Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Archives - Humanosphere

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Gates-backed tech toilet poops out in India |

: Bill Gates reviews one contestant in the Toilet Re-Invention contest.; Gates Foundation

One of the most popular missions lately for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has been to re-invent the toilet, an initiative it launched nearly two years ago to great media fanfare as part of its broader program aimed at improving sanitation and water.

Billions of people lack access to proper sanitation, making this a huge global public health threat, and need. Some news stories:

Time Gates Foundation funding toilets of the future

NPR Bill Gates crowns toilet innovators

Reuters Gates Foundation puts money on solar-powered toilet

Today, according to India media, one of the winning toilet innovators in the philanthropy’s contest, Eram Scientific, has failed to attact poopers nearly a year after introduction. As The Hindu reports, an official says part of the problem is:

“People don’t know how to use these technologically advanced toilets. They are afraid to use it; they fear being locked up…”

Bill Gates is on his way to India so maybe he’ll swing by to check on this project and see if he can flush out the problem. To be fair, this is why this project is part of the foundation’s Grand Challenges program, which is designed to test out high-risk ideas and learn from failure.

FILED UNDER: Basics, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, sanitation, toilet

May 7, 2013 | 1:00 PM | By Tom Paulson |

Bill Gates’ humanitarian plan for world (vaccination) domination |

: UN

Bill Gates loves vaccines.

He says so all the time. The media, as well as the social media hipsterverse, regularly report on this love affair, usually cheering along with Gates in favor of the cause of polio eradication — a cause which was advanced recently at a meeting he and other glitterati convened in Abu Dhabi, the world’s richest city.

Gates says the very foundation of his foundation comes from his realization in the 1990s that kids were dying for lack of access to a vaccine we in the rich world take for granted. As a result, boosting vaccination worldwide became the prime mover, the raison d’être, for what would soon be the world’s biggest philanthropy.

Yet few appreciate today just how revolutionary, and unlikely, was the start of this love affair.

Promoting this powerful, fundamental tool for children’s health may look now like an obvious humanitarian thing for a philanthropist to do. But it wasn’t either obvious or that celebrated when the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation started down this path (pun intended) in the 1990s.

The Gates Foundation’s push for a revolution in immunization was greeted, from the outset, by a weird combination of controversy and apathy. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Health, Amie Batson, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, GAVI, Kate Elder, Médecins Sans Frontières, Orin Levine, PATH, Seth Berkley, vaccines

April 19, 2013 | 2:46 PM | By Ansel Herz |

Geek Heretic explains why technology can’t solve the poverty problem |

Kentaro Toyama is a geek heretic, or at least, that’s what Tom Paulson dubbed him last year. Now it’s the working title for Toyama’s upcoming book. Toyama is a renowned computer scientist and expert in computer-human visual interactions. He helped launch Microsoft Research in India in 2005 and was dispatched by Bill Gates to find technological solutions to poverty and inequity. After giving it his best, Toyama decided technology, though useful, cannot fix poverty.

: Kentaro Toyama in the studio

One of the commenters on Toyama’s ideas last year wasn’t convinced: “If he is only talking about current things like personal computers, sure. But when we get 3D Printers that can make more replicators, nanobots and the like, he is totally wrong.”

It’s certainly tempting to think that next generation of futuristic technologies can change the world. But Toyama has seen innovative technology rendered powerless, harmful even, in settings of severe poverty. He says the problems require even deeper solutions.

So we get deep into the issues in the podcast. Listen in below.

Technology's limits in the fight against poverty Download

FILED UNDER: Podcasts, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Kentaro Toyama, poverty, technology

April 3, 2013 | 11:45 AM | By Tom Paulson |

Indian slum activists are Revolutionary Optimists at Melinda Gates TED talk |

Today, at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, was another one of those TED franchise talks.

For this latest spin-off of the popular by-invitation-only main TED talks, this one known as a TEDxChange, Melinda Gates hosted a talk given in Seattle and webcast online on positive disruption – on challenging time-worn assumptions, prompting creative solutions to entrenched problems and inspiring even the most disenfranchised to recognize their personal power.

Speakers included a clever young poet from Nigeria, a theologian who claimed it was progress for the Catholic Church to officially consider the possibility that condoms are not immoral, a social media expert who claimed social media is changing the world, journalist Roger Thurow (an expert on hunger and agriculture in Africa) and an inspiring young woman Melinda met on a trip to Niger.

Like most TED talks, it was fun with a lot of broad and encouraging statements without too many complicating details. The webcast itself was ‘negatively disrupted’ (lots of jokes on Twitter about this) when the TED live stream dropped just as Melinda was making her opening statements. It was restored minutes later.

Of all the featured speakers, there may be no better examples of positive disruptors than 14-year-old Sikha Patra and 15-year-old Salim Shekh, along with their revolutionary Bengali community activist and mentor Amlan Ganguly. Salim and Sikha spoke with Melinda at the event. I talked with them earlier. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Basics, Amlan Ganguly, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, India, Melinda Gates, Prayasam, Revolutionary Optimists, TED

March 12, 2013 | 10:00 AM | By Tom Paulson |

Gates Foundation wants to make safe sex more fun |

: Flickr, bnilsen

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation thinks safe sex isn’t as much fun as it should be.

