>> rose: welcome to the program. tonight bill and melinda gates. >> when you let your heart break and think of what it would be like to deal with a child dying of malaria. you say to yourself my gosh, we have to save not just that childe-rqnc0@6cexjbut 600,000 children. and that can be done. if you let your heart break but then you come home and you take all the science meeting and you see all the great innovations and you figure out how do i deliver those things in these difficult remote settings in africa. i think that sets up learning for the foundation over the last 15 years. not just how to do the great science but also how to deliver it in these remote settings. >> philanthropy is more about pilot programs, innovation. some of the research things that it's so risky it wouldn't get done otherwise. as a percentage of the dollar, the overall economy in a

philanthropy is a less than 2%. and so we have to be careful to only do those things that uniquely able to do. but saying that every childhood get an education. no philanthropy is not going every year for every student be the one that steps up to that. that's got to be the government commitment. >> rose: bill and melinda gates for the hour next. >> 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. captioning sponsored by rose communications

from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: bill and melinda gates are here. their foundation has donated more than $31.6 billion globally since its inception is a years ago. their primary goal internationally is to improve healthcare and combat poverty. foundation contributed $50 million last year towards fighting ebola. they want to expand educational opportunities and access to technology. this week they'll publish their annual letter. and they write quote the progress we've seen so far is very exciting. so exciting we are doubling down on the bet we made 15 years ago and picking ambitious goals for what's possible 15 years from now. our big bet the lives of people in poor countries will improve faster in the next 15 yearsr59any other time in history. and their lives will improve more than anyone else's. i am pleased to have bill and melinda gates back on this

program. welcome. >> thank you. >> rose: i want to talk about the big bad and i want to bring in you talked about optimism and this report is full of optimism. 40 years ago you and paul had a big bet and that turned out to be successful. the foundation in 2000. the idea that innovative health in education and you're doubling down that bet now. why are you believing that this is doable? >> well we've been lucky enough to get a chance to go39countries, to meet with the scientists, to understand the need for the problem. how can you bring malaria down. how do you get teaching on-line so that it helps kids out. we're seeing examples. and so everything we predict is based on that experience. innovation is on our side. the fact that people care and will be able to inform them about progress in a better way. and people should know it's

really a great thing that we want them to join in with. >> rose: are there also things that you have learned in the last 15 years that will improve the way you achieve your goals in the next 15 years. >> absolutely. i think as an organization we continue to learn and hopefully it rate on everything we've learned. but i think we've learned how to get vaccines out with a much reduced amount of time. it used to take 20-25 years a vaccine would come out in the united states. now we've gotten0gto three years in the developing world with the specific strain for instance for pneumonia which is one of the biggest childhood killers. specific strains for different countries in africa. that's a huge learning. we've also learned how to bring the prices of vaccines down across the board which means we can give them to millions more children. >> rose: when you have failed to achieve what you thought you might what's been the reason. >> i think sometimes we've gone into an area and maybe looked at the problem slightly in the wrong way. for instance in the pacific northwest our own backyard we wanted to reduce homelessness.

we thought the way to do that was to build transitional housing. we do that. we built about 1700 units. but that's not really the way to end homelessness. the way to end home listness is going back up stream how do you keep the family from ending in that situation. right when they're on the cusp and can't pay the rent or medical bills. can they move in with somebody else and keep them there longer and surround them with the services they need. we asked the question a different way and came up with a different solution. we learned from that. >> rose: you said it's fair to ask whether the problems with predicting, we're predicting we can achieve. the issues, the results will be stifled by climate change. and you don't know. you've got a 15 year window. >> well the impact of climate change in the next 15 years fortunately is not dramatic. what's dramatic isq+ over time if we don't invent and

employ electricity and doing transport. and so it's a hybrid problem although it's not a near term disaster. and solput more into incentives, more into conservation. in the meantime we know that some warming is built in. that the co we've already admitted will cause warming. the biggest problem there is what that does to agriculture. and so inventing better seeds that can deal with drought or flooding, have higher productivity. that is the way to mitigate these things. so we do two things. we invest in private companies who are energy innovators and that's to reduce the emission. through the foundation we invest in agriculture advances which give you the resilience so that even in the face of climate change, the farmers will have more nutrition,/w8their kids and escape

