the second major infectious disease, after smallpox, that has ever been completely eliminated.”

But the battle is not a sure win yet. Lapses in vaccinations, incomplete inoculations of the four oral doses required, and a lack of funding continue to pose a threat.

Bill Gates And Warren Buffett’s $600 Billion Charity Challenge

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 12:00:00 +0000

Philanthropists Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have asked 400 of the richest Americans to pledge half of their fortunes to their favorite causes either during their lifetimes or in their wills.

Both Gates and Buffett are worth about 50 billion dollars each, and both are large contributors to charity, including Buffett’s annual contribution to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which Gates has invested over 30 billion dollars in.

At GivingPledge.org, the two call upon other rich people to make a conscious commitment now rather than putting it off, and to go public with their pledges to motivate others to do the same.

Bill Gates Clarifies The Issue Of Overpopulation

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 12:30:00 +0000

During a Q&A at TED, philanthropist Bill Gates, co-founder of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, was asked if his charity, by saving millions from dying of malaria and other diseases, is contributing to the problem of overpopulation in the world.

He was grateful to get the question, since it allowed him to clarify the very issue he started out with himself.

“This is a very important question to get right because it was absolutely key for me. When our Foundation first started up, it was focused on reproductive health. That was the main thing we did because I thought population growth in poor countries is the biggest problem they face. You’ve got to help mothers who want to limit family size have the tools and education to do that. That’s the only thing that really counts. Well then I came across articles that showed that the key thing you can do to reduce population growth is actually improve health. And that sounds paradoxical. You think, ‘OK, better health means more kids not less kids.’

Bill Nighy Blogs About G8 Meeting In Canada

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 12:30:00 +0000

British actor Bill Nighy was in Canada this week for the G8 meeting, and took the opportunity to blog about his experience.

“I arrived at the G8 by a roundabout route,” the star wrote in the Huffington Post. "Just a day earlier, I was standing in Dandora, a toxic tip on the edge of Nairobi where little girls as young as five live on a mound composed of toxic and human waste. They survive by competing with wild pigs for scraps of rubbish, forced to sell their bodies to get access to the richest pickings.

“I was there to bear witness to the good work aid does before traveling to the Toronto summit as Oxfam’s Global Ambassador. Comic Relief, a British charity, rescues children from this dump and gives them schooling in a safe, almost fairytale environment.

Celebrities Back A Massively Good Initiative

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 12:00:00 +0000

Big names such as Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Spike Lee, Samuel L. Jackson, Susan Sarandon and will.i.am are backing the easiest way yet to contribute to the fight against AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and to improve maternal and child health care in developing countries: click on MASSIVEGOOD when booking an airline ticket on line or tell your travel agent to do so.

By clicking MASSIVEGOOD, each ticket purchaser contributes two dollars to the cause. When one considers how many airline tickets are purchased each day, it’s easy to see the potential of the combined contribution.

The first one to click on MASSIVEGOOD, former US president Bill Clinton said, “We may be in the process of seeing a massive redistribution of responsibility across the globe, where ordinary people who get on airplanes say, ‘OK, we’ll buy the medicine,’ and let the public funds be used to build out the health systems. This could save millions and millions of lives. This is really a way of empowering ordinary people around the world and using technology for the public good.”

Bill Gates Has Big Charity Ideas

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:30:00 +0000

Over the next ten years, Bill Gates plans to spend $10 billion on vaccines for children in the developing world. That’s more than double what his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has spent in the past ten years, and which is already seen as a phenomenal success.

At the TED conference last month, however, he put vaccines for the poor countries aside in order to address climate change as he thinks energy and climate are most important to those same poorest countries: climate determines if crops grow or not, and energy prices determine what they can afford.

Gates says we need energy miracles, and now we have a deadline. To reduce C02 output to near zero, which is the necessary target according to current scientific predictions, Gates thinks TerraPower might have an answer. He is placing his hopes on innovation and he’s backing a traveling wave reactor design that would supply the world’s energy using mostly the depleted uranium waste from today’s reactors, of which there is plenty, instead of using only enriched uranium like current reactors. Nevertheless, he recognizes the need for many solutions.

Bill Gates Puts His Philanthropic Diaries Online

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 12:00:00 +0000

Spurred by his philanthropy, not only is Bill Gates now on twitter, but he’s also set up a website detailing what he’s learning about global issues.

In Gates’ own words:

“Since leaving my fulltime job at Microsoft to dedicate more time to our foundation, a lot of people have asked me what I’m working on. It often feels like I’m back in school, as I spend a lot of my time learning about issues I’m passionate about.

Bill Gates Gives Big To Irish Aid Agency

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 11:30:00 +0000

Microsoft founder Bill Gates will give $41 million to Irish aid agency Concern Worldwide to help fight baby and mother death rates in developing countries.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will fund an initiative that will field-test new ways to deliver maternal, newborn and child health solutions in six countries in Africa and South Asia.

