knee welcome to the program. tonight, bill and melinda gates and warren buffet talk about contributions to the night and about the foundation and the giving pledge. >> the question is what's the best way to translate a bunch of little paper stock certificates into something that is consistent with the belief that all that equals value and we are the perfect situation that an entity was already in existence run by two extremely bright, energetic people who devote their lives to it, young by my standards, anyway, spending their own money, which is a real factor. so it wasn't play money. >> rose: from sun valley idaho, bill and melinda gates

and warren buffet for the hour. >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: 15 years ago, in the year 2000, bill and melinda gates created the bill and melinda gates foundation. nine years ago, in 2006, warren buffet 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 buffet, bill gates and melinda gates joined forces one more time. they created the giving pledge. also a request for the very wealthy to pledge to give away 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. >> what really grew out of warren's idea that we should meet with other people who were serious philanthropists and learn from them how they were engaged and how they thought about it and through that we created a group. it's been amazing. we had a yearly gathering. people have commented to me separately and i've learned a lot. i look forward to those

gatherings. there is so much in common that we can learn and sometimes people do end up working together. >> rose: we'll come back to what you've learned. where did the idea come from and what are you thinking? >> i'm not sure exactly. we had a dinner that david rockefeller hosted, and i would say it's sort of involved. we had 15 or so people there. we went around the table and we just asked people to sort of explain where the giving philosophy came from how their thinking went. they talked about their families and their parents' influence. it took at least two hours to get around the table before we were really interested in talking sort of peer-to-peer about it. and there was so much we clearly hit a chord at some point, then the three of us talked later on and the giving pledge evolved out of that. >> rose: i remember you

talking about it at the time. you said there was an emotional connection between people because they thought and found themselves listening to other people and feeling like this is exactly the way i feel. >> yeah, they didn't feel awkward in talking about themselves. i think we're a little lucky to be called on first even. the first person their degree of candor, the first couple, i think, was contagious as we went around the table. so nobody engaged in any posturing or anything of the sort which you might get sometimes in a group particularly when some of the people don't know each other well and weren't acquainted. instead of that, we got this very candid discussion by, really, everyone there and they talked about their children sometimes, and sometimes disappointments, or sometimes how faithful they felt about what happened with them. it became clear that peen when people similarly situated got together perhaps we would learn

from each other and good things would come out of it. >> rose: melinda, how has it been going. >> we have 137 prejudicers in 14 countries. one of the neatest things is when we get together for the annual gatherings. the first night you sit down at dinner, you realize you're amoption friends. we are getting to know them and they're getting to know each other and look forward to the event. i think because to have the candor of the conversations about what to do about your children, what about the next generation, how do you think about the leader, how do you even start a foundation if you're beginning. those are the conversations you want in a small group and that's what our gathering affords. >> there's no one-upsmanship or anything like that. these people are quite capable in different situations, but i would say it brings out the best in everybody. they're not trying to impress the other person. they're generally interested in successes, failures, family

situations, whatever it may be. so there's a level of candor that's really impressive. >> rose: was that bridge hard the international dimension, to get people not as familiar with philanthropy as americans are? >> one of the things the u.s. should be proud of is it is the leader, the most engaged in philanthropy and most to have the strong examples -- rockefeller, carnegie, ford foundation -- were american foundations. other countries are interested in it because, whether it's helping universities or research or doing education, it's proven, even though it's a small part even of the u.s. economy it's been a very innovative part, where people show pilot programs that really then influence a lot of other activities. most of our members are from the united states, slightly better jobs of reaching out to people

in the united states, but beyond that, it's going to grow, and we would like to see our global basis strengthened. we like to see people getting involved when they're younger, a bit more collaboratively, and hopefully will give more of their resources. >> rose: that's what they're trying to tell people to think about, early rather than at the end, because you're better equipped to make decisions at this time? >> definitely. i think by having people come together, even if they're pledging to give it away attend of their lives, if they gather they learn about what's possible if people are interested in them and how did you get going. so we're trying to get people to learning from one another and get started earlier because if they put their brains against these problems, whatever they've done in their business lives against the problems of inequity or whatever, that can have a huge effect and they're learning