poverty. >> rose: the interesting thing with me and knowing the two of you. we've talked about fertilizer before. >> we have. >> rose: it is how you have discovered the significance especially in africa of farming and fertilizer. tell me about it. >> well i grew up in the city so i didn't understand much about different crops and harvest and seeds all these things. and yet if you're going to care about the poorest you've got to learn about agriculture. over 60% of the poor people in the world are people who farm. most of what they eat is what they grow themselves. and so you've got to raise their productivity. every country that's come out of poverty started by getting their agriculture sector to be very productive. there are good lessons about how to do that. how the green revolution helped better seeds. those seeds were never adapted for africa. africa has a lot of climate ecosystems. it has a lot of different crops. >> rose: but can you adapt

them for africa now. >> yes. >> rose: that's the point. >> that's what we've gotten into now. it was very under funded so we've come in as one of the great funders there. our optimism comes from looking at what can be done with those seeds, both can conventional breeding and gmo breeding are giving us much much better seeds. in the meantime, we have seeds that are better than what the farmers are using. so our whole system of getting it out to them educating them giving them the credits so they can buy the seeds and fertilizer. fertilizer's too expensive in africa. if you get roads and credit system. fertilizer alone will often double your output. so it's really that lack of knowledge, lack of credit that's standing in the way of this. we predict africa will be able to feed itself. today it imports $50 billion of food a year. it's ironic you got a country, a continent with 60% of the people

are farmers importing food from the country where 2% of the people are farmers. >> rose: the other thing you talked about in terms of africa and you both talk about in hereir is that it's agriculture and health. >> absolutely. health is the precursor. if you don't grow up and live a healthy live you can't really participate in the economy. even in the family is dealing with three or four episodes of malaria in their family a year, it takes them out of the work force. so you have to do all the right things so a child grows up and is healthy. we look do they reach their fifth birthday. are they being fed a nutritious meal so they have the cognitive ability then to go on to school. is the mother not dying in childbirth. how doógtheir health is lifted up so then you can go on to give them seeds and fertilizer and training so that then they're getting more income off of their farm. as bill says, 20 to 30% increase in yield is huge for a family because not only can they then feed their family they're healthy and they can feed their family, they can put that crop on the market and get that income when they've got that

income they can then deal with the health shocks that come and they can educate their kids. they all talk about educating their kids. >> rose: you also talked about polio malaria, hiv. are we expecting break throughs in the next 15 years. >> absolutely. we think that we'll get polio done and we had a good year last year, everywhere but pakistan. it's been six months since there's been a case in africa. pakistan, we have a lot of cases but knowing that you know the focus on there is government's starting to do the right thing. >> rose: that was a politicalço issue for a while. >> well the army and the government havedefractions between floods and political things. and really going into the area where we're preventing vaccinations being done that really memo we couldn't succeed. now that the army's gone in

there they're controlling those territories. we need their cooperation to get primary health care working. and so the dialogue, the resources. i predict they'll get there. nigeria wasn't easy and we're crossing our fingers but now we've gone six months it's likely we won't have more cases. we'll get other diseases in the next 15 years but all we can say for the big killers malaria, hiv, that's the period where we'll build the break through tools. we'll get -- >> rose: is it still 600,000 deaths a year. >> yes die of malaria. we've got a pipeline, a better diagnostics, drugs and vaccines. and so 15 years from now the roadmap for eradication will be clear. we will have gone to local areas and shown how to do it. we'll need the next 15 to be sure that we get that one completely finished. >> rose: it's not only a health tragedy but an economic tragedy. >> absolutely because you have to be not dealing with an

episode of malaria to be able to participate in the economy. think about a mom or dad who are dealing with child with malaria and having to get them into the clinic. they're spending money to do that, it takes a lot of time, the child is sick. they're not out working their farmer they're not out participating in the economy in the local area. >> rose: another break through was in banking. tell me what you hope will happen there clearly about the technology issue. >> sure. we're seeing hundreds of millions of cell phones all over places likeóphilippines, bangladesh and we're seeing banking come into the forefront in huge scalekenya, tans knee yeah philippines, bangladesh. people are using their cell phones to save small amounts of money. it's incredibly buzz they don't take the transport fees they don't go to the bank where they tell you they're unwelcomed. they can stay out on their farm and save a dollar a day, $2 a day and it's transformative because if there's a health!wc0@6cexjshock in the family they then have the money to deal with it.

