tv Charlie Rose Bloomberg July 20, 2015 6:00pm-7:01pm EDT
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(the lion sleeps tonight.) woman snoring take the roar out of snore. yet another innovation only at a sleep number store. >> from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." charley: 15 years ago, bill and linda gates created the bill and melinda gates foundation. nine years ago, warren buffett pledged part of his fortune to the bill and melinda gates foundation. the gates foundation has since become a leader in fighting global issues such as hunger poverty infectious diseases, and education. in 2010, warren buffett bill and melinda gates joined forces again. they created the giving pledge. it is a request for the very wealthy to pledge to give away
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at least 50% of their wealth to charitable causes before they die. that effort has grown to include 137 contributors from 14 countries. last week in sun valley, idaho, i talked to warren and bill and melinda about their lives and how the giving pledge came about. bill: it grew out of warren's idea about meeting with other people and learn from them. why were they engaged? how were they thinking about it? it was the idea that we would create a group and that emerged and it has been amazing to us. we have a yearly gathering. people have common interests will meet separately and i have learned a lot. i look forward to those gatherings. it's not people pitching each other but there's so much in common we can learn and sometimes people and of working together. charlie: where did the idea come from and what were you thinking?
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warren: i'm not sure. we headed dinner that david rockefeller hosted. it evolved out of that. we had 15 or so people there counting couples. we went around the table and we asked people to explain what they're giving velocity was. it was how they are thinking about it and they talked about their families and their parents influence. it took at least two hours to get around the table. people were interested in talking peer-to-peer about it. there was so much we clearly hit a chord someplace. the three of us talk later on in the giving pledge evolved out of that. charlie: at the time you said there was an emotional connection between people because they found themselves listening to other people and feeling like this is exactly the way i feel. warren: they did not feel
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awkward. we are lucky perhaps and who we called on first. the first person their degree of candor, the first couple, it was contagious as we went around the table. nobody engaged in any posturing which you might get sometimes in a group particularly where some people don't know each other well. instead of that, we got this very candid come discussion by everyone there. they talked about their children sometimes and sometimes their disappointments and sometimes what they felt good about. it became clear that if a bunch of people similarly situated would get together, we would learn from each other and perhaps have other good things come out of it. it evolved out of that first meeting. charlie: melinda, how is up and going? melinda: we have 137 pleasures
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and 14 countries. when we get together, the first night is sit down at dinner, you realize you're amongst friends. these people we have gotten to know, they are getting to know each other and we look forward to the event because of the candor of the conversations we can have about what you do about your children and what about the next generation and how do you think about a leader. how do you start a foundation of your beginning? those are conversations want to have an private in a small group. i think that's what our gathering affords. warrenl:: there is no one-upsmanship. some of these people can be capable of that. it brings out the best and everybody. we are not trying to impress the other person. they are genuinely interested in success and failure and family situations or whatever it may be. there is a level of candor is impressive. charlie: was the international dimension heart, to get people
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not as familiar with philanthropy? bill: one of the things the u.s. should be proud of it is the leader with the most engaged philanthropy most of the really strong historical examples like rockefeller and carnegie and the ford foundation were american foundations. other countries are interested in it whether it is helping universities or research or finding new ways of doing education. philanthropy has proven, even though it's a small part even of the u.s. economy, it has been a very innovative part where people showed new pilot programs that influenced a lot of other activities. most of our members are from the united states. they do a slightly better job of reaching out to people in the united states. the international pieces will grow. we would like to see this strengthen him a global basis. we always like to see people
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getting involved when they are younger, a bit more collaboratively and hopefully with even more of the resources. charlie: it's trying to tell people to think about this early in your life instead of at the end of your life because you are better equipped to make decisions. melinda: by having people come together, once they decide they will pledge even if they pledged to give it away at the end of their life they start to learn from one another at these gatherings what is possible in what they are interested in and ask how we got going. we are trying to get people to learn from one another and get people started. if they put their brains against these problems whatever they have done their business life against the problems of inequity or whatever they choose, they can have a huge effect. they are learning that from one another. charlie: what is the pitch to somebody? you call them up and you say what? warren: i usually send them some