“Half a million women die every year in childbirth, the majority in developing countries,” said Tom Arnold, chief executive of Concern Worldwide. “The whole point of this is to look for breakthroughs.”

Bob Geldof Launches One Campaign Report On G8

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 15:30:00 +0000

A host of leaders and stars helped launch the ONE Campaign’s DATA Report in London yesterday.

Bill Gates, Desmond Tutu and Bob Geldof all talked at the event, which launched the annual report that aims to measure the G8 against commitments made at their 2005 summit in Scotland. But the news is not good, revealing that France and Italy are performing so poorly that they are threatening to cause the G8 as a whole to default.

“It saddens me and angers me that great nations like Italy and France are going in the wrong direction,” said Archbishop Tutu of South Africa. “We must all campaign to encourage the forthcoming G8 meetings to do better and do what is right.”

Ted Turner Responds To Ashton Kutcher For World Malaria Day

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 15:30:00 +0000

Following Ashton Kutcher’s Twitter Battle with CNN last week that resulted in Kutcher donating 10,000 mosquito nets to charity, Ted Turner – chairman of the United Nations Foundation – has challenged him yet again.

“Congratulations Kutcher, your Twitter followers really came through for you,” said Turner in his video message. “But World Malaria Day is only the beginning. We need to send more nets and save more lives. And you don’t have to be Bill Gates or Oprah Winfrey to make a difference – you just need $10. If 10,000 more people joined the United Nations Foundation’s Nothing But Nets campaign, I’ll have you and Demi over for lunch at Ted’s Montana Grill in Atlanta. Hope you like Bison Burgers…”

Nothing But Nets is a grassroots campaign to save lives by preventing malaria, a leading killer of children in Africa. While the UN Foundation has been working with the UN to fight malaria for years, it was a column that Rick Reilly wrote about malaria in Sports Illustrated, challenging each of his readers to donate at least $10 for the purchase of an anti-malaria bed nets — and the incredible response from thousands of Americans across the country — that led to the creation of the Nothing But Nets campaign.

Bill Gates Foundation Empowers Africa’s Livestock Farmers

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 12:00:00 +0000

In some of the poorest nations on earth, 25% of livestock are dying from preventable diseases. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and UK Department for International Development (DFID) are donating £28 million to stifle it.

The donation went to charity GALVMed (Global Alliance for Livestock Veterinary Medicines), who will focus on 13 diseases over 10 years, some of which can pass from animal to human causing even more disturbing numbers of deaths.

But in communities that depend on livestock for basic levels of income and food, proper distribution of vaccines is key. Thus, besides making existing vaccines available and developing some new ones, Galvmed has been developing a strategy for the distribution of them through supply networks, community-level networks and activities to empower local people, reported The Times.

How Bill Gates Is Trying To Change The World

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 12:30:00 +0000

Bill Gates spoke at a TED conference this month about two things his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is working on and some of the obstacles it’s facing. He proposed two questions. The first one was: How do we stop a deadly disease that’s spread by mosquitoes?

Now that malaria no longer exists in the rich countries of the world, more money is being spent on baldness cures than on eliminating malaria from poor countries. “Now, baldness is a terrible thing,” Gates quipped, "and rich men are afflicted. That’s why that priority has been set.

Bill Gates Bites Back At Malaria

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 12:30:00 +0000

It was not a “swarm of mosquitoes,” unless you believe that less than ten mosquitoes constitutes a “swarm.” And despite news reports to the contrary, the audience was not upset. They laughed loudly when Microsoft-founder Bill Gates released the bugs. On YouTube videos, the elite audience laughed and applauded when Gates declared about mosquitoes, “There’s no reason only poor people should have the experience.”

Yet news reports described the insects as a “swarm,” the audience as “shocked,” and the stunt as “a show stopper.” However, Gates’ speech on the dangers of malaria continued without a hitch, as did the conference itself.

Bill Gates Pleads For America To Stand By Barack Obama

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 13:30:00 +0000

During his election campaign earlier this year, president elect Barack Obama pledged to double US foreign assistance to $50 billion by 2012. But that was before America’s economic crisis hit, and spread. Bill Gates is worried that the crisis has changed people’s minds about how much aid America can afford.

“The crisis didn’t reduce people’s need for assistance,” said Gates in a speech at George Washington University earlier this month. Obama has promised to make development around the world a topmost priority for his administration. Gates says, “If we can stand by the president as he stands by his pledge to the poorest nations, even in the face of our own financial challenge, it will make a phenomenal statement about the kind of partner America plans to be in the world.”

“In an increasingly interdependent world,” said Obama during his campaign, “we can’t think that a genocide in Darfur has nothing to do with us. We can’t believe that HIV/AIDS devastating an entire continent somehow is separate from us. Diseases get on planes and they end up here in a matter of hours. Violence that occurs elsewhere in the world ultimately can have ramifications for our national security.”