Friday, April 8, 2011

Bill Gates visiting the Parliament to discuss development aid

The fight against poverty and disease was in the spotlight Tuesday when Microsoft founder and major private aid donor Bill Gates was in Parliament's Development Committee to present his Living Proof initiative, aimed at showing what can really be achieved by development aid."Millions of lives can be saved each year," the founder of the Gates Foundation said. "The bottom line is that the aid community makes a difference and there are opportunities to do more."

Helping poor farmers to feed their communities, raising income and nutrition levels, enabling children to go to school are at the core of Gates's initiative. His campaign "Living Proof" also distributes vaccines, cutting HIV/AIDS-related deaths and mother-to-child HIV transmissions. Health is the key, he told MEPs, "better health conditions can address all the other issues that we wanted to improve".

Mr Gates said agriculture is a fundamental target area. "If we can help farmers to be more productive, we not only help them but also deal with the challenge that the world needs more food."

Development Committee members were curious about how philanthropy works in relation to government aid. "Even if you want to maximise philanthropy, it will not phase out aid from rich governments," he said.

Mr Gates thanked Europeans for their "incredible generosity", as the world's largest aid donor and said, "every country should do best it can."

However, he said that a lot of aid isn't properly targeted. But, "we are learning to be smarter about aid spending," he added.

In response to a question from an MEP about being sure big donations go to the right people, Mr Gates said, "some money will be misused (but)...less than 5%". He said it is possible to track investment, for example, "if you send money for vaccines, you can see if children are actually getting them".

Source Press room - European Parliament

More information Press room - European Parliament

linked programmes:

> More European grants

EU states are encouraged to implement national programmes for Roma integration

A report adopted by the European Commission calls for implementing national strategies aiming at integrating Roma population socially and economically. Roma population represents 10 to 12 million of people in Europe.

Youth enemployment: european efforts are required

Several proposals aiming at tackling youth unemployment are on the agenda at the European Parliament: a "European Investment Plan", reallocating EU structural funds for youth employment and a "European Youth Guarantee".

The European Parliament is funding your projects!

The European Parliament’s Communication DG has just launched a new grant programme, which will fund projects aiming at improving citizens’ knowledge of the role and functioning of the European Parliament. This 2012 - 2014 programme was...

Pre-accession assistance instrument (IPA): seven Western Balkan countries are given the possibility to participate to large scale flooding exercise in Croatia

During four days, exercises simulating a large scale flooding are organized in Zagreb for civil protection intervention teams from seven Balkan countries.

The EU launches a pilot phase on European project bonds

A pilot phase on European project bonds was decided today between the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament. This remains an important milestone, and the Danish presidency has therefore played an important role in the efforts t...

Subscribe to our Newsletter

Need an advice?
To place an order?

Contact
Marine Rossi at

33 (0)1 42 54 60 64

Click here to ask me your question in live