that from one other. >> rose: so what's the pitch? (laughter) you call them up and say what? >> i usually send them some material on it first because there might be some misconceptions about it. i ask them whether they've gotten the material and whether they've got any questions. >> rose: have you read it? yeah, and what you want to do is get them talking. and there are some people that aren't interested, but a very significant percentage -- i have been amazed at, frank l frankly, how well it's gone. >> rose: you have 130. 137, yeah. and i had a dinner some months ago, and one of the people who came had misconceptions about you know, they had to do this or that, and by the end of the evening, this particular person was ready to join, and will give

99% on this particular thing. >> rose: what's the transaction? >> the transaction is making a pledge to give at least 50% though a lot name a larger number, but give at least 50% during their lifetime or death to philanthropy, and then i encourage them to explain how they got to that decision. you know, is it from their parents, the examples around them and why they're doing it? and we get magnificent letters that i felt from people i talk to that the letters are enormously important because somebody 10 20, 50 years from now are going to read that like carnegie, rockefeller, you name it, you never know what's going to strike a chord. like a lawyer naming an argument, name 20 reasons your

client isn't guilty. (laughter) >> rose: but do you all make the calls? the three of you are engaged in a real personal way in terms of recruiting? >> i think what works the best is just to invite people to a dinner about philanthropy. that's our recruiting dinner. whennively traveling i look at my schedule so i have time for dinner, even outside the u.s. and you have anywhere from six to as many as 15, which was almost too many and you talk about philanthropy. and then afterwards, if you get a sense that it might be good to follow up by sending them material and making a call. so a lot of people who are joining already have the intention to give but they find

the idea of being part of a group, that it will help them engage and make sure that it's a fun thing for them. you know, we love the impact and diversity of philanthropy, but we also feel like people -- it's a voluntary thing, and it can be one of the most fun things you've ever done. yet hiring staff and talking about causes. it forces you to think about death and how your kids may be involved and some in different ways than others, these are complex issues. and it doesn't necessarily prepare you for answering these questions. >> sometimes they will have to have a family conversation, so they will say we're in favor of it in general. we could have had an initial conversation over the years with our kids but we've never committed like this and sai they say give us some time. and we say we'll call you back

in three or four months. sometimes they'll share the conversations with their kids because they're proud of the kids' response. >> one to have the kids talked the parents into doing it when the parent wasn't initially inclined. >> rose: what are their resistances? >> when i call them and they say, i plan on putting it in my coffin with me, i don't have much of a chance. (laughter) >> rose: how about people who say, i want to pass this to my family. >> if that's what they want, that's their business. if they want to pass it all then they can. we particularly see that as the bulk of what was passed down to them. you know, why should they break the chain.

the first generation fortunes tend to be more philanthropy than inherited fortunes. >> rose: the interesting thing is young members, too. >> you know, there's going to be -- 20 years from now, there will be dozens and dozens and dozens of billionaires who have come up, they're heros the steve jobs, the mark zuckerbergs, you name it. >> i'm excited to see what mark and priscilla do, the zuckerbergs, how they will come at it because she's i embedded in health and he's into education and facebook and the way they see things together, i think they will totally inspire different people. >> we have a session for younger members to have the family of people who have signed up. i know 35 or more probably will come. and their attitude, some of them maybe are beneficiaries of trusts their grandfather set up

or something but it's the influence on future giving that i think will be very, very substantial. i think it's having an effect currently, but it will be bigger over the years. >> that's the group we call the next generation group, and they're getting together on their own. the next meeting is actually in omaha. >> rose: what do you learn in these sessions? >> we have people get up and give a six-minute explanation of something they're excited about or something that's gone well or something that didn't go well. they don't have breakouts. so things like can you do investments, advance for philanthropic means giving internationally, scientific research, we had four breakouts and people had to pick one of the four because they found several they were interested in. >> rose: before we start talking about the foundation in general, there is no legal commitment made. >> correct. >> rose: there is an ethical,

