Full text of the speech by Bill Gates Senior

So I don't know how much you can learn from what I have to say, but you are so young and full of promise that listening to words of wisdom from people like me just comes with your territory. We are jealous of the years that lie ahead of you. We are inspired by all the ways in which you will make the world a better place. It is only natural that we antiques want to share a few thoughts.

I love visiting Cambridge. I hear that in a few years, the university will celebrate its 800th birthday. What strikes me is that for all those centuries, it has continuously ranked as one of the world's preeminent institutions. Yet the reasons for its excellence are continuously changing.

Formerly, people venerated Cambridge because they believed it symbolized England's unique superiority, or the apex of Western civilization, or the talents that white men alone possess.

But no more.

Cambridge is at the top of the list now because it honors the potential of brilliant students from all over the world; because it recognizes what young people from poor countries have to contribute to the human endeavor.

Cambridge is still great--in part because you are here.

This university matters precisely because it is not what it used to be. It is no longer a monument to a worldview dominated by chauvinism. It is more and more a testament to the idea that the world should be as big in our minds as it is on a map.

That is what I would like to talk about today—the simple truth that the key ingredient to making a peaceful world is the understanding that all people, no matter where they live, are equally precious. That an impoverished child in the Kisenyi slum in Uganda matters as much as a Cambridge graduate. That that child deserves the opportunity to become a Cambridge graduate. This principle is fundamental to everything we do at the Gates Foundation.

The world has made remarkable progress in this direction in just the past few years, but we have so much further to go. And if we're going to create a better world for ourselves, you will lead us there. It is a lot of responsibility, but it is the primary task that my generation is leaving for yours.

It is fairly easy to applaud the aspiration that all lives have equal value—that children everywhere are as important as children anywhere. But as long as a disease like malaria—a disease we know how to prevent—is killing 2,000 African children every day, we have to acknowledge that equality is still just a goal we aspire to.

As long as these children die because they don't have bednets, a very simple and inexpensive technology, we have to admit that we are still living as if children in Zambia matter less than children here in England.

The challenge is translating what we believe into a reality for the billions of people in the world who are suffering.

Meeting this challenge is going to take four big changes in the way we all relate to each other.

First, we need to heighten our awareness of the problems that plague our world: We are already so much more knowledgeable about the people we share the planet with than we used to be. Part of this change is technological. We can now see live video footage from anywhere in the world around the clock. We can travel to the furthest ends of the earth in just a few hours. We can send email to remote areas of Nepal and get a response in an instant.

But it will also require a shift in perspective. Since I got involved in global health work about a decade ago, I have seen the amount of attention the media pays to global issues increase by an order of magnitude. Yet when I travel around the world I realize how much more we still have to learn. Our conception of what truly matters must continue to evolve.

Second, we have to make a real commitment to solving these problems: I am talking about a new state of mind. It is one thing to say to yourself, It is a crying shame that Chinese subsistence farmers don't have enough to eat. But it is another thing altogether to accept some level of responsibility for farmers in China—to come to the conclusion that you are obligated to help them in some way.

That is a leap people are starting to make. You may have heard of the ONE Campaign in the United States, akin to “Make Poverty History” here in Britain. ONE has mobilized almost 2.5 million U.S. citizens to urge the government to do more to meet the challenges of AIDS and extreme poverty. Or the Product RED campaign, which encourages us to use our power as consumers to fight disease. By joining these campaigns, millions of regular people are deciding to make improving the world a regular part of their daily lives.

And yet commitment means more than signing a petition or buying a red cellular phone. These campaigns need to become mass, effective movements.

Third, nations and their citizens need to make and keep their commitments: Governments are doing better on this score. Several European nations, including the U.K., have made long-term aid commitments that will help poor countries vaccinate millions more children against preventable diseases that still kill. A number of countries have instituted a tax on airline tickets to fund the purchase of lifesaving drugs and vaccines.

The United States government still needs to do more, even though President Bush has shown impressive early leadership in this area. The $15 billion President's Emergency Plan for

AIDS Relief, for example, represents the largest single pledge ever made to fight a disease. And it marks the first time the United States committed billions, not millions, to fighting AIDS. As voters and advocates, we must make sure that our elected officials know that we support this kind of spending and encourage more.

Finally, the hardest work is the complicated and frustrating struggle to make a real difference for real people on the ground: I want to linger on this point because it is so critical.