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material first. there might be some misconceptions about it. i asked him -- them whether they got the material. you want to get them talking. there are some people not interested. a very significant percentage of people are. i have been amazed how well it has gone. i would've set up we had 50 by now -- we have 137. i had a dinner here some months ago one of the people who came at misconceptions -- they had to do this or that -- by the end of the evening, this particular person was ready to join. charlie: what is the transaction? warren: they get a letter
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explaining how to make a pledge and give at least 50%. many of them name a larger number but give at least 50% during their lifetime to philanthropy. and then i encourage them to explain how they got to that decision whether it's from their parents or their family around them and why they do it. we gets a magnificent letters and the people i talked to the letters are enormously important. because somebody from 50 years from now will read that. we have read about carnegie or rockefeller or roosevelt and you never know what will strike a chord. it's like a lawyer making an argument. name 20 reasons why your client is not guilty. charlie: you want to make sure you have your bases covered. do you all make the calls? are the three of you engaged in a personal way in terms of
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recruiting? bill: what has worked the best is to invite people to a dinner about philanthropy. that's not a recruiting dinner. when i'm traveling around come i look at my schedule and see if i've time for dinner even outside the u.s. you can have anywhere from 6 or as many as 15 which is almost too many. you talk about philanthropy and then afterwards, you get a sense that it might be a fit for them. i can follow-up by sending the material in making a call. a lot of the people who are joining already have the intention to give every dollar but they find the idea of being part of a group that will help them engage and make sure that it's a fun thing for them. we love the impact and diversity part of it but we also feel it's
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a voluntary thing. it can be one of the most fun things you have done but hiring staff or picking exactly what cause -- it forces you to think about the depth and how your kids may be involved and some in different ways than others. these are complex issues. even somebody who was successful at business, doesn't necessarily prepare you for answering these questions. melinda: sometimes they have to have a family conversation. they may say we are in favor of it and had an initial conversation with her kids but with never committed like this. give us some time they say and we will call you back in three or four months and we do. they will share with you sometimes the conversations they had with their kids because they are so proud of how the kids responded. warren: i know one case where the kids talk to the parents
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into it. the parent was not initially inclined to do it. they don't want to give away the money. when i call and they say they want all of their money in their coffin, i know i don't have a chance. charlie: how about people who say they want to pass their money to their family. melinda: we do have some of those. bill: if they are not a fit for the group, we see that that the bulk of it was passed down to them. why should they break the chain? the first-generation fortunes and to be more philanthropic then inherited fortunes. charlie: you also have young members. warremn: that is huge.
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20 years from now, there will be dozens and dozens of billionaires, hundreds that have come up who are heroes with esteemed jobs like mark zuckerberg or whoever. melinda: i'm excited to see what mark and priscilla do. to see how they come out of because she is embedded in health and he is embedded in the education and facebook. the way they see things together -- i think they will totally aspire to help people. warren: we are having sessions with the younger members of the families who of signed up. probably more will come under attitude toward this -- some of them are beneficiaries of trusts or something. it is the influence on future giving that i inc. will be very substantial. i think it's having an effect currently but i think it will be bigger over the years. meilnda: we call them the next
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generation group. their next meeting is in omaha. charli;e: what you learned the sessions? people get up and give a six minute explanation of something they are excited about or something that's gone well or something that did not go well. charlie: it's a sharing of experience. bill: and we have breakouts about things like investments that can advance philanthropic. we have scientific research education -- 4 breakouts this time in the main complaint was that they have to pick one of the four because they saw several they were interested in. charlie: there is no legal commit and? warren: correct. ccharlie: there is an ethical, moral commitment.