moral commitment, but that's it. >> yep. >> rose: when you set up the foundation, the two of you, what was the idea? >> well, we talked about it even before we got married, so that was about six years into our marriage, and i was seeing that i could spend a little more time on it. i turned the c.e.o. title over just that year and we made a pretty big gift of 20 million that year and that kind of forced us to get going. (laughter) my dad is a great person who had been a microsoft executive partnered to create the

organization, even though between children and work, we weren't able to give as much time as we have now. so we got started, and we can look back on that and say that was the start of the learning curve. we did a lot of reproductive health, we learned about that. we thought, okay, let's do some science. we weren't working with governments as much. we learned that's super important. so it was great that, by the time we had that time, the foundation was already going. we had a team, ex per made some mistakes. so by 2008 when we're both increasingly engaged, there's a lot there to build on. >> rose: what were the principles that you began with? >> that all lives have equal value, no matter where they're lived on the planet. yet as bill and i would travel and read and look, you realize we don't treat all lives as

equal. what the united states spends to save one child from death, it takes $30 to save a child's life, a basic package of vaccines to the world, and we weren't making the investments to the world. so we decided to invest in health outside of the united states. that's where we thought 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, so our predominant investments in the united states are around the u.s. education system. >> rose: has that changed in terms of where you see the focus for this foundation? >> that will be our focus our entire lives, those are big enough problems, there are enough for our lifetime. we'd love if the foundation, in our lifetime, really could conquer a lot of that and people could later focus on other

problems. and education has been -- i would say we've seen less progress but we're still totally committed to it. it's the right cause. the united states created this amazing framework that allows microsoft and berkshire and amazing educations that we both had the opportunity to have and, so, we wish we could have the same type of impact on u.s. education as we feel quite sure we'll have on global health. >> rose: you wish but are not sure. >> no, we're not sure. of all the things we're doing it is the riskiest. that is, you know, we spend on education broadly about 800 million a year and that money -- there are great partners in this michael bloomberg, people who do amazing

work in education, and as a group, we can't say that the educational scores have moved up a lot. dropout rates have come down some and there's a few points of light in terms of good charter schools. >> rose: when you're watching this from a place of friendship you, obviously i think it got accelerated after susie's death. >> right. >> rose: began to say what should i do? did you have evolving thoughts about philanthropy? >> no. i had thought out and then i had to make a change. but, you know, it was obvious what i should do,. >> rose: obvious you should give your money away or where to

give it? >> i was going to give it away. there is no other option, charlie. >> rose: can't take it with you. >> everything i wanted with money i bought a long time ago. so money had utility to other people but didn't have any utility to me. and the approach that all lives are of equal value i wouldn't change a word in that. i think that is exactly how i feel. and the question is what's the best way to translate a bunch of little stock certificates into something that is consistent with the belief that all lives have equal value. and here i have the perfect situation in that, you know, an entity was already in existence was run by two extremely bright energetic people who were going to devote their lives to it, young by my standards, anyway, and spending their own money

which is a real factor so it wasn't play money. so it was very nice. of course i did it in conjunction with four other foundations, too. >> rose: and your foundation. yeah, and all five, i couldn't feel better about it. >> rose: and, so, what was your response? >> we took a walk and -- >> rose: you and bill took a walk? who was on the walk? >> the two of us. we walked and said wow. hat a sense of responsibility. we benefited so much from our friendship of warren, even independent of this, and the whole idea of giving it away -- i read an article about giving it away even before we met warren and that had greatly influenced my thinking. you know, as we had been going about the foundation, i had been talking to warren one on one and he had a group of friends together when, within a few months of us being really

inspired, we'll take global health and we can have so much impact, i was just electrified to share my enthusiasm in front of warren and a group of his friends early in the life of the foundation. so he was an advisor, a helper, a mentor, every step of the way. and the idea that, wow, we were going to be able to magnify this, and our sense of responsibility back to him would be even greater than it had been and it was very touching. >> rose: so what role do you have? >> just a couple of days ago, i gave some. >> on the foundation, i think

