The Gates Foundation opens its gates, or a few windows
The new visitor center's vivid, heartfelt displays tell the story of the foundation's globe-spanning philanthropic ambitions, and of the enormous work that waits to be done.
Eric Scigliano
Dick Nelson
In February the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation opened its visitor center, and the public gained a clearer view of the wide-ranging work of the world’s largest philanthropy. The foundation is the centerpiece of Seattle’s position as an international hub of efforts to improve human health, expand educational opportunities, and reduce poverty and hunger in the world’s burgeoning population.
The visitor center is adjacent to the two six-story buildings that compose the Gates Foundation’s headquarters campus just east of Seattle Center. These imposing, energy-efficient offices were completed and occupied in June 2011. A third is planned. The campus is not open to the public, but the center gives a sense of the work done by the almost 1000 employees who occupy foundation’s Seattle home and its offices in Washington, Beijing, Delhi, and London, and of the many other organizations funded by its grants.
The D.C. office signifies the foundation’s efforts to build strong partnerships with the federal agencies that provide foreign assistance. Both Bill and Melinda Gates have emphasized that private philanthropy cannot carry the full load, and that coordination with government programs is essential to improve global health and human development .
Since 1999, the Gates Foundation has spent $26 billion to fund more than 7,500 projects. In 2010 alone it disbursed $2.6 billion grants, supporting projects in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and more than 100 countries. The foundation currently has an asset trust endowment of $34.5 billion, which is supplemented by annual gifts from Warren Buffet in the form of Berkshire Hathaway shares.
The visitor center’s exhibits show how the foundation’s concerns have evolved and expanded since its inception in 1994. At first it focused on improving public education in the United States, and improving high school graduation rates is still a major goal. Today improving global health is the primary focus, encompassing family planning, the development of new vaccines, and health care delivery.
The Foundation’s diverse efforts also touch on several of the Millennium Development Goals adopted by the United Nations in 2000. In addition to combating disease, the eight goals seek to end extreme poverty and hunger, reduce child mortality, improve nutrition, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality, and build sustainable and equitable economies; clearly they are interrelated and mutually dependent. All eight are on track for achievement in 2015 or soon after.
The visitor center is designed to both educate and engage visitors by eliciting suggestions for improving humanity’s condition in the United States and abroad. Keyboards are provided to encourage people to contribute their ideas, and in some cases their criticisms of the foundation’s programs. Comments are directly posted on screens for all to see.
After viewing the exhibits, including several innovative technologies that the Foundation has helped develop, visitors are invited to indicate how they will personally support global development in one or more of its many facets. Pledge cards are available to take home as reminders.
The Gates Foundation can be its own toughest critic. One display candidly admits that its Small Schools Initiative, an early effort to improve high school graduation rates by reducing class size, “failed despite spending $700 million” over the course of a decade. Resources were redirected to an effort at boosting teacher support and improving teacher effectiveness.
But the foundation doesn’t hesitate to defend programs that have come under attack by others working on similar problems. One example: the application of biotechnology in the form of transgenic or genetically modified disease-resistant seeds to small-farm agriculture. Genetically modified organisms are an incendiary topic in the development community and among those who promote organic foods. But the Gates Foundation believes they can make a big difference in many developing countries, where smallholder farmers make up the majority of the population and food costs consume up to half of family incomes. Bill Gates takes on GMO critics in his most recent annual letter and in a press interview.
The foundation’s position is that poor farmers (and in Africa most rural smallholders are women) should be given the best opportunities to improve productivity, feed their families, and even export food commodities to generate income. A program it supports buys food from small farmers to replace food aid that is currently sourced from the United States and other wealthy nations.
More productive seeds are just one piece of the foundation’s African rural development program. Increased soil fertility, water for irrigation, and improved market access are others. In Asia, grants have gone out to support research in flood-prone regions where rice plants must survive being under water for extended periods.
Several Foundations programs reflect Bill Gates’ interests in information technology and innovation. An early program, the Gates Library Fund, was designed to bring free internet connections to libraries in developing countries. The Next Generation Learning Challenges, which the foundation funds in partnership with the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, applies learning technology to improve college readiness and completion rates in the United States.
Last December, the Gates Foundation awarded MIT $3 million to develop a massively multiplayer online game to help high school students learn math and biology. The intent is to change the way science, technology, engineering, and math are taught in secondary schools, so that students pursue the kind of education and training that employers are seeking.
A new priority at the foundation is giving people tools such as wireless phone banking that build personal and family financial security. A display at the visitors center indicates that 90 percent of people in developing nations lack a safe place to keep their savings.
Meanwhile, in its core mission, the Gates Foundation has partnered with several Seattle-based organizations to solve some of the most intractable global health problems. Recipients of Foundation grants include PATH (the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health), the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute, the Infectious Disease Research Institute, and the UW’s Department of Global Health.
Since 1995 PATH has received 112 grants totaling $2.68 billion, including $183 million in 2009 grant to develop a successful vaccine against malaria, which kills nearly 1 million people each year, mostly young kids, and debilitates infected adults.