if they want to make sure they have the fees come fall to put their kid in school they've actually saved it on their phone. then they can use their phone and they are using their phone for all kinds of other things. the crop price markets. is it worth me going to the market today to take my farm goods in. so they're participating in the economy by having that banking on their phones. >> rose: finally education is the final break through here we talk about in this report. what's the break through, technology. >> well the key is the software. it was about 15 years ago people said boy we can take great lectures, video them and put them out on the web for free. but that did not have much impact. it wasn't connected to a degree. if you watch you got confused, you had no way of getting straightened out. the problems weren't there and so the last 15 years people have been playing around. our foundation, the biggest funder of these on-line closes.

they're selling a lot. there are quizzes, personalized learning, coaches. so what he started to do and you imagine that he now and other people doing all the other subjects over the next five to ten years will put out free learning software. even a young kid who wants to learn the alphabet or a little bit of math the mother can hand the kid the phone work a their level, personalize it to exactly the pace. so in terms of being a supplement particularly for families or kids who are motivated it makes the idea$phaving a library available. it's way way beyond that. and so it's the software and the fact that the phone or a bigger screen tablet de device will be pretty pervasive in the time frame. >> rose: what's the report on the big history project. where are we on that.

>> it's pretty amazing. >> rose: tell me what it is. >> big history is a way of teaching science and history so it's all integrated. you start at the beginning of time and see how planets got formed, single celled life, farming, complex -- >> on vacation, yes. >> so it's a way of creating the knowledge map so that instead of thinking hey these things aren't very connected or how much is there it gives you the framework and all your knowledge fits in. okay here's why the egyptians are interesting, here's why the dinosaurs are interesting. it's all in your understanding. >> rose: do you push back to this at all. >> well we have it now in a few thousand schools. new courses being taught in high school don't come along. there's coding courses which is

catching on and there's big history and we're getting great feedback we keep improving the materials. it's a pretty big investment and of course it's all free to whoever wants to use it. but i predict this will be a widely used course. we've already gotten over 50,000 students to give us their feedback. >> rose: and david christian, an australian professor. >> he led this with a bunch of people pulling it altogether. he goes aroupp the world and explains it. he's done an amazing job. >> rose: common core. >> yes. >> rose: where is that. >> i think is that's really sticking in states. what you're hearing from teachers. we saw a few states -- >> rose: bush is supporting. >> he's very much a supporter of common core. it's basically a set on standards against which we know if a student is learning math in second grade or fourth grade or tenth grade they're learning the right thing to advance to the next grade level. in math and in english language

arts. that means if a student moves from vermont let's say to new york to texas they're learning everything they need to learn at each place. it also means with a set of standards you can have all kind of curriculum. you can teach for that english less object you can use scarlet letter, you can use madam bow rea, you can use your favorite english text but in ninth grade let's say in english language arts. and so it opens up the possibility as bill says, lots of digital people creating great software can come in with great lessons, teachers can grab on and use those and personalize those along which kids want to learn about but they're learning the right thing so they're ten prepared to go on to college. >> rose: why is the american federation of teachers opposed to this. >> they're not opposed to the common core. they have looked at various states and said have you given the teachers enough training are you trying to roll this out too quickly. they have a lot of concerns

about the personnel systems that are coming in to give teachers more feed back and even sort of rank teachers. so to some degree they said okay if you're changing the curriculum, should you be putting the personnel system in at the same time. now those are two important things and it will be decided locally what those roll outlooks like. but it's more of the implementation issues where from time to time they've said hey let's slow down or let's tune that. >> if you survey the teachers the interesting things the ones that have had time to work with the common core and build out their lesson plane, they're saying they see the difference it makes in their clxjsroom. they'll say i was nervous when this came in. i don't know if i had enough time to plan it. it took me time but boy am i seeing the difference in the learning and the student outcome. >> rose: how is it doing. >> it's doing well. we have 127 billionaires now signed up to the giving pledge. we're almost at the five year anniversary this spring we will

be. i think the neatest thing about it have been the learning that are coming from one another. whether it's u.s. education system. whether it's how you measure and figure out whether your money is having impact. there's a whole session on measurement learning. everybody are benefiting from 9 conversations that we get to have in private about what things that we're learning, how we're going about doing the work. it's been beneficial certainly to us even as other people kind of introduced their areas to us that they're thinking about that are different from ours. >> rose: let me talk about the stanford speech. you two gave it together. this was 2014 of this year. and you began saying i love optimism on the stanford campus because you two are more optimistic now an ever. and optimism is essential. you make that point. and you talk about the fact though, and this is why storytelling is so important in

