Partners and Progress

A MESSAGE FROM PATTY STONESIFER

Annual reports often start off with a letter that looks at how the organization progressed over the past year. That's certainly understandable—it's always satisfying to look back at the past 12 months and say, “This is what we did.”

In this letter, though, I'm going to try something different. I want to look back at the past 12 months and say: “This is what other people did.”

Why? Because at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, we believe that philanthropy plays a relatively small role in making social change. Foundations can act as a catalyst, but it's the private sector and governments that drive the most lasting improvements in people's lives. Theirs are the accomplishments that really deserve to be highlighted—because they made real progress on some of the most important issues we face today.

It's hard to overstate how important others' work is to our own. Bill and Melinda Gates started their foundation because they want to increase equity—to help make sure that all people, no matter where they're born, have the chance to make the most of their lives. We've chosen four areas where we think we can do the most to promote equity: global health, U.S. education, access to digital information, and grantmaking in our local region.

In each of these areas, we believe our role is to help our grantees and partners build models of success—effective new vaccines, new ways to raise high school graduation rates, etc.—that can be widely adopted.

Time and again in 2004, our partners helped make sure that promising solutions reach the people who need them. But if these models are going to have the most impact, they need to be adopted at a scale that goes far beyond the reach of any single organization. That's why the public and private sectors—and partnerships between the two—are so important for promoting equity in the United States and around the world.

For instance, in the effort to improve U.S. high school graduation rates, state governments are fostering a powerful new momentum behind an exciting model for high schools. Nearly two thirds of today's ninth graders won't graduate ready for college or work. This model, known as the early college high school, lets students earn up to two years of college credit or an Associate's degree while they're still in high school. It creates a new pathway to college for those young people—often low-income and minority students—who might not otherwise have a chance at a post-secondary education and sets them up for success in college or a career.

As of fall 2004, thanks to support from state and local governments as well as a number of foundations, nearly 50 early college high schools with more than 8,000 students had opened in 19 states. Several states have shown fantastic leadership in this work, including North Carolina, which will open 75 new early college high schools in the next five years.

The private and public sectors are uniting on several fronts in global health too. For instance, 2004 brought some very encouraging news in the search for a vaccine to stop malaria—a disease that kills more than 1 million people every year, mostly children in Africa. That's nearly two people every minute.

The vaccine candidate, known as RTS,S, could make a huge difference for millions of people. It had been under development in government and industry laboratories for 20 years, but as corporate priorities changed, testing and development on it almost came to a stop. In 2000, the Malaria Vaccine Initiative set out to change that by reinvigorating international efforts to develop vaccines. They created a partnership that brought together the pharmaceutical company GSK Biologicals, the government of Mozambique, the Manhiça Health Research Center in Mozambique, and others. What they announced in 2004 is truly exciting: the first solid evidence ever that a malaria vaccine for children is possible. Next up are pivotal trials to confirm that it's safe and effective in children. If it is, it could save millions of lives.

In the United States, state governments showed their commitment to providing the public with free access to computers and the Internet via public libraries. Between 1997 and 2003, the Gates Foundation and our partners worked with 11,000 libraries across the country to install public-access computers. More than 14 million Americans use these computers regularly.

Now the challenge is to keep the computers connected and the library staff trained to use them. To do that, 37 states and the District of Columbia leveraged our Staying Connected challenge grants to raise an additional $7 million in 2004.

Finally, in our home state, the Washington Legislature began what we hope will be an innovative program to end family homelessness. It's a daunting problem: More than half of the residents of Washington's homeless shelters are families. In response, the Legislature created the Washington Families Fund, which will provide a reliable funding stream for services linked to affordable housing that help homeless families.

With contributions from the state and private donors, this fund could grow to more than $5 million in 2005. One of the catalysts for creating it was the success of the Sound Families Program, a public-private partnership supported by the Gates Foundation. By the end of 2004, Sound Families had funded more than 846 new affordable-housing units in Seattle.

These are just four examples of how governments, the private sector, and foundations can work together to help people improve their lives. In 2004 we made more than 400 grants to help further this work. These projects represent exactly the kind of innovative work that will make the world a more equitable place. One day I know we'll be able to look back and say: “This is what we all did, together.”

Patty Stonesifer
Co-chair and President