2.8 billion. >> it's shares of berkshire stock, so he takes 5% of that of the remainder every year. berkshire stocks have gone up enough even though the number of shares goes down, this is a record gift really incredible. so all five foundations got this amazing check. i hope we sent a thank you note. i'll have to check on that. >> rose: the thank you note is what they do. >> rose: what brings you the most satisfaction from being engaged with them in this work? >> well, it's the satisfaction of knowing what i've built up over a lot of years will get used to improve other people's lives. >> rose: have the ambitions of the foundation changed? because, clearly, i have read the annual report and clearly, you have talked about things about measurement, you've talked

about the importance of government in terms of partnership. how has it evolved in terms of the idea that permeates the work of you three? >> we're on a learning curve, and in the year 2 -- from the year 2000 to 2015 the cause of global health had some great achievements. governments, and we came together for a vaccine fund. likewise, a similar set of partners for the global fund which is about h.i.v. tuberculosis and malaria, and those funds were established and set very ambitious goals. you know, they ran into some corruption, and the prices didn't go down as much as they wanted and some countries weren't getting as much as they

wanted, how do you build the management of those situations burks overall they were phenomenally successful. , so you know, we probably put that at the top of the list of things that we really, you know, can point to that we, with partners, feel incredibly proud of. in all the years we've worked, those would be at the front. the education, though we have been committed, we haven't moved the dial on the average map capability or reading and writing capability of particularly the inner city schools, but we have enough successes to really be energized and really get a pattern of okay, how do you work in poor countries, how do you engage the best scientists in the world. i'm more enthusiastic about the work today than at the very

beginning. >> rose: so are you? absolutely. i think one of the premises we have about how we work has to do with innovation, that we believe in innovation whether innovation in a malaria vaccine or an innovation that comes along technologically, those innovations allow us to push forward. the great example is polio eradication. we could bnlt talking about it if we didn't have the right vaccines and tools. the mapping lets us get to the village level to know if we're making progress. we believe in innovations making sure those come out of the lab from all over the world china, india, the united states, get them out on behalf of the poor but then governments scaling up. even though we've put in billions of dollars of vac seeps, tens of billions are put in by government. >> rose: so you put work in in the beginning and have projects that give people in government who have the ability to scale

up, to scale up. >> every single thing we're in requires government scale up whether reducing tobacco use malaria, education. we could spend our resources on the u.s. education system in less than a year if we were putting all our resources in it. >> both bill and melinda had the ability to bring others along with them. both governments and individuals. so there is not only the funds of three of us combined but they have the stature, the eloquence, the experience to talk with maybe governments, maybe very wealthy individuals and corral hundreds of millions maybe billions of dollars additionally on this. >> rose: you would know better and better to speak about than they are because their participation on the ground makes a difference.

>> rockefeller and carnegie, they did wonderful things but they were not working 50 and 60 hours a week all over the globe and going to places i don't want to go to. you know, it's hands-on to an extraordinary degree and that not only gets results but it attracts other people to go along with them because they know it's for real. it's big. >> rose: but you don't do it because you know it will make a difference. you do it because you want to be there. you want to see it with your own eyes and feel it with your own hands? >> you have to. there's a mix of things. some are purely learning trips where you don't go see the government, you don't go see the press, you just go out and see okay, what's up with malaria or farming. we didn't grow up knowing much about farming.

virtual farming is quite unique. then there are trips where you really are sitting down with the president and saying your vaccination rates compared to other countries is far lower, so the way you get the vaccines out, you can do a lot better. >> rose: and we're here to help. >> yeah, and we'll put money behind it. there's a measurement system so you will know what parts of your country or the ministry are really doing the job well. so let's get engaged in this. and the willingness of both leaders to sit down with us and talk about these things has been positive. there are a number of countries ethiopia would be the top of the list where they've really changed a lot of policies and although it took some of our resources, they made permanent changes to the health and agriculture sectors. >> rose: what kind of resources, what kind of people what kind of institution are you creating?