a conventional speech. you talk about going to africa to talk about the digital divide and see if you can minimize the digital divide, right. >> right. >> rose: what happened. >> well the ideaíj that a computer was relevant to the problems they were dealing with where getting enough food having decent health, having any electricity, a reasonable place to live. you know it's pretty clear to me that hey i love this computer and i thought it was neat and kids should have access. but they had to rig up a special generator just so i could do this one demo and they borrowed that generator. it was going to be there once i left. the idea there was a hierarchy of needs and that in our next focus together that we'd get, have those very basic issues while in addition still believing in digital empowerment but not as the top of the list. that was pretty eye opening for me. they were super polite about the

whole thing but i kind of gut that oh this you're doing this. i had so much to learn. >> rose: in fact you left saying i've got to find out about poverty. this is the first sort of searing impact of poverty on you. >> that's right. and it was touring through africa simply as a vacation that we got to see people really dealing with the basics. and so it's been a learning process ever since. >> rose: you got a call from him after they were in a hospital, tuberculosis. >> we call each but it was a different call. bill was really quite choked up on the phone. >> rose: because he had seen first hand. >> because he had seen first hand in a tb clinic hospital how awful it is to have that disease. and he literally said to me it's a death sentence to go into that hospital is a debt -- death

sentence because of the amount of tb. he said this can't be. he knew the difference but if he lived in the united states what the different the healthcare system how is it dealing with it. when you see those moments of heart break that's what propels you in the work and that'scñ what makes you say how can help not just the hundred people in that hospital but how can i help thousands and millions. >> rose: you said in a speech i told her i had been somewhere i had never been before. >> this particular hospital is called king george the fifth. you only would go in if you had drug resistent tb. the few drugs that work at all at this point have horrific side effects. there's one that gets rid of your hearing. there's another one that kind of makes you a little crazy. the hospital is not well staffed. there's young kids in there and they were thinking well do we educate them or not because

they're going to die. the staff were getting infected so not many people wanted to work there. it was just as bad as it could be. and you know there those people were and i knew most of them would never ever come out of it. and how did we get to the point where in parts of the world in that was a problem. new york city actually had a drug resistent tb problem about 15 years ago put a lot of money into it and solved it. but here it's just going on and then less innovation and delivery money shows up it's going to stay kind of a piece of health. >> rose: hears what you say in the annual report and in your speech. you said iñespecially the sense that to accomplish, to eliminate poverty which you say can be done and disease which you say can be

done, it's going to take a combination of brain power. you've often talked of putting enough iq on the problem but also heart. >> absolutely. >> rose: tell me about the heart problem the issue. because you say the worst you see the more you'll do it. >> i think you have to go to these places and you have to let your heart break and you have to say to yourself what if i was born in these circumstances. what if i was born in a rural remote place in tanzania. what would life be like for me as a mother and father. how would i save my child's life, what length would i go through to feed my children. you put yourself on the other side of the mac because when you sit down and talk with vinckers you're across the mat from one side to the other. what would i want the west to know. what would i tell them. when you let your heart break and think what it would be of a child dying of malaria you say to yourself my gosh we have to save not just that child but

600,000 children and that can be done. if you let your heart break but then you come home and you take all the science meeting and you see what the great innovations are and you start to figure out how do i deliver those things in these difficult remote settings in africa. i think that's been a set of learning for the foundation for the last 15 years. not just how to do the great science but also how to deliver it in these remote rural settings. >> rose: you tell the story of a woman who had two children please take my children and you said i can't. i hear you. and she said please take one, you know. >> she had these sons. and i could see she had a tiny little house. and she kept saying and i could see her husband inside she had been injured and she says he has no job anymore. she said you can see the÷5m

when i couldn't shedy says okay please just take one of them. she doesn't know who i am. she just knows i'm a woman from the united states and she knows the chance for those children to grow up and be healthy and reach their potential is so much higher in the united states than in her village in india. >> rose: showing like all mothers the first idea is the best that can happen for her children. >> absolutely. i took a group, i was out with a group of u.s. senators actually in africa a couple years ago, we were visiting ethiopia and tanzania. she was talking about this corn said maize said, the extra income she was getting at market. we knew from her story she was telling us she was walking every are tee four kilometers to get cart, two kilim meters to recharge her cell phone when we asked her what she wanted for