Polio shows how vaccines can end a world-wide scourge. Thanks to an intensive effort to administer oral vaccine to all children, India just completed its first full year without a single case of polio reported. Now the polio virus survives in just a few areas, in Nigeria, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
Many locally based organizations are working on myriad challenges in the developing world eyond disease eradication, from education to clean water and micro-lending. World Vision, a large private charity headquartered in Federal Way, has received foundation grants for its global development work.
Global Washington, another local organization supported by the Gates Foundation, provides opportunities for all these groups to share information, collaborate, and, when appropriate, join in advocacy. It maintains a state directory of more than 350 academic centers, businesses, foundations, and nonprofits engaged in global development.
The Gates Foundation and its trustees have also spawned initiatives to advance global philanthropy. The Giving Pledge, initiated by Bill Gates and Warren Buffet in 2010, seeks to persuade other rich Americans to donate at least half of wealth to philanthropy. This effort has recently expanded to include wealthy individuals and families in China.
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Comments:
Posted Wed, Mar 28, 10:58 a.m. Inappropriate
Another take on Gates Foundation and that essential field trip:
When A Non-Profit Gets In Bed With The Enemy: Monsanto's Chemical War on the World
It's huge – asymmetrical, shaped like two fat slugs meeting in on the same cornstalk at their mouths. The benefactors call it a campus. Some see it as a reflection of the hubris the Foundation promulgates.
NBBJ architects figured in 900,000 square feet to meet the needs of 1,200 employees at a cost of $500 million. The voices of small holder farmers and agro-experts are not heard in those halls of 20,000 foot high policy making.
It cost the protestors at the rally outside this monstrosity about $60 in poster board and Haz-mat suits. It was a fun time in rare Seattle March sunshine.
More than 40 people, as part of a global day of action against Monsanto, marched to and around the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation “campus” Friday March 16 to deliver a letter asking the Foundation to divest from Monsanto (the Foundation has more than $23 million in Monsanto stock as part of a very odd mix of companies in their portfolio).
Trying to eradicate developing countries' diseases, forcing genetically modified farming into Africa, and weighing in on and lobbying for privatizing public education are just a few of the Gates Foundation's larger goals, largely financed by $11.9 billion, with the following five top stock holdings:
a. Berkshire Hathaway Inc. - 73,997,400 shares, 49.75% of the total portfolio
b.McDonald's Corp. - 9,372,500 shares, 5.21% of the total portfolio
c. Caterpillar Inc. - 9,590,400 shares, 4.86% of the total portfolio
d. The CocaCola Company - 10,182,000 shares, 4.31% of the total portfolio
e. Waste Management Inc. - 15,716,367 shares, 4.15% of the total portfolio.
They've got 500,000 shares of Goldman Sachs, 7.1 million shares of Exxon Mobile and those half a million shares of Monsanto.
What's all the protesting about? According to Dena Hoff, a diversified family farmer in Glendive, Montana, and North American coordinator of La Via Campesina, “The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust's purchase of Monsanto shares indicates that the Gates Foundation's interest in promoting the company's seed is less about philanthropy than about profit-making. The Foundation is helping to open new markets for Monsanto, which is already the largest seed company in the world.”
These aren't sour grapes about one of the richest people on earth capitalizing on stock trading. Monsanto, who created the dioxin-leeching defoliant Agents Orange and Blue, is one of the main drivers of genetically modified foods.
Heather Day, director of Seattle-based Community Alliance for Global Justice, and one of Friday's organizers (see story here on AGRA Watch), summed up the recent news on GE crops and foods: “Reports are coming out weekly about impending crop failures of GE corn in Africa, pesticide resistance for GE corn grown for ethanol in the US, and about indications that Bt toxins, the primary GE pesticides, especially when in the presence with Roundup, have potential impacts on human kidney cells and mammalian testis.”
Another one of the protestors/letter signatories was Les Berensen, a medical doctor who is also with GMO Free Washington. His concern is tied to Monsanto's Roundup, which has the main ingredient of 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid. Berensen mentioned how salmon and other fish species are being affected by the huge runoffs from fields of corn, beets, soy, cotton and potatoes that are genetically modified to take up to four or five dousings of Roundup.
He likened this day and age of Monsanto as a Frankenstein era for both species in the wild and the human species. The event, like many around the world, was attended by a diverse group of people, including in Seattle:
Dan Trocolli, Seattle Educators Association and Social Equality Educators; Kristen Beifus, Washington Fair Trade Coalition; and William Aal, Washington Biotechnology Action Council.
One fellow holding a corn sign and getting signatures was Travis English, UW graduate student in planning and with CAGJ and AGRA Watch. He is seeing more and more destruction of departments at UW through consolidation and outright disbanding. He's working on food policies for several cities as part of his graduate work.
“There are already many movements around healthy local food economies. There are proven projects and farms in Africa that are both sustainable and organic. Getting people hooked on Monsanto's seeds and pesticides with micro-loaning that they can't pay back will result in more farms being lost and more people moving to the cities. This is not a successful formula, and the Gates Foundation should really lead by getting rid of its Monsanto stocks, as a first step.”