>> we work with so many -- >> rose: do these all come together for the foundation or on sort of an ad hoc basis? >> it depends on what you're working on. we have different gatherings and settings. we have unicef, world health organization, all working together on polio. on the ground, we have different partners with different expertise and then back in the u.k. or u.s. you may be using a partner who's doing the mapping and the modeling and the disease surveillance. some of it happens on the ground and -- >> rose: but the foundation is coordinating all of this? >> yes, with we have about 1,500 people in total, most in seattle, but with offices in africa india and china also an office in europe. we use grantees as much as we can, but with malaria, we have a group around 20 people who are experts, and, so, they can go

out to the vaccine experts, the drug experts, the mosquito experts, the modeling experts and orchestrate those skill sets together and then take that and say, okay which countries are we going to get rid of malaria in and how are we going to reduce that map? so in many cases we are helping to convene different silos of expertise with people at the foundation. >> rose: polio 2020 -- polio 2020, eeradicated? >> that's a possible case. >> rose: close to eradication. yes. it's gone very well. we haven't had a case in africa since last august. >> rose: so almost a year not one single case. >> of polo in africa.

the one of two countries we have polo cases are pakistan and afghanistan, and even there the two regimes including the army people there and the various political parties have stepped forward to improve the quality of the campaign. so you're 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 then you would start a three-year clock to make sure that you're looking and there is not some hidden pocket of the disease, which is a very appropriate time period and that would lead to eradication in best case by 2019. >> rose: you're living this. it has been hard. it's been delayed from what was expected when 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 other disease eradications. >> rose: when was the last time a disease was eradicated. >> only one disease has been eradicated, smallpox, '77. the certification was in 1980. >> think how important that was. it killed millions a year, and the u.s. took the lead, and we -- they didn't even have internet and modeling. now, they have some amazing people, but that was inspirational. >> i was going to say the other thing that i think divides the modeling now is it's not just envisioning, it's expectation. one of the things that was shocking to us is when we were at microsoft you could get a report on your desk about sales

any day of the week. well, you couldn't get it. if you're trying to eliminate malaria or eradicate polio, those reports didn't exist. now every 30 days we get a report on polio showing exactly what vidgeses it's in in pakistan afghanistan, nigeria. you have to have data. it allows you to know whether you're making progress but also starting to allow us know how and where to act on some of these problems at a much deeper level. >> rose: as you eradicate polio you want to get inspiration to people to let them know it's possible, if you bring enough resources and focus and talent. >> yeah, after smallpox got done, grant, a brilliant person who is responsible of saving tens of thousands of lives said our next phase will be to raise

vaccination coverage from 30 to 80%. so he took the '80s and '90s and got it close to that perms. so that's another miracle, really the second biggest miracle other than small box in global health up to this point. it was all driven off the kind of confidence and energy and resources that came because smallpox works. >> rose: you've got to look at this and say, my god, i couldn't be spending my money any better. >> exactly. it's gratifying because to be able to translate an accumulation of wealth it basically has no meaning in terms of your life, unless it gets traps late into something that really does save lives. one thing that's worth emphasizing is when you get into large-scale philanthropy take the eradication of polio it's not a cinch.

but in the field of philanthropy big-scale philanthropy, it's not the batting average that counts, it's the slugging percentage. if you do nothing in life but hit singles, that's why you have a high batting average, but the best slugging percentage, a big foundation should be shooting for a high slugging percentage not a high batting average. >> that's so reassuring. that's what he said, swing for the fences. you have to take risks. particularly working on problems society has left behind. that rings in your ears when you're doing likely hard days. there are hard days where we feel we aren't making progress or what haven't we seen? how did we not go about this right? we have to remember it's these hard problems and that keeps you going, that and meeting the people in the field, the amazing partners we work with and also the families who are living under unbelievable circumstances.