her future she said i want my kids all five of them to be educated. everybody in the room was blown away. it wasn't something she quuntd for herself it was for her children. that's the story i hear over and over again in the developing world. >> rose: you say optimism drives innovation. meaning what. you have to be optimistic in order to see the fruition of innovation? >> it's hard to tell people to immerse themselves in how tough life is in to countries unless you're telling them we want you to see that because you can be part of changing it. and so telling them that it is changing for the better is a key element there. if you just look at the headlines you don't see the improvement because bad things happen all at once. they make headlines. as we're improving the world, we're saving one liver at a time as the vaccines are getting out to more kids. as we add a new vaccine. there's almost never a moment

where you see that upward task and of course we often talked about it's still not there. and i know that these are solvable problems. i know that name theb3 days give us enough time, enough brilliant people on delivery, enough resources that thing can beacon curred. we can bring to extremely low level all these diseases. >> rose: you also make the point and we know and the president speaks to this in the state of the union address, the idea of inequity. and people are saying my life, even in the west, that i've happened i'm worried my children will not have that kind of life. and their pessimistic and you say to them? >> well, i believe the u.s. education system will be better

ten years from now 15 years from now than it is today. i think that's of critical importance because that's what's if we really believe in equal opportunity, that is the system that enables it. so i believe the people are wrong to be pessimistic. i think we can make that education system better. i think partly as the economy gets better, that mood will improve as they see the innovation. there's broad base benefit here that we're really taking these things -- >> rose: we have a consensus in this country about those things or are we engaged in a kind of grid lock that does not allow us to fullyñ, mobilize all of the potential of our innovation and our creativity. >> well, there's a basic belief in funding an education system. the idea of how do you get the

highest quality teaching. a lot of debate about that. what country should we learn from with a type of system should we have. does the school board system lead to the kind of excellence that we want to get out of these things. i think there's a health debate and nobody kneels good where we are today. i don't think that fundamental principle is what's at question i would say the execution where do you drive the excellence what do the measures look like. do you just trust that things go well or do you actually have a system in place. >> i would say even a decade ago when we were early getting in the education work but 15 years ago we weren't having the right conversation as a nation about how are we graduating kids prepared to go on to college. we know if you get into college your chance for your earning potential is huge down the line. we weren't even discussing the fact that only a third of the kids coming out of high schools

were even prepared to go and why was there that gap. how can you have high schools that are so bad that you're graduating kids with a set of straight a's and b's and saying they're ready for college and they get there and they're completely not. we find we're having that conversation and figuring out what it's going to take to fix the high school system. the differences come in on the implementation how to do that but having the right conversation that needs to be done i think we're past that difficult conversation that needed to come forward. >> rose: back to africa. you said a great quote in the speech which i read which was that if we don't have optimism with a don't have empathy. it doesn't matter how much we master the secret of science we're really not solving problems, we're just working out, empathy the key word there. >> we don't need to distract huge percentage of

if we had ten percent of the effort, then we could make these break throughs. the funny thing we found was when you look at something like malaria there was almost no effort at all. so the last 15 years had been fantastic. the u.s. aid budget on aids and malaria's gone up substantially. the research money available but it's coming from us and others has meant that smart people are going into those areas. and you know we'd like to see it increase some. fortunately there's enough people we can keep working onç4 6cj& cancer keep working on alzheimer's and parkinson's and still with a 10% allocation, do a fantastic job on these diseases. and it's true with the aids budget as well. the most generous country in the world, norway puts 2% of their government spending, 1 % of their

economy into the aids budget. that's considered the best. we're not saying it's a gigantic take away from spending it's measurable but those dollars are very dramatic now that we have good programs. >> rose: i assume you don't accept the argument it is made by people and articles i've read, there may be thekç risk of private philanthropy meaning definite does not deal the responsibility at the large scale it ought to be delivering on. do you think there's some merit in that argument. >> philanthropy has a pretty narrow role. the private market has the biggest role and you use that wherever you can. then government comes in and roads and justice, making sure everybody gets education. those basic needs for everybody government's got to step up to that. philanthropy's more about pilot programs. innovation. some of the research things are

so risky it wouldn't get done otherwise. the overall economy in a philanthropy is less than 2%. so we have to be careful to only do those things that it's uniquely able to do. but saying every child should get an education. no philanthropy is not going to every year for every student be the one that steps up to that. that's got to be the government commitment. >> i think vaccine is actually a perfect example. vaccine is about to come up on a five year renewal of funding. what we're doing as a community is raising $7.5 billion that will get announced next week in berlin. vast majority of that funding is government funding. so over five and-a-half billion will be from governments. that fund alone has allowed us to create a poll mechanism to poll the vaccines through. but what the private philanthropy piece can do is go make sure new vaccines are created, make sure we get lower