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gifts, $20 billion that particular year. that kind of forces you to get going. fortunately, my dad -- warren: it's a start. charlie: it's a big number for you t. bill: both my dad and a great person who had been a microsoft executive partnered to create the organization even though between children and work we were not able to give as much time as we have now. we got started. we look at comment now and say that was the start of the learning curve. we did a lot of reproductive health and learned about that. we thought we should do some science. we were working with government and we learned about super important stuff so it was great that by the time we both got more time that the foundation
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was already going and had a core team of people with some expertise and made some mistakes and did some things well. by 2008, when we were both increasingly engaged, there's a lot there to build on. charlie: what were the principal you began on? bill: that all lives have equal value. melinda: no matter where they are in the planet. as bill and i would travel and read and look out, you would realize we don't treat all lives as equal. what the united's dates spends to save one adult or one child from death, it takes $30 to save a child's life with vaccines in the developing world that we were not doing that. we were not making those investments and we set ourselves, or has to be something we can do about it. we decided to invest in health outside the united states. we thought that's where we could have the most impact. in the united states, we felt like not all kids were having an equal chance at a great education. our predominant investment in
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the united states was around u.s. education. charlie: as that changed in terms of where you see the focus for this foundation question mark bill: those two big themes will be our focus for our entire lives. those are big enough problems that if you started with polio you move on to malaria. diseases with us for a lifetime. we would love if the foundation in our lifetime could conquer a lot of that. then people later could focus on other problems. education is the one where we have seen less progress but we are still totally committed to it. it is the right cause and the united states created this amazing framework that allowed microsoft and berkshire and amazing educations that we were both have the opportunity to have. we wish we could have the same type of impact in u.s. education
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as we feel quite sure we will have on other things. charlie: you wish but you're not sure. bill: we are not sure. of all the things we are doing, it is the riskiest. we spend in education broadly about $800 million per year. that money has not had an effect in a dramatic way but there are great partners like michael bloomberg and a ton of people to do amazing work. charlie: on education. bill: yes, as a group, we cannot say that the educational impact is been a lot. dropout rates have come down some and there is good turnout from chum -- from some charter schools. charlie: when you watch this as a place of friendship, i think it got accelerated after susie's death and you began to say what
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should i do? did you have evolving thoughts about philanthropy? warren: i know go into a trance over decisions. it was well thought out. i had to make a change. it was obvious what i should do actually. charlie: obvious that you gave your money away or where to give it away? warren: i wanted to give it away under any circumstances. there is not any other option. charlie: you can't take it with you. warren: everything i wanted in life i could buy. money had more utility to other people than me. the approach that all lives are of equal value -- i would not change a word of that. that is exactly how i feel.
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the question is, what's the best way to translate a bunch of little figures into something that is consistent with the belief that all lives of equal value question mark i have the perfect situation. an entity was already in existence and was run by two extremely bright energetic people were going to devote their lives to it, young by my standards and spending their own money which is a real factor. it wasn't play money. it was very natural and i did it in conjunction with 4 other foundations that were smaller. i could not feel better about it. charlie: what was your response? melinda: we took a walk and we were both in shock. we were on the walk, the two of us. we said it was unbelievable. bill: what a sense of
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responsibility. we benefited so much from our friendship would warrant even independent of this. the idea giving it away, i read the fortune article about giving it away before we met warren. that had greatly influenced my thinking. as we have been going about the foundation i have been talking to warren one-on-one and he had a group of friends get together and within a few months, of us being really inspired, we thought we could have impact. i was electrified to share my enthusiasm with warren and a group of his friends early in the life of the foundation. he was an advisor and helper, a mentor every step of the way. the idea that wow, we could magnify this in our sense of responsibility back to him would be even greater than it had been. it was very touching.