>> rose: quick things. one, malaria you're hopeful by 2050, perhaps? if things come together? >> we should be able to do better than that. we're in this period where we need tools. so in the drug pipeline the vaccine pipeline, the killing mosquitoes pipeline, there are likely good thoughts, and we expect sometime between 2030 and 2050, it could be eradicated. the actual thing at this point is to take that map of malarias and pick a few areas and do regional eliminations. so southeast asia, cambodia, thailand myanmar, there is quite a bit of malaria there, and that's one of the first regions we've gotten together. australia is helping, u.k. we can prove even with today's tools, we can do it there. and we have about four or five

shrinkages before we have the confidence and all the experts saying, okay let's go about it at the heart of africa. congo, equatorial africa. we'll point there, learn as we go and then have that final push. >> rose: childhood fatalities. nothing could be more important. >> nothing could be more important. the thing that is amazing about it is it the world has made huge progress. childhood deaths have been cut in half since 1990, cut in half. part of that is because the u.n. with the development goals set a road map that said we have a goal of cutting childhood mortality by two-thirds, so we've got it by half. what happened was all of the n.g.o.s and the governments said what investments do we need to make? what investments in vaccines? what investments in malaria?

what do we need to do about women's education, because a child is 50% less likely to die if his or her mother has been educated, because of every change she then makes, through vaccine, healthcare system or what she invests in her own child. the world started to make those investments and now we have a road map for what works. it's a matter of scaling those things up more and more. some are innovations like vaccines. some are very basic things like breast feeding and keeping your baby warm and clean cord care and things we do in the united states you can do inexpensively and it's just cultural change for women. >> mall nutrition. that attributes to almost half the deaths. the saddest thing about mall nutrition is that if a child had been fed properly in the first thousand days, while the mother is pregnant and after birth for the first two years, they are not cognitively able to learn in

school the way they were meant to. >> there are children who don't develop physically or mentally. it's only in the last three or four years that the incredible problem that's become evident to us and even today understanding exactly which interventions for mall nutrition, we're doing a study that helping women have chickens in the area so there will be more eggs, or getting cows so there will be more milk, that is going to be an element for the strategy, and that's a nice one because pitts the economic well being of the livestock owners as well as the nutrition of the community that they're in. there's a lot. we're trying to put micronutrients in the salt and why hasn't that worked in the past and you need to cook with it.

i will be smarter about mall nutrition when you see me a year from now two years from now five years from now. >> in the last two weeks our son who is 16 and i stayed in a malarian household. this couple let us live with them a couple of days. they knew we were friends of the n.g.o. it was amazing to see because they were diversifying their diet. they learned they had needed to eat more than maze so they invested in new chickens, not only allowing protein for the family, but selling chickens on the market, eggs to the neighbors, getting more income, and then diversifying into pigs, and they had at this point three small pigs. i said, what are you going to do with them? i thought they would eat them. they said, no, that's the high school education for our daughter. that's part of the school fees and that one is part of the school fees for our son. so when they can start to make the diversification, it not only helps nutrition, but the

livelihood and that helps their family. there is not a family i haven't met around the goal when you ask them what their hopes and dreams are, they say i want to educate my children. >> rose: they believe that's the ticket. >> they know it is. >> rose: you must be in a learning curve yourself. to understand how much there needs to be done in the world, but how there are these solutions and these ideas that are coming out of this. >> yeah, i've always been a great one for letting other people do the work, charlie. (laughter) what you just got through hearing, i mean, the difference between having two very smart people working with their own fund, committed to the work and who care enormously about it, compared to running some organization where it got set up 20 years earlier and just gets passed from one person to the next, it's night and day. this is the way to make a difference. >> rose: and do you think you're having an influence in terms of other people who will

want tone gauge in philanthropy the way you have engaged in philanthropy? you i made a dramatic shift in your life when you joined full time. the way you spent 24 hours now is way different than in 1995. >> absolutely. the goals are very different. some of the ideas of meeting with scientists or -- >> rose: the process of acquiring information. >> i was well trained the microsoft was an ideal preparation. i think we can show two things that it can be fun and be living examples of that, and of some of the riskier causes that people can feel it's less risky maybe they'll do it in different countries or ways. >> rose: what does risk mean? taking people's money and spending it in africa is daunting.