price vaccines for something like hpv for cervical cancer for women. so we can bring down the prices we can get new vaccines created and that government that huge amount of government funding will pull them through. it promises them there will be a market to the pharmaceutical companies and pull it through and get them delivered out to the countries. >> rose: most people think that the two of you and the foundation has done more than anything they ever imagined might be possible. you also initiated ten years ago the grand challenge project. what is your ten year assessment of that and what did5e you learn from it? >> well grand challenge was ecial in the -- early in the life of the foundation five years in and we thought boy can't we get pretty quickly tools for hiv and malaria and tb. and we feel great about the money we spent there. we've learned how tough it is to get tools for these diseases.

and so we say it's even though that was ten years ago it will be another 15 before we have that full set of tools. >> rose: so you need more time to get morefaziujachieve everything you want. >> we were a bit naive about all the scientific difficulties and getting these trials done, getting out there. >> rose: the naivety was about how long it took. >> mostly about how long the twist and turns. >> rose: what would you say about the grand challenge. >> there are some pieces we wanted to add on. we didn't think about gender initially and now the found agent is starting to think more about girls and woman in all ourpódwork. not that we haven't been doing it. the last announcement we made in the ball we have a particular gender lens to say to scientists look out there and come up with your most creative idea around germs and women. for instance one thing that's already come forward is young women scientists working in africa with 12 africans. she's figured out how to create with local product, local agriculture products, a very

cheap menstrual pad means girls aren't out of school for seven or eight days out of the month. and her technology can be used in manufacturing other businesses like cardboard. you you can create whole businesses in industry but just like focusing on girls we actually have a local product that's cheap. we wouldn't be doing that if we weren't pulling those ideas forward. >> rose: have there been opportunity costs because you thought it was essential. we'll come back to vaccines. to see what the possibilities were of these grand projects. opportunity calls. >> the world benefits immensely that the u.s. government funds basic medical science. nih budget, 30 billion a year really is driven so much new knowledge. and so we try not+) to duplicate that. we have a lot less money than that so we try to build on that and we have a veryzz3partnership with them. we have some areas like

nutrition or early delivery that the science is not understood. so we've had to go down to fairly basic levels that we wish other funders developed that understanding. and yet because they haven't now you know some of the very basic nutrition studies we're doing. and that's the scientific landscape and so, you know, it's got to be done. >> rose: you're talking about agriculture. tell me about the issue of water. >> well water is in a sense always being renewed by rain and sometimes you have too much and sometimes you have too little. there are parts of africa where they wait for the rains and you'll have years for very little rain comes and that's tough because unlike in the u.s. if you get a bad year you've got

a savings you've got storage. you can get through a year without malnutrition. in africa, they're always right on the edge, and so a little bit of change in the weather and they won't have enough crop to feed their own families. these are notjçó irrigated farms. there's a factor of difference between african productivity and u.s. productivity. we think we can bring african productivity up to one point, from one to 1.5. not all the way up to the u.s. level. part of that is they just can't afford the mechanication and irrigation. they will still be dependent on the.itthere are areas where the population growth is such that you won't be able to grow enough food. people have to leave those areas and go to other areas that's always very very difficult to achieve. >> rose: also about this water i forget the name of it. >> poop water. >> rose: yes, roll tape. take a look at this. >> i'm very impressed with this

solution here. it generates electricity and generates clean water. >> it will grow at every corner of the earth that needs it because it makes money every day. >> rose: so tell me what i just saw. five minutes ago before you took that drink, that was sewage. >> right. in african city, when you have filled up latrine where does that stuff go. well unfortunately the cost of processing is so high that you have to pay somebody to process it. and that means you take it and dump it somewhere and that's causing not just smell but also disease in that slum environment. if we could make it so we didn't have to charge you when you come and empty the latrine because your using that as input to generate clean water and

electricity then it changes the whole behavior. pretty soon that sewage is going to the processing center. we had engineers build a system like that and we had a couple who came up with a brilliant solution. that system we just saw there is headed to senegal with one of peter's sons will be watching overso what the reaction is and eventually hope to build thousands of those. >> i think the other thing to say two things about clean water. first is if you don't have access to clean water. we know children get more diarrheal episodes and affects their gut function. we don't know the science what happens to their government but we know we can't take nutrition out of the food and if you don't get proper nutrition you can't grow up to your best cognitive ability to perform in school or the economy.