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charlie: what role the you have? warren: every july, i use about 5%. i am well within my capabilities. that's about the limit. charlie: that's no small number. bill: warren: $2.8 billion. bill: it shares -- it's shares of berkshire stock and he has named an amount and he takes 5% of that, of the remainder, every year from berkshire stock which is going up. this is a record gift, really incredible but all five foundations got this amazing check. i hope we sent a thank you note. i will have to check on that. warren: the thank you note is what they do. charlie: what is it that brings
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you the most satisfaction from being engaged with them in this work? warren: it's the satisfaction of knowing that i grew up over a lot of years and it will get used to improve people's lives. charlie: have the ambitions of the foundation changed? clearly, i have read the annual report. i did not read your report. clearly, you have talked about things like measurement. you have talked about the importance of government in terms of partnerships. how has evolved in terms of the idea that permeates the work of you three? bill: we are on a learning curve. from the year 2000-2015, the cause of global health had some great achievements. some governments and we came
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together for a vaccine fund, a similar set of partners for the global fund which is about hiv and tuberculosis and malaria. those phones were established and set very ambitious goals. they ran into some corruption and the prices did not go down as much as they wanted. some countries were not getting as much stuff out as they wanted. how do you build the management? overall they were phenomenally successful. we probably would put that at the top of the list of things we have -- we can point to that we with partners, feel incredibly proud of. out of all the areas we work in those would be at the front. the education stuff, although we remain committed, we have not
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moved the dial on the average math or reading and writing capability of the inner-city schools. but we have enough successes to be energized and really get a pattern of how to work in very poor countries. how do you engage the best scientists in the world to come up with new tools question? i am more enthused about this today than at the beginning. charlie: so are you? melinda: absolutely, one of the premises of how we work is about innovation. we believe in it whether it is innovation in a malaria vaccine or an innovation that comes along technologically. those innovations allow us to push forward on behalf of the poor. a great example is polio eradication. we could not even talk about if we do not have the right vaccines or the right tools. also the mapping that has come along.
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that allows us to get down to the village level to know if we are making progress. we believe in making sure the innovations come out of the labs all over the world, china, india, the united states, get them out on behalf of the poor. then it's up to governments to scale up. even though we have put in billions of dollars for the vaccine there are tens of billions in by government to scale it up so we can have so many print charlie:. charlie: these are projects of give the government's ability to scale up question mark melinda: everything requires government scale up whether it's reducing tobacco usage or eliminating malaria or whether it's u.s. education and we could spend our resources in the euro's education system in less than one year if we used only our resources. warren: that's the value they bring. bill and melinda have the ability to bring others along with them. both governments and
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individuals. it's not only the funds of the three of us combined but they have the stature, the eloquence, the experience to talk with maybe governments or very wealthy individuals and corel hundreds of millions or billions of dollars additionally. there is a multiplier effect. charlie: their participation on the ground makes a difference? warren: i think it's a good match. it's unmatched. rockefeller and carnegie and roosevelt, they did wonderful things and spent a certain amount of time but they were not working 50 and 60 hour weeks all over the globe and going to some places i don't want to go to. it is hands-on tunic for neri degree. -- two in it for neri degree.
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that gets results but it attracts other people to go along with them because they know it's for real. it's big. charlie: you do it because you want to be there and see with your own eyes and feel it with your own hands? melinda: you have to. bill: there is a mix of things with trips and they are learning trips where you don't go into the government or go see the press. you just go out and tackle malaria or something else. we do not grow knowing much about farming. oral farming is quite unique. there are the trips where you really do sit down with the president. you say their rate is lower than other countries so the way you get the vaccines out, you can do a lot better. charlie: and we are here to help. bill: we will put money behind it and there is a measurement system so you will know what parts of your country or what parts of your ministry are doing the job well.
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so let's get engaged in this. the willingness of those leaders to sit down with us and talk about these things has been positive -- has been a positive surprise for us. ethiopia is the top of the list were they changed a lot of policies. although it took some of our resources, they made permanent changes to the health and agricultural sectors. charlie: what kind of resources, what kind of people, what kind of institutions are you creating? melinda: we work with so many partners. charlie: do these all come together for the foundation or is it ad hoc? melinda: it depends on what you are working on with different data rings and settings. with polio, we have unicef world health organization, all working together on polio. on the ground, you have different partners with different expertise and back in the u.k. or the u.s., you might use a partner who is doing the mapping and the modeling and
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surveillance. some of it happens on the ground and some of it happens at home. charlie: the foundation coordinates all of this? bill: we have 1500 people in total, most in seattle but with offices in africa and india and china. also an office in europe. we use them as much as we can but it feels like with malaria we have a group around 20 people who are experts so they can go out to the vaccine experts, the mosquito experts, the modeling experts and orchestrate those skill sets together and then take that and say, ok, which countries are where we are going to reduce malaria? in many cases, we help to convene different silos of expertise with people at the foundation. charlie: polio, 2020?
