Have you ever wondered why some charities seem focused more on international issues than those in America? do you think focusing predominantly on other countries is fair? If you ran a large charity, where would you direct your funds? Why?
In Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof’s blog On The Ground, mr. Kristof and Melinda Gates, of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, answered reader questions about charitable giving. one reader, Cosima Barlett, asked why the foundation, and mr. Kristof, don’t focus more efforts and resources domestically. Here’s what they said:
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MELINDA: When Bill and I started the foundation we decided to tackle the largest sources of inequity, both at home and abroad. Globally, the greatest disparity we saw was in health. Children in poor countries were dying of diseases like measles that were either preventable or that nobody was working to address. we felt like our resources could make a huge difference in the lives of poor families.
In the United States, although there are certainly healthcare challenges, we’ve gotten to a point where we usually aren’t talking about health in terms of child mortality. Instead, the greatest inequity we see America is in education. Roughly 25 percent of the foundation’s resources are focused here and most of that goes towards improving our schools.
Education is supposed to be the great equalizer, but the system is failing most of our students, especially low-income and minority youth. Only one-third of students graduate high school with the skills they need to succeed in college. but getting some sort of degree after high school is critical for success in today’s economy. What we have learned over the years is that the key to improving our education system is ensuring that there is effective teaching in every classroom in America.
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NICK: That’s an interesting question, Cosima, and it’s one I wonder about in relation to my own reporting: do I spend so much time writing about crises abroad that I neglect problems festering at home?
I’m not sure, but there are two reasons why I understand a focus abroad. first, poverty in the world’s poorest countries really is different than poverty in America. On my first win-a-trip journey, I brought a student with me who was skeptical of all my Africa reporting. Casey Parks had grown up in Georgia and Louisiana in a poor family, without insurance, and she didn’t see that there was any need to go to Cameroon to write about global poverty. but then in Cameroon, Casey and I watched a woman named Prudence dying in childbirth, completely needlessly. and Casey told me that she realized that yes, there really is a difference – and that in the world’s poorest countries a $10 investment in a bed net really can save a life, in a way that is not true in the U.S.
The second point I would make is to push back at the idea that we should solve our own problems first, before we try to solve Congo’s or Bangladesh’s. at some point we are all humans, connected by a web of humanity, and that’s true whether we are new Yorkers and Californians – or whether we are Alabamans and Bangladeshis. It doesn’t feel right to me to ignore people’s needs and lives because they didn’t win the lottery of birth and end up with American citizenship. What matters most is their humanity, not their passport.
That said, I sometimes worry that American university students think that it’s cool and glamorous to spend a summer fighting poverty in Africa, but have much less interest in mentoring disadvantaged kids across the tracks in their own cities. That troubles me, too. and as a matter of fact, I hope to do more writing this year about America’s own challenges – including education.
Students: tell us whether you think directing charitable resources to other countries is the right thing to do. Why might it be important for American-based charities to aid foreign countries? Why might it be important for them to focus on problems at home? Where do you think a charity could do the most good? What do you think of the explanations provided by Ms. Gates and mr. Kristof?
Students 13 and older are invited to comment below. Please use only your first name. For privacy policy reasons, we will not publish student comments that include a last name.