it has a profound effect on children. it effects global women hugely in the developing world. both going to find a latrine. they'll tell you standing in lines for hours long distance to go to a place that's safe but they're the ones that carry the clean water. that is women's work in the developing world and they'll spend hours a day going carry clean water back to their family. my daughter jennifer and i spent some time on a farm in tanzania last null and i could not believe when the wife described she used to go 20 kilometers to get water, twice a week. she said finally when their first son was born, she had chosen this marriage, she got to choose the marriage. her husband came home one day and she packed her bags. he was going to leave and she was distraught why are you going to leave. there's no water. you brought me to a farm with no water. meyer relatives didn't live in this kind of environment. he said what can i do to help and he said go collect the water. when he did and wentts the 20

kilometers and realized what it took he realized he to do take a bicycle. the other men made fun of them and eventually joined him and the men decided to build water pans all around the village so the women didn't have to go more than a kilometer. that's the differences it makes in their lives. >> rose: does this become an issue for you women, empowerment of women both in terms of banking, mobile banking, in terms of change in culture. you see it in hiv. >> absolutely. i think for women we have to empower them. you have to. it will change the gdp of country. we actually know that. the way to think bell powerment is three areas. health decision-making and economic opportunity. so you start them on a healthy life you make sure they can participate in something like mobile banking so they can participate in the economy and you get them into school. because if you get a girl into school the effects are tremendous not just for her but

the family. if she's in school she gets married later, has children later in live and doesn't by in childbirth and has healthier children. she sends her own daughter to school twice as likely and get this her child is likely to life to the fifth birthday. two times likelihood her child will live to fifth birthday if she's educated. because the whole way she accesses the healthcare sist emtell is different if she has literacy if she's in that teacher learning role, she can bring stories to her family for what medication had he can get. education transforms everything for girls. >> rose: two things again. to tie together what you said at stanford and what you said in this annual report, this annual roar. the last part of it is asking people to be global citizens. meaning what? >> well we think everybody feels like they're part part of

humanity. their caring is not just for their family. >> rose: instinct. >> particularly thebetter off that yes you want to have a great career but you'd like to be connected with people with real moral value where you're up lifting people's lives. we had like people to sign up. they'll get some e-mails every month about different things going on ask we'll expect they'll pick one of those and really engage with it. we'd like to see more of them get out to the developing world so we'll give them opportunities that not only will they see the fun stuff out there but they'll see where they need to do a better job. once you've actually gone, that really draws you in. so getting another 10, 20,000 out there then that data would come back and say the same type of things we do. so it's a special year because the u.n. is adopting the goals for the next 15 years. so we'd like people to step

away, sign up and they'll see a few things that sparks their interest and give them a chance to engage in this grand project. >> rose: is there something you believe you can do that you couldn't do when you set out, with all the goals of the foundation. because for a while, you were really there as the principal driver of the foundation. >> i believe we could make things better for women all over the word. women and thinner. >> rose: is it slower than you thought. >> the childhood pieces is really quick. childhood definite coming down bag cut in half in the last 25 years that's actually gone really well. the piece that i think we didn't get into we started to get into and we didn't for a while and now we're back in full force is making sure women have contraceptives. it's transformative for their live. if they can space in too many the birth of their children the women are health jury and their babies are healthier and it transforms their family because

if they choose not to have six or five children instead they make this decision to have two or three it changes everything about being able to keep those kids healthy and get them into schools. and women all over the word, when i sit down and talk with them, i would go in to talk about vaccines and they wanted to talk about access to contraceptives. it was really interesting. >> rose: your life? investment in the world, this investment in trying to cure disease and poverty. what's your observation to interrupt one more time. >> it's in some ways not that different because you're working with smart people and you have some thing that work and some that fail. it's very difficult in terms of the types of problems you work on. my partners at microsoft were paul alan and steve balmer.

now my full time partner is melinda and our co-trustee who gives us good advice. in terms of having the sense of okay let's do better let's let this move faster. the things i learned in my career were super helpful to be able to do this job. >> rose: do you mean in term of business model in terms of metrics and those kinds of things. >> people skills. learning a bit of science. >> rose: has he because of the experiences that we've been talking about and you talked about, the last thing you said at stanford when you see suffering don't turn away turn towards it. has he changed? >> >> rose: have you seen things in him that you did not know were there. >> i knew they were there. i wouldn't have married him in they weren't there. >> rose: you weren't surprised. >> absolutely. i got to see them during thetime when we're dating. when you're a ceo running a hard charging business that moves very very quickly you move very