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eradicated? bill: the best case with you as possible --. warren: don't make stock market predictions. bill: i have a positive bias but it has gone very well the last year. we haven't had a case in africa of polio since last august. charlie: almost a year, not one single case? bill: of polio in africa. the only two countries we have had polio cases are pakistan and afghanistan. even there, the two regimes including the army people there and the very political parties have stepped forward to improve the quality of the campaign. we are now reaching almost enough children that we feel there is a good chance of the last polio case being in pakistan sometime in 2016 which
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then you would start a three-year clock to make sure we are looking and this is not a hidden disease which is an appropriate time period and that would lead to certification. in the best case, by 2019. charlie: you are letting this? bill: it's exciting because it has been hard to it has been delayed from what was expected on the whole thing got started. a lot of brilliant ideas came along in the process and those ideas will apply to improving world health and going after the disease eradication once we are successful on this one. charlie: when is the last time humanity eradicated disease? bill: charlie: only one that was smallpox. the last case was 1977 and the certification was 1980. warren: think our important that was. charlie: it killed millions of people per year. the u.s. took the lead and we
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did it. they did not even have internet and modeling. they had some amazing people but that was inspirational. melinda: the other thing i think with the modeling -- you asked about the ambitions of the foundation -- it's not necessarily just ambitions, its expectations. when bill and i can into philanthropy, we were shocked that you could get a report about sales any day of the week from microsoft. you could not get it. if you're trying to illuminate malaria or polio, the data system did not exist. now, every 30 days, we get a report on polio that says exactly which villages it's in in pakistan, afghanistan and nigeria up until last year. charlie: it's a data revolution. melinda: it allows you to know whether you are making progress but it's starting to allow the world to know how and where to
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act on some of these problems at a much deeper level. charlie: if you can eradicate polio, you want to give an inspiration to people that it's possible to do these things. melinda: definitely. charlie: if you bring in of resources and focus and challenge. bill: the head of unicef, tim grant, a brilliant person who is responsible for saving tens of millions of lives set our next phase, we will raise the vaccination coverage from 30% to 80%. he took the 1980's and 1990's and got close to that percentage. that another miracle, really the second big miracle other than small talks in global health up to this point. it was driven off the kind of confidence and energy and resources that came because smallpox worked. charlie: lauren, you have to look at this and say i could not be spending might money any
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better way? warren: absolutely it's gratifying. to be able to translate and a conflation of wealth that basically has no meaning unless it gets translated into something where it does save lives. one thing that is worth emphasizing is when you get into large-scale philanthropy like this, take the eradication of polio, it's not ascension. -- it's not a cinch. in the field of philanthropy big skill philanthropy, it's not the batting average that counts, it's a slugging percentage. if you doing nothing but life -- nothing in life but bunt and get singles, the best batting average, big foundation should shoot for a high slugging percentage, not a high batting average. melinda: that is so reassuring. swing for the fences and you got
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to take risks. particularly that we are working on robbins that society has left behind. that rings in your years when you are doing some hard days. there are hard days when you think you're not making progress. how did we not go about this right? we have to remember that it's hard problems. that keeps you going. that and meeting the people in the field, the amazing partners we work with but also the families who are lifting themselves up under unbelievable circumstances.
