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Bill [Gates] and I believe philanthropy can only be effective if it starts things and proves whether they actually work or not. That's the place that governments often don't want to, or can't, work.

Melinda Gates

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Melinda Gates
Age: 60
Born: 1964
Born: August 15
Businessperson
Entrepreneur
Organizational Founder
Patron Of The Arts
Philanthropist
Dallas
Texas
Melinda Ann French
Melinda French Gates
Melinda Ann Gates
Government
Starts
Work
Effective
Believe
Bills
Things
Prove
Proves
Actually
Philanthropy
Whether
Gates
Often
Governments
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Bill

More quotes by Melinda Gates

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Around the world we have girls in primary school at about the same rate now as boys, but keeping them in quality secondary schools is where the world is lagging. I'm seeing a lot of countries look at this now.
Melinda Gates
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Government funding that's coming from the United States is making a huge difference on the ground in the developing world. It's really palpable - it's making a huge difference saving lives.
Melinda Gates
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If we don't empower women, we don't allow them to unlock the potential of themselves and their children.
Melinda Gates
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I learn in a different way. I learn experientially.
Melinda Gates
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I am inspired by the women I meet everywhere I go. They have to work so hard just to make sure their families survive, but somehow they stay optimistic and do everything in their power to make the future better than the past.
Melinda Gates
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Microsoft certainly makes products for the Macintosh.
Melinda Gates
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Sanitation issues in the developing world affect women more than they affect men.
Melinda Gates
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All of a sudden people in the United States start to realize that vaccines make a difference. The controversy and the myth that's there, we're always trying to bust through that. So when I see a disease outbreak, I say to myself, OK, that'll get people realizing how lucky we are to have vaccines.
Melinda Gates
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Human-centered design. Meeting people where they are and really taking their needs and feedback into account. When you let people participate in the design process, you find that they often have ingenious ideas about what would really help them. And it’s not a onetime thing it’s an iterative process.
Melinda Gates
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We set out what's going to be our work time versus our foundation time versus family time, and we'll reassess that... sometimes every week.
Melinda Gates
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When I look at 225 million women who want contraceptives, and then I look at the 52 million unintended pregnancies that could be avoided by addressing this unmet need, where can we have the biggest impact with our voice, our dollars, our partners? It's on contraceptives. I would rather address the problem upstream.
Melinda Gates
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My undergraduate work was in computer science and economics. It just happened to be at that time when 34 percent of computer-science majors were women. We didn't realize it was at the peak at the time.
Melinda Gates
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That's universal - we all want to bring every good thing to our children. But what's not universal is our ability to provide every good thing.
Melinda Gates
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Despite the debunking, you have a small group in the last five years that hasn't wanted to vaccinate their children, for instance, for measles. Then, all of sudden, we got an outbreak of measles and kids were starting to die from measles.
Melinda Gates
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Everyone agrees that the failure of our high schools is tragic. It's bad business, and it's bad policy. But we act as if it can't be helped. It can be helped. We designed these high schools we can redesign them.
Melinda Gates
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Having children made us look differently at all these things that we take for granted, like taking your child to get a vaccine against measles or polio.
Melinda Gates
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We started our foundation because we believe we have a real opportunity to help advance equity around the world, to help make sure that, no matter where a person is born, he or she has the chance to live a healthy, productive life.
Melinda Gates
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Like in Africa, if somebody doesn't have fuel, they're still going and collecting firewood. If they get an oven, that's a huge difference. You can do things to reduce the inequities by making sure that they can get clean energy, safe energy. To make sure they're not having to collect water every day. That's huge for women in the developing world.
Melinda Gates
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With economic opportunity, sometimes it's making sure that if they're not in a place where they can have good jobs, that when they have economic opportunity, they have digital tools to use.
Melinda Gates
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We have to look at it country by country. In places like the developing world where, as you say, in Mumbai, it's about five hours' gap between what a woman does and a man does. You have to start by recognizing the problem and talking about it, trying to change those roles.
Melinda Gates