At least, that seems to be the gist of one request for a grant application from the world’s largest philanthropy as part of its Grand Challenges Explorations program. One of the goals for this round is to develop a better condom – and by better they basically mean a condom that doesn’t suck.

“It is a bit unusual,” said Stephen Ward, the program officer with the Gates Foundation administering the project.

In its request for proposals, the foundation opens with a detailed description of the global production of condoms (15 billion units per year), usage (750 million) and a ‘steadily growing market.’ When used properly, the Gates Foundation notes, condoms can protect females from pregnancy and both partners from sexually transmitted infections like HIV. They are cheap, ubiquitous and a great example of a ‘multi-purpose prevention technology.’

“The one major drawback to more universal use of male condoms is the lack of perceived incentive for consistent use.”

Yeah, they suck. They’re no fun. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Science, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, condoms, family planning, Grand Challenges Exploration, HIV-AIDS

February 14, 2013 | 10:40 AM | By Tom Paulson |

Behind the scenes with the Gates Foundation’s ‘strategic media partners’ |

: Flickr, MMR d

Just kidding.

I wasn’t actually allowed behind the scenes at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s recent meeting in Seattle entitled “Strategic Media Partnerships.”

The Gates Foundation funds a lot of media – more than $25 million in media grants for 2012 (but still less than 1% of the budget).

I’m media but I wasn’t invited. I asked if I could come and report on it, but was told the meeting was off the record. Those attending included representatives from the New York Times, NPR, the Guardian, NBC, Seattle Times and a number of other news organizations, non-profit groups and foundations. Not all were grant recipients, or partners. Some just came to consult.

Spoiler alert: Nothing sinister happened. But there’s still a story here.

The public doesn’t see much coverage of the media’s collaboration with the Gates Foundation. Yet it’s substantial, influential and, despite the media’s distaste for reporting on itself, I feel compelled. So here’s my news analysis…. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Basics, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Dan Green, David Bornstein, media, NPR, Sam Loewenberg, Stephen Colbert, The Guardian, Tina Rosenberg, Tom Murphy, Tom Scott

February 6, 2013 | 11:33 AM | By Tom Murphy |

The Sudden Death and Rebirth of the Global Health Council |

The global health community was left bewildered when the Global Health Council suddenly announced last April that it was closing.

Members of the prestigious, decades-old organization were not warned in advance, participants in the upcoming annual meeting had to abruptly cancel their plans and the GHC’s cryptic explanation (scroll down to April) just left everyone scratching their heads:

“Times have changed… Funding that once existed to promote a broad-based health agenda is now focused on specific health issues. The fundamental shifts in the health landscape have led the Board to revisit the relevance of the organization and determine that the Council’s current operating model is no longer sustainable.”

But times have changed again, apparently.

The organization is being resurrected with a new board, a slightly new name (Global Health Coalition) and with purportedly a new and more relevant strategy. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Basics, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Erin Hohlfelder, Global Health Council, Global Health Initiative, Global Impact, Jono Quick, Lisa Cohen, Scott Jackson, Washington Global Health Alliance

January 30, 2013 | 2:47 PM | By Tom Paulson |

Gates Foundation CEO describes how measuring polio is key to ending it |

Bill Gates issued his annual letter for 2013 today, in which he makes the case for measurement as a critical tool to fighting poverty, disease and inequality.

The call for better measurement and evaluation within the aid and development community is popular, but hardly new. And, as we noted earlier in the week when Gates spilled the beans on what he was going to say this year, it’s one thing to measure something and quite another to be certain you’re looking at the right variables, getting meaningful numbers and coming up with an answer that actually provides you with a useful new course of action.

That’s why I wanted to tell Jeff Raikes, CEO of the Bill& Melinda Gates Foundation, the story of the drunk under the street light.

You know, this guy sees a drunk guy crawling around under a light looking for his car keys. He asks the drunk where exactly he thinks he dropped the keys. “Over there in that dark alley,” replies the inebriate. So the guy asks, why look here? Drunk guy: “The light is better.”

“…” said Raikes, blankly looking like he thought agreeing to this interview maybe wasn’t such a good idea.

My point was that measurement and evaluation are fine, but as Albert Einstein said: “Some things that are worth doing can’t be measured; And some things that can be measured aren’t worth doing.”

The eradication of polio is a top priority right now for the Gates Foundation, as Gates notes in his 2013 letter and has said many times over the years — saying so again in a speech this week in London. He thinks it can be done by 2018, a fairly bold prediction because it’s been made by others so many times over and has, so far, never happened. Said Gates:

“The number of global polio cases has been under 1,000 cases for the last two years, but getting rid of the very last few cases is the hardest part.”

Yeah, so how can measurement help? Continue reading →