The wealthy individuals revealed a $20 billion contribution to combat global warming, pandemics, gender inequity, and other popular issues.
Microsoft mogul Bill Gates and his ex-wife Melinda French Gates revealed on Wednesday that they had made their largest-ever donation to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a whooping $20 billion. The significant gift increases the foundation’s endowment to $70 billion.
“The great crises of our time require all of us to do more,” Bill Gates declared, sharing his hope that the mammoth pile of money might “mitigate some of the suffering people are facing right now and help fulfill the foundation’s vision to give every person the chance to live a healthy and productive life.”
Despite the fact that Gates has been a constant presence in the media since the Covid-19 outbreak began and has openly donated vast sums of money to vaccine research, he voiced worry that the coming years would undo all of the foundation’s recent successes. The billionaire bemoaned that a particularly problematic collection of conditions necessitates strong humanitarian relief due to the epidemic, surging inflation across global markets, the turmoil in Ukraine, and climate change.
“The world economy is entering a low-growth cycle, with rising interest rates and high inflation,” Gates wrote in a press release trumpeting the couple’s donation. Calling for “all sectors of society – government, the private sector, and the nonprofit sector including philanthropy – to engage on these issues,” he observed that cash-strapped governments still recovering from the self-imposed economic wounds of Covid-19 might not be able to afford sorely-needed humanitarian projects. The Gates Foundation, he explained, would help fill the gap.
Gates warned that both the Covid-19 epidemic and the Ukrainian conflict might send all of mankind into a lengthy economic abyss, calling the former “one of the worst defeats in history” and the latter “a terrible catastrophe for the entire planet.” With yearly philanthropic outlays anticipated to surpass $9 billion by 2026, he said that the newly endowed Gates Foundation would save the day by tackling the pressing global concerns of climate change, food security, kid mortality, gender equality, and pandemic prevention.
Given that Bill Gates has made more money as a philanthropist than he ever did as a software entrepreneur, critics of the Gates’ giving method have criticized it. The Gates Foundation has given roughly $250 million in tax-deductible “charitable” contributions to businesses in which it owned stock, according to a 2020 probe. However, the Western media establishment, where many of the biggest news organizations also get considerable financing from the foundation, has generally remained silent about this apparent conflict of interest.