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charlie: childhood for tele twos -- nothing could be more important -- childhood fidelity's -- fatalities, nothing could be more to important. melinda: childhood deaths have been cut in half since 1990 and part of that is because the u.n. set a road map and said we have a goal of cutting childhood fatality by 2/3. we got up by half but what happened is all of the partners with the governments, we said what investments do we need to make? investments in vaccines or malaria, how do we get malaria beds used? what do we need to do about women's education? a child is 50% less likely to die if his or her mother has been educated. because of every change she makes to access the health care
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system or what she invests in her own child. the world started to make those investments and now we actually have a roadmap for what works so it is just a matter of scaling those things up more and more. some are innovations like vaccines and some are very basic things like breast-feeding and keeping your baby warm and clean core care, things we do in the united states. you can do this inexpensively and it's a cultural change for women. charlie: nutrition? melinda: that attributes to almost half the deaths. the saddest thing about malnutrition is when a child isn't that properly in the first 1000 days while a woman is pregnant and after birth, they are not cognitively able to learn in school the way they were meant to learn. bill: for every child who dies there are 4 children who don't develop as a clay or mentally. it's only in the last three or four years the incredible problem that is has become evident to us. even today, understanding exactly which interventions in
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malnutrition -- we are doing a lot of pilots. it looks like helping the women have chickens in an area so that they will be -- there will be more eggs or getting cows so there will be more milk -- that will be an element of the strategy. that is nice because it ties in with the economic well-being of the livestock owners as well as the nutrition of the community that they are in. there is a lot that we are just learning and we are trying to put some of the micro nutrients into the soil why hasn't that worked in the. past? you need to cook with it. i will be smarter about malnutrition when you see me one year from now and two years or now and five years from now. melinda: in the last two weeks, our son who is 16 state in a malawi household. the couple left them live with
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us for a couple of days and they knew we were friends of the ngo who was there and it was amazing to see. they were diversifying their diet and have learned a needed to eat something more than maize so they took their little bit of money and invested it in chickens matt allowed protein for the family that they were selling chickens on the market and selling eggs to their neighbors and getting a little more income. then there were starting to diversify into pigs. they had three small pigs and i said what will you do with them? i thought they were going to beat them and they said that as a high school education for our daughter. that is part of the school fees. when they can start to make those diversification's, it not only helps nutrition but it helps their livelihood which then helps the family. there is not a family i have not met around the globe and asked them what their hopes and dreams are and they say i want to educate my children. charlie: do they believe that is the ticket? ubermelinda: they know it charlie:
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you must be on a learning curve yourself to. to understand how much needs to be done in the world but also how there are solutions and these ideas that are coming out of this. warren: yes, but i'm a great one for letting other people do the work. what you just got through hearing -- the difference between having two very smart people working with their own funds committed and to care enormously are prepared to run an organization that got set up 20 years ago and gets handed from one person to the next -- it's night and day. this is the way to make a difference. charlie: let's talk about women and development and that's become a focus of yours. melinda: definitely, that's because women are agents of change. for too long, the community look at them as somebody we should do something to instead of saying
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they are the agents of change. if you unlock their potential, if you make sure they are healthy and their children are healthy and you make sure they can have some decision-making capability and economic opportunities and you invest in them, they invest in everybody else. every marginal dollar a woman gets in her hands, she puts 90% back into her family. she is often the one making the decisions about what the kids eat a new gets to go to the health care clinic when they are sick, who eats first the family. we have to invest in them if we want to get huge widescale impact. i think we were not looking at investing in women in scale which we need to do. secondly, how do you look at your programming? you cannot assume if you do something -- we have a drought resistant maize which is great but if we assume that the agriculture dealers would get it out to all the farmers, that's a false assumption. they don't reach women. you have to go the extra mile to reach the women and make sure
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they get the crops and the seed in her hand and understand and they can keep the income. charlie: this must resonate with you a lot. warren: if you believe every life has equal value, you've got to be doing something for women. in many cultures, and in our own, and going back for thousands of years in many cases, it has not been the case that society has said that women's lives have equal value to those of males. our own constitution talks about the qualifications for the presidency and it has a bunch of mail pronouncements in their. we wrote that 13 years after saying all men were created equal. great article two, section one. melinda: and we can measure. in the past, so much of this should be about data so we know where to invest. we did not collect the data about women. we did household surveys and in bangladesh and india, the only