>> rose: daunting because -- yes, the idea of don't these governments always take this and it's corrupt or even if you make progress then there will be instability and things will be wiped out. would i look foolish and, you know, where do i start in africa, who do i trust? it took us many years and many mistakes before we felt any confidence there. so i think everyone in philanthropy encourages other people to take a bit more risk try something a bit more on the frontier. there are great causes in universities. that's a fantastic thing and do good work. >> rose: let me talk about women and development, and that's become a focus of yours. >> definitely, and the reason for that is because women are agents of change and i think for too long the community looked at them as, you know somebody we should do something

to instead of think we are the agents of change, and if you unlock their potential -- that is, if you make sure that they're healthy and their children are healthy and you make sure they can have some decision-making capability and economic opportunity, and you invest in them they invest in everybody else. every marginal dollar a woman in the developing world gets in our hands, she puts 90% back into her family and she's often the one making the decision about what the kids eat who goes to healthcare clinic when they get sick, who eats first in the family. so we have to invest in them if we want to get huge wide scale impact. we wanted the community to look at investing in women which we're doing. you have to look at the programming. we have drought-resistant maze which is great corn seed, but if we assume that the agriculture dealers in africa would get it to 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 they get the seed in their hand, they understand the planting techniques and they can keep the income. >> rose: this must res made with -- this must resonate with you a lot. >> if you believe every life has equal value, you have to be doing something with women. in many cultures and our own and going back for thousands of years, it has not been the case that society said that women should have equal value to males. our own constitution when it talks about the qualifications for the presidency, it has a whole bunch of male pronounce in there, and we wrote that 13 years or so after they were made equal. but read article 2 section 1. >> and we measure it. in the mast, it's funny -- you know, so much of this has to be aboutda at that. first of all, we didn't collect the data about women when we did the

household surveys. the surveys in bangladesh and africa and india the question they ask is who's the main bread winner, and it's the man they go down that path and don't ask about secondary income. there are so many places we haven't had good data about women and haven't collected it. but turns out, when you start to collect it, you can actually measure empowerment, you can measure when a woman starts acting differently, making different decision when she gets her economic means. we'll do that because that's when you get prime ministers and presidents to act differently even in their own countries. >> and there's a thing called no ceiling report. >> we partnered in 2013 with the clinton foundation to really figure out where in the world do we have data on women. we use the economists economic unit at u.c.l.a. and say collect all the data in every country about women -- childhood marriage, where they were in the workforce, labor force participation, do they have a chance to go to school. so we looked at that and we also

visualized it so people could go up and read it and now we're going to fill in the gaps where we don't have the right data. to the childhood marriage data we all use and quote around the world, it's not very deep. it's really not. if you want to know how to act in childhood marriage, we need better data to know where and how to act. >> rose: how does technology affect all of this? >> technology is very helpful. if they're not careful technology responds to the large markets. so the middle income and rich people will drive what applications get written and how it gets used. but thinking back on the amazing cell phone, the amazing internet connectivity and saying, okay, what about the farm who are wants to know when to plant the crop, which seeds to pick, what about a primary health clinic and making sure the supply chain gets everything there. we know is that working there are they doing what they're supposed to do.

