Time's Persons of the Year

The "Person(s) of the Year" of Time Magazine came out this week. They named Bono and Bill and Melinda Gates as this year's "Persons of the Year".

It is so encouraging to see this. Bono wrote the suprisingly intelligent and well-informed forward to Jeffery Sach's latest book, "The End of Poverty" which I very quickly added to my (lesser know/read) Recommended Readings section. Bono has lead the public-relations charge in both the foreign debt relief and sub-Saharan AIDS awareness campaigns for years now and my respect for him has grown immensely over the years...as well as my belief that this is truly a life-long, altruistic pursuit of his, which is encouraging. Too often a celebrity will pick up a pet cause (think: USA for Africa), usually some acute and fashionable issue de jour, promote it (not to mention themselves) for a while, say something sanctimonious about it before a song now and then and then it fades away. What Bono has done and continues to do is providing tangible, macro-economic impact and is inspiring throngs of otherwise disinterested youth to take an interest in development economics.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is setting a new standard in research, development and most importantly, distribution of antimalarial and anti-retroviral drug treatments to the developing world. Their hands-on approach and enourmous endowement has revived many vaccine programs and its sheer size ($23 billion) ought to shame developed-world governments the world over into digging deeper to care for the less fortunate of our human race.

I am at times concerned when I see only the richest "good Samaritans" getting media attention as I feel it perpetuates the misguided notion that philanthropy is for the extremely rich vs. my personal conviction that we citizens of the developed world recognize our "relative wealth" in comparison to the average human and in so doing, feel compelled to action now, and not wait for our perverbial ship to come in in order to reach out to liberate the oppressed and extend hope to the hopeless. Still, in this case they deserve all the attention and praise they can get.

I find it particularly encouraging that Time has dedicated pretty much the entire issue to major philanthrophic, development and international aid trends...since its obviously close to my heart. This same week there is another article in Newsweek calling Economics the "Sexiest Trade Alive" and mentioning Jeffrey Sachs, a man who is rapidly becoming one of my biggest heros. Could I have predicted a mega-trend when I threw my name in the "International Security and Development" hat two years ago? I hope so. I would love nothing more than to see us all awaken to the suffering the "other half" of our people endure and dedicate ourselves to ending it now...not waiting until we make our first billion or until we sell our 10th platinum album.