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question they asked is who is the main breadwinner. assumes they learned that, it's the man, they go down that path and don't ask about secondary income. there are so many places where we have not had good data about women and have not collected it but when you start to collected, you can measure empowerment. you can measure when a woman starts acting differently in making different decisions when she gets the economic need. we will do that because that's when you get prime ministers and presidents to act differently even in their own countries. charlie: you have a thing called a no ceiling report. what is that? melinda: we partnered with the clinton foundation to figure out where, as a world, do we have data on women? we used economic units to collect all the data we have around the world in every country about women, childhood marriage, where they were in the work horse, labor force participation, do they have a chance to go to school. we looked at that and we also visualized it so people could
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read it and now we will fill in the gaps where we don't have the right data. the childhood marriage data we all use, it's not very deep. if you want to know how to act in childhood marriage, we need better data to know how and where to act. charlie: how does technology affect all of this? bill: technology is helpful but if you're not careful technology responds to a large market. the middle income and rich people will drive how applications get used and written. piggybacking on the cell phone and the amazing internet conic entity and saying what about a farmer who wants to learn when to plant their crop? what about a primary health claire -- health care clinic in the supply chain gets everything there and is the worker doing what they should do? we can tweak that digital foundation and with some extra money, make sure that financial
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services health quality tracking, even budget tracking although we have not done this yet, we are in the early stages of brainstorming, how can you follow money and gather evidence of where the money is used so that donors have more confidence and the auditing is built-in in a low-cost way. that digital platform allows us to be way more ambitious starting with satellite photography that counts the population for polio activities down to reaching somebody so that their savings account is literally on their cell phone. melinda: in the developing world, cell phones are pervasive. the old plastic ones we used to use -- what that's allowing is the digital platforms to generate mobile money. 87% in kenya, the money runs
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through mobile and we have it in philippines and bangladesh and tanzania. this is happening. a remote woman in a rural area her husband goes into nairobi let say to get a job and he can send digital money back to her on her phone. meanwhile, she can be saving one dollar a day from the eggs she is selling at market. when it comes time for school fees, they have the money. the cell phones will get better and agriculture and crop prices will be on their. when she gets her crop to a middleman, she knows the market prices so when he says i only got $10 a bushel, the market price might've been $20. that will happen when those smart phones get across southeast asia. we know one in three women experienced violence.there is an application i can give people -- six people on my cell phone network, my cell phone so of a woman gets in a
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violent situation in india, she can press a button and six people know she is in trouble. eventually we will know her gps location and that changes things. warren: you improve agricultural techniques, you will improve the lives of millions of people. look what it did in this country. it was innovation when good farming came along. if you look at how primitive agriculture is in so much of the world, you're talking about hundreds of millions of lives that could be improved if you enable them to get more out of that acre than they have been getting before. charlie: i have seen what you've learned about ebola and other possible diseases and how this global community can do something that they had not done before to be able to make sure that the worst does not happen. bill: we are still in the final
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efforts to get the numbers down to 04 ebola. the numbers are down quite a bit but once they get to zero, the three affected countries will need a lot to rebuild back to a decent health system and get their economies going. it's also a lesson globally. we were lucky that it stayed in the three countries and did not get more widespread. there are diseases other than a bola that will come in the future. charlie: you were concerned about an early warning system in the capacity to respond early with a maximum -- bill: right, you need a reasonable health care system and then surveillance sites that are gathering data. the foundation is reaching out to other people to say let's get this early warning system going. there's a lot of reports being written about how to strengthen the who who plays a central role here. the contrast i have drawn is
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that when it comes to military activities, we have people in reserve and we do training and plan ahead. for an epidemic, which could be a natural epidemic or even worse potentially bioterrorism we are not as ready. we don't have the volunteers and the supplies and the training. the only good thing that can come out of you bola is that it's a wake-up call in those resources are put in place so that we would be faster. that will be important if it's a more infectious agent then you bola. -- then he bola -- a bola - ebola. charlie: this must make you very enthusiastic. these people could be doing a lot of other things but something brings the three of you to this table wherever you
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are. it's the driving compassion and the driving will to make a difference. warren: what you hope is that somebody listening or through reading or whatever -- bill had parents that were very involved in philanthropy -- that they think it through a little bit as to what they can be doing. many people do things individually that i admire more than what i am doing just the money.they pour themselves into it every day. my older sister does that. she is 87 and she helps other people. she is giving up far more than i give up. i am giving up some money but not time. i have had two people come 10,000 miles just to talk to me for one hour or so about philanthropy and the giving. it's fascinating. the remote part of the world,
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angie: taking some heat. the commodities route sends gold to its lowest in five years and oil to below $50. still fighting. ibm reports second quarter sales declines across all units. it is the 13th straight period of falling revenue. paying up. greases his emergency loans to pay some bills. terms of the bailout should be fixed next month. welcome to "first up." i am angie lau, coming to you
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