Many of the protesters were in Haz-mat suits, and many carried signs belying the fear of this giant genetically modified experiment taking place in mankind. Ellie Rose is working on Transition Seattle and buttressing “ a culture of engagement through a group called We the People Power.”
One attendee, Karen Studders, had come from Occupy Wall Street, Zuccotti Park, where for two months she lived in a tent. Studders, in her mid-sixties, once worked in big business, for government organizations, and with United Nations agencies, plying her legal and science degrees from the University of Minnesota.
“We have to act quickly. The abuse of these corporations, which is so blatant now, has got to stop. I have a lot of hope after being part of the Occupy movement, especially after we were illegally evicted.”
She not only went from tent to tent to listen to the ideas and rebellion of the youth, but she went into a self-made retreat after the police crack down, traveling to various cities to see the Transition Town movement up close and personal.
The security at the Foundation would not accept the signed letter asking the Gates Foundation to divest from Monsanto. I talked with several Foundation employees – researchers with higher degrees. They said that Foundation's policy employees is to “not let us engage in any dialogue on any issues of controversy.” Which means, nothing but the weather can be discussed? (Whoops, climate change seems to affect disease and crops).
Additionally, any nice, well-crafted and footnoted handouts on Monsanto and Roundup pesticides they might be handed “will have to be handed over to security once we enter the building.”
Those three monkeys – see, hear, and speak no evil – seem anachronistic in the 21st century for a think tank outfit like the Gates Foundation.
Fortunately, less than a week after Seattle's event, dozens of protesters monkey-wrenched Monsanto’s California office in Davis, an area close to the Capitol, through vocal activism. Unlike Seattle's event, the California activists made demands to shut down the biotech giant which has its talons in the United States government, including the Supreme Court.
“If a small group can take down their office for a day from some mild protests, a few hundred thousand can take down the entire company — permanently,” wrote journalist Anthony Gucciardi from Natural Society.
Check out the Monsanto strategy here – for our school kids:
http://www.nationofchange.org/outrageous-lies-monsanto-and-friends-are-trying-pass-kids-science-1332862386
More on AGRA Watch –
http://www.downtoearthnw.com/search/?q=AGRA+Watch&x;=0&y;=0
Posted Wed, Mar 28, 4:47 p.m. Inappropriate
[CONTINUED}
The security at the Foundation would not accept the signed letter asking the Gates Foundation to divest from Monsanto. I talked with several Foundation employees – researchers with higher degrees. They said that Foundation's policy employees is to “not let us engage in any dialogue on any issues of controversy.” Which means, nothing but the weather can be discussed? (Whoops, climate change seems to affect disease and crops).
Additionally, any nice, well-crafted and footnoted handouts on Monsanto and Roundup pesticides they might be handed “will have to be handed over to security once we enter the building.”
Those three monkeys – see, hear, and speak no evil – seem anachronistic in the 21st century for a think tank outfit like the Gates Foundation. Fortunately, less than a week after Seattle's event, dozens of protesters monkey-wrenched Monsanto’s California office in Davis, an area close to the Capitol, through vocal activism. Unlike Seattle's event, the California activists made demands to shut down the biotech giant which has its talons in the United States government, including the Supreme Court.
“If a small group can take down their office for a day from some mild protests, a few hundred thousand can take down the entire company — permanently,” wrote journalist Anthony Gucciardi from Natural Society.
Check out the Monsanto strategy here – for our school kids:
http://www.nationofchange.org/outrageous-lies-monsanto-and-friends-are-trying-pass-kids-science-1332862386
More on AGRA Watch –
http://www.downtoearthnw.com/search/?q=AGRA+Watch&x;=0&y;=0
Not to outdo Crosscut and the rest of Seattle's truth seeking gumshoes.....
(see story here on AGRA Watch)
here (actually 5):
http://www.downtoearthnw.com/search/?q=AGRA+Watch&x;=0&y;=0
Posted Thu, Mar 29, 11:09 a.m. Inappropriate
Dick--
I am amazed, given your politics, at this hagiographic account of the Gates Foundation.
As someone who has been working to challenge their incursions into African agricultures (with the "AGRA Watch project, http://www.seattleglobaljustice.org/agra-watch/
I am glad that you mentioned that people have raised concerns about these activities. Then you lay out the Gates rebuttal without ever having indicated what those concerns are! You could have easily discovered them (or your contacts at Gates could have furnished you this information) and written a balanced essay. instead, you became a cog in the Foundation's propaganda machine. What a disappointment!
It is telling that scores of African grassroots organizations--of farmers, environmentalists, of policy wonks dealing with development issues--are outraged that a rich white guy from 10,000 miles away--who knows nothing about ag or Africa--is using his enormous wealth and power to tell them what they should be doing. Talk about neo-colonial mentality!
And what he is pushing is WRONG. industrial ag approaches will NOT feed hungry Africans, according to Olivier de Schutter, the UN's Special Rapporteur on Hunger, or the IAASTD study funded by the World Bank and several UN agencies. They realize that only "agroecological" approaches are sustainable, affordable, amenable to local control and democracy. Maybe you need to read up a bit before postings like this.
Phil Bereano
(former constituent)
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