As I said before, there is some disconnect when we say that all children are equally valued, while we allow almost one million to die of a preventable, treatable, disease like malaria every year.

There is some barrier between our ideals and our actions when most of us have no idea that people are still dying every day from a civil war in northern Uganda that has been raging for more than 20 years.

There is still so much to be done when wealthy nations persist in using import tariffs as a weapon against countries that are battling to escape poverty.

Part of the problem is that in some ways we are not really as ready to eschew our narrow interests as we say we are. And we need to keep striving toward that goal. But another part of the problem is that the issues we must address are almost incomprehensibly difficult. And it will take more than good intentions to solve them.

I traveled to Uganda and Zambia a couple of months ago to learn about a variety of projects the foundation is involved in, and I was struck again and again by what a really monstrous thing the HIV/AIDS crisis is. I was alarmed by how hard it will be to end the crisis even if we get the awareness, commitment, and money it requires.

We will not cure AIDS in my lifetime. My son and daughter-in-law have devoted so much of their resources to fighting the disease because they think it can be stopped in their lifetimes. If they are right, then it is you who will stop it.

I want to give you an idea of what you're up against. Not because I want to discourage you, but because I want you to understand the kind of resolve that the situation demands. And I want you to get a sense of how truly astounding it will be when you succeed in creating a world in which nobody dies of AIDS anymore.

I want you to imagine for a minute that you're a typical baby born in Zambia, where one in six adults has HIV or AIDS. You will grow up in conditions I literally cannot d
escribe, and then, sometime before you turn 40, you will likely die.

Some of you are just a decade or a bit more away from your 40th birthday. You believe your life is just beginning. What if, instead, you knew it was coming to an end? What if? Would you have come here to Cambridge? Would you still have dreams? Or would you give up?

Imagine the force of will it would take to hold on to hope.

Or, what if your future promised the hardship one woman in a small village near Lusaka in Gambia told me about? “Many of us that you see here are widows,” she explained. “We have lost our husbands and we have no one to provide for us or help us to raise all these children. We have our own children and we take the orphans of our brothers and sisters. We have so much do to, and so little help from the men.”

These makeshift families must bear the incredible burden of disease without the support that people who get ill in wealthy countries expect as a matter of course.

For example, in the entire nation of Zambia, whose population is greater than that of Ireland and Scotland combined, there are only 540 doctors. Some Zambians who were doctors are sick or dead from HIV. Many who might have been doctors moved away because life in Zambia holds so little promise.

In Uganda, the government has made great strides in reducing HIV/AIDS. The percentage of people infected has gone down from a high of 18 percent to just over seven percent now. But even at that level, the disease is simply devastating.

So what, then, is the way out of the AIDS epidemic? Right now, we need to make sure that people who are sick get treatment. And we need to do everything in our power to guarantee that people who are healthy stay healthy. Ultimately, however, what we need is a vaccine.

Here again, we run into the problem of complexity. I don't understand the science. I just know that it is incredibly challenging and that it will be the life's work of an entire generation of brilliant researchers.

Luckily, some of you do understand the science, and you can make it your life's work. Some of you have studied how public policy gets made, and you can help make these global issues a priority for governments. Others have degrees in economics, and you can find ways for businesses to make a profit in a flat world. Many of you will become teachers, and you can instill a sense of humanity in your students.

No matter what you do, you will be living and working in a world that operates according to new rules. We are living in a time of unprecedented opportunity. You will have the ability to make changes that I cannot yet conceive of because our notion of what is possible is expanding so rapidly.

Our task now is to make the possible happen. That means reminding yourself continually about who you are really responsible for, and working tirelessly to live up to that responsibility.

Let me give you a quotation from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He spent his life preaching about a world that we were on the verge of creating. He was a preacher because he knew that people needed to keep striving to bring that world into being. He knew that the future he imagined was not ineluctable. It would have to be the product of human effort. And we continue—you continue—in that effort today.

“Through our scientific and technological genius,” King said, “we have made of this world a neighborhood. And yet we have not had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood. But somehow, and in some way, we have got to do this. We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools.”

I look around this wonderful place, this remarkable gathering and what I see is a community with so much idealism, so much commitment and so much energy. I am more than optimistic—I am certain, daunting as the obstacles may be, that as the leaders of our global neighborhood, you will find the way to make of it a brotherhood.

Thank you.