we can take that visual foundation and with a little bit of extra money make sure that financial services health quality tracking even budget tracking, even though we haven't done this yet, we're in the early stage of brainstorming it how can you follow money and gather evidence of when the moppy is used appropriately so that builders have more confidence that it's bill built in a low-cost way? the digital platform allows us to be way more ambitious. starting with satellite photography that's told us the population of the polio activities all the way down to reaching somebody so that their savings can't is literally on the cell phone. >> when you golanyplace, there are cell loans. they may be the old plastic ones, but that's allowing digital platforms.

mobile money. in kenya, 87% of gdp runs through a mobile phone system. we've got them in the philippines, bangladesh tanzania. so these are happening at scale. a remote woman in a rural area, if her husband goes into nairobi to get a job, he can send digital money back the to her on her phone. meanwhile, she can save a dollar a day from selling eggs on the market so when it comes dime for school fees, they have the money. and as cell phones get better when she gets her crop to a middle man, she knows market prices and when he says i only get $10 a bushel, she says the market price was 20, when that happens, when they become smart they will tell you over southeast asia -- we know one in three women experience violence.

if a woman gets in a violent situation in india, she can push a button and six people know she's in trouble. >> if you improve agriculture techniques, you will change the lives of hundreds of millions of people. look what it's done in this country in a couple hundred years. it was innovation when the planter and tractor came along. and if you look at alternative agriculture as in so much of the world, you're really talking about hundreds of millions of lives that can be improved if you enable them to get more out of that acre than they have been getting before. >> rose: just want to touch on what you've learned about ebola and other possible diseases and how this global community can do something that they hadn't done before to be able to make sure that the worst doesn't woman.

>> ebola, we're still getting the numbers down to zero. the numbers are down quite a bit. even though once they get to zero, the three affected countries will need a lot to rebuild health systems and get their economies going. but the lessen globally, we were lucky that it stayed in the three countries and didn't get more widespread. there are other diseases that will come in the future. >> rose: but you were concerned about an early warning system and capacity to respond early with the maximum. >> right. what you need is a reasonable healthcare system and then surveillance sites that are gathering data from them. the foundation of reaching out to other people to say let's get this early warning system going. there are a lot of reports being written about how to strengthen

the w.h.o. that has a central role here. the contrast i've drawn is that, when it comes to military activities, we have people in reserve, we do training we plan ahead. for an epidemic, which could be a natural epidemic or even worse, other epidemics, we don't have the volunteers and supplies and training, so the only good thing that can come out of ebola is if it's used as a wakeup call and those resources are put in place so that we would be a lot faster, that we'll be very important if it's a more infectious agent than ebola. >> rose: in listening to these two people it must make you enormously proud because of their enthusiasm and the commitment to be there but also, as they live this experience, they, like you could be doing a lot of other things, but something brings the

three of you to this table, to a table wherever you are, whether it's seattle omaha or wherever it might be and the driving compassion and driving will to make a difference. >> well, what you hope is that somebody listening or just like we through reading or whatever may have been experienced, bill had parents that were very involved in philanthropy, that they just think it through a little bit as what they can be doing. a lot of people do things individually that they throw themselves into it every day. my older sister spends every day at age 87 helping other people. she's giving up far more than i give up. i'm giving up money, but i'm not giving up time. so i've had two people come 10,000 miles just to talk to me for an hour, an hour and a half about philanthropy and the

giving pledge. it's fascinating. the remote part of the world i won't identify where they're from, but, you know, if it strikes a chord, who knows where the ripples go. >> rose: thank you for coming. thank you. >> rose: thank you, bill. thank you for joining us. see you next time. for more about this program and earlier episodes, visit us online at pbs.org and charlierose.com. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

>> rose: funding for "charlie rose" has been provided by: >> rose: additional funding provided by: >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide.

>> the following kqed production was produced in high definition. [ ♪music♪ ] >> yes check please! people! >> it's all about licking your plate. >> the food is just fabulous. >> i should be in psychoanalysis for the amount of money i spend in restaurants. >> i had a horrible experience. >> i don't even think we were at the same restaurant. >> leslie: and everybody, i'm sure, saved room for those desserts.