quickly and very efficiently and i don't think he spent much time at work thinking about things that tug your heart. >> rose: so understanding the kind of resources you have because of microsoft, it's not surprising, you know, that this investment in the world and making sure that all lives are equal and the reality of your life. >> it's not surprising. i knew bill would always as he told me get around to the. he always said it would be in his 60's and he's not there yet. but he's living that every single day and not just doing the optimism and innovative science and meeting with great leaders, he's inspiring people inside and out side the foundation to move forward on this bold vision and to touch people's lives. it's amazing with software but in so many different areas that are transformative to their lives. i think it's phenomenal that he's doing it earlier than said he would. >> together. >> we've been doing it together and we enjoy it and we enjoy the people that we meet and learn on

the ground. it's just a lot of fun and i think it's very deepening to our marriage. >> rose: do you get more out of it than you give to it. >> sure. >> oh gosh so much more. >> rose: left me talk about microsoft. you're back at microsoft for one third of your time. >> it's about 30% of my time. and you know, the new ceo is taking some new direction. and whatever help he asks for i'm there. >> rose: and you got a new windows 10 coming out. >> yes. they've got well they have an announcement this week. it ships later this year. >> rose: are you optimistic about it? are you excited about it. >> yes. i'm helping get the new strategy in place and there are bright people there full time. i'm enthused about this they stepped back they realized key trends they need to get ahead of. they have brilliant people. >> rose: is that primary mobile. >> well mobile cloud.

machine learning. the daptb research work at microsoft has stayed very very strong. and so now mapping that into the office product changing quickly or the way you work across multiple devices changing quickly or being the leader on speech and vision giving you new ways of interacting with information. >> rose: we've been talking about women and poverty. there are questions raised you ought to is a more women. >> sure. i think what's been great in this software industry is they're actually publishing their statistics now so you can see the transparency is is first step. and i think they're all submitted. they know it will be better for them if they can get more women in computer science. but it's a problem you've got together back to elementary and middle school and look at the points of why do you lose girls in middle school and high school. what is it about confidence, what is it about teachers teaching science and computer science that keeps girls engaged so they don't step back. particular ly when the boys are speaking out and have

confidence. a lot of things coming forward like code.org will help, people having transparency and i think more women role models not trying only to men they are but sponsor girls and pull them up. i think all of those things will help. all the things sharyl sandberg has brought forward in her lean-in conversation but we need to do more. >> rose: what's on the frontier in the technology world or artificial intelligence or biomedicine. what is it that in the end matches your excitement about the world we've been talking about all this hour? possibilities extra improvements in the lives of people around the world. >> over the holiday the memo i wrote for microsoft was about this agent that will perfect

your memory, remind you to do things at the right time. using the computer will help you to the input super well. software, these still a lot that can be done there and hopefully that inspires microsoft to do things. i spent earlier this week with medical scientists and that was so amazing because despite what you see in how many new drugs come out the last few years, medical science is really on the verge of break throughs and not just for the developing world although fortunately that is -- >> rose: are you thinking of things like stem cell. >> yes. various ways of attacking cancer. still cell immunotherapy. this period will be so incredible in terms of those medical advances. though i'm optimistic about a

lot of areas but those i get a front seat on the medical break throughs and these it break throughs generate a lot of things like the banking thing and the education thing. the i.t. piece is the enabler. now you have to go out to the great teachers and learn from them. but it's wonderful that that digit gift is not anywhere near its final piece of work. nor are biological advances. >> when we were dating and bill's working full time and loved being ceo of microsoft but one thing he would say to me on vacation i wished i got to spent more time with other scientists in other fields. he could see and read but didn't get much time to go outvisit labs and scientists. and now he's doing a lot of that. >> real privilege. >> rose: my take away from this is this is really a remarkable time in terms of tools that we're developing and at the same time we cannot for a moment forget that it is not

only about optimism and innovation but it's also about caring and heart and actually experiencing and feeling the reality around you. >> absolutely. >> rose: thank you. thank you. >> thank you charlie. >> rose: bill and minute de gates for -- melinda gates for the hour. >> for more visit us on pbs.org and charlierose.com. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

[serene guitar music] ♪ ♪ captioning and audio description provided by the u.s. department of education. >> it was good to be back in the wilderness again, where everything seems at peace. i was on me and the anal was a gre feeling-- free omore tplan d do as i plse beyo was all around me. my d w a dream no lo. suppose i was here bause this was sething i had to do-- not just dream about it, but do it.