Bill Gates: Rebel With A Cause

Bill Gates - Rebel with a Cause Rebels don’t go against the traditional flow of society just because they can; rather, they have a cause they hope to accomplish. These goals often center around social/societal change, and the changes Bill Gates seeks is no different. Gates is most commonly known for his massive amounts of wealth he had earned through the founding of Microsoft, and through his philanthropic efforts and donations he has also made his way into the list of modern day rebels. Bill Gates donates massive sums of money to benefit organizations and efforts that seek to improve the lives of those suffering in countries plagued by disease and poverty as well as improving issues within developed countries such as America, encouraging

The aforementioned information helps to show just how much time, money, and energy Gates has invested into this project, and that the Foundation is more than just a side project he occasionally puts some money into to give himself a good public image. The Gates Foundation has been cited as the world’s largest private charity by Forbes, who had stated that, “. . . it has distributed more than $40 billion in grants to date and supports organizations in over 100 countries,” (Kirsch). The biggest issue Bill Gates hopes to solve is that of global health, of which a lot of his donations work towards supporting. Examples of his foundation’s humanitarian efforts in Africa center on eradicating polio and malaria through research and vaccinations. To further explain the successes of the charity, Melinda Gates (co-founder of the Foundation and wife of Bill Gates) and her husband, when asked what their favorite number is, had responded with, “. . . 122m, which is the number of children’s lives saved since 1990. In other words child mortality has been drastically reduced,” (Bill Gates: 'Africa Has Substantially Improved by Any Metric '.). Another special

In Gates’ words regarding his endeavors in developing new economies, “I think the two biggest impacts that aid has had is that it has funded new tools - like vaccines or in agriculture; and two, it helps these governments build the delivery systems such as a good primary healthcare sys­tem. So, yes, you want to enable the pri­vate sector, a thriving private sector is far larger than the government,” (Bill Gates: 'Africa Has Substantially Improved by Any Metric '.). His statement goes to show that simply offering aid has a larger impact than one would think at first, one that goes further than what the country’s government can offer. The Foundation isn’t simply offering a short term fix, but looks to uplift both countries and their governments into a long-term solution to the issues they currently struggle with. However, despite the multitudes of problems to be solved within Africa, Gates believes the largest focus by far should be that of health, though agriculture is a close second. The way the charity goes about eliminating polio can also be applied to other diseases and outbreaks, as explained by Gates when he had stated that, “. . . what you do with an epidemic outbreak, and what you do for polio eradication are absolutely one and the same,” (Bill Gates: