Chris Anderson: So, this is an interview with a difference. On the basis that a picture is worth a thousand words, what I did was, I asked Bill and Melinda to dig out from their archive some images that would help explain some of what they've done, and do a few things that way.
克里斯·安德森:这次的访谈有些不寻常。 一张图片的背后往往是很长的故事, 所以我做的就是,请比尔和梅琳达, 从他们的收藏中挑选出一些照片, 这些照片不但会解释他们所做的一些事, 还会给我们一些其他的帮助。 那么,我们就从这张开始。
So, we're going to start here. Melinda, when and where was this, and who is that handsome man next to you?
梅琳达,这张照片拍摄的时间和地点是什么? 你身边那个英俊的男人是谁? 梅琳达·盖茨:戴着那副大眼镜的?哈?
Melinda Gates: With those big glasses, huh? This is in Africa, our very first trip, the first time either of us had ever been to Africa, in the fall of 1993. We were already engaged to be married. We married a few months later, and this was the trip where we really went to see the animals and to see the savanna. It was incredible. Bill had never taken that much time off from work. But what really touched us, actually, were the people, and the extreme poverty. We started asking ourselves questions. Does it have to be like this? And at the end of the trip, we went out to Zanzibar, and took some time to walk on the beach, which is something we had done a lot while we were dating. And we'd already been talking about during that time that the wealth that had come from Microsoft would be given back to society, but it was really on that beach walk that we started to talk about, well, what might we do and how might we go about it?
这是非洲,我们最开始的第一次旅行, 我们两人都是第一次到非洲, 1993年秋天。 我们已经订婚, 我们在几个月后结了婚。 正是这次旅行让我们真正看到了那些动物和大草原。 那实在难以置信。比尔从没有那么长的时间没去工作。 但真正让我们感动的,还是那里的人和极度贫困的状况。 我们开始问自己一些问题。 这里非得是这种状况吗? 在旅行结束的时候, 我们去了桑吉巴尔, 花了些时间在海边漫步, 这是我们在约会的时候常常做的。 在那段时间我们已经在谈论, 从微软得来的财富应该回馈社会, 但就是在那次海边散步时,我们开始讨论, 我们可以做些什么?如何去做? 克里斯:是这次度假让世界最大的私有基金会得以创建,
CA: So, given that this vacation led to the creation of the world's biggest private foundation, it's pretty expensive as vacations go. (Laughter)
那这次度假的花费可真够高的。
MG: I guess so. We enjoyed it.
(笑声)
CA: Which of you was the key instigator here, or was it symmetrical? Bill Gates: Well, I think we were excited that there'd be a phase of our life where we'd get to work together and figure out how to give this money back. At this stage, we were talking about the poorest, and could you have a big impact on them? Were there things that weren't being done? There was a lot we didn't know. Our naïveté is pretty incredible, when we look back on it. But we had a certain enthusiasm that that would be the phase, the post-Microsoft phase would be our philanthropy.
梅琳达:我想是吧。但我们觉得很享受。 克里斯:你们俩谁是主要决策者?还是共同决策? 比尔·盖茨:我们共同工作、探讨如何把钱回馈社会, 生命中能有这么一段经历,对此我还是很激动的。 合作的时候,我们谈论着最贫穷的人们, 你能深刻地影响他们吗? 还有没有没做到的事情? 有很多我们是不知道的。 当我们回想起来的时候,真是天真得难以置信。 慈善事业,我的后微软时期应致力于我们的慈善事业, 对此我们确实有热情。
MG: Which Bill always thought was going to come after he was 60, so he hasn't quite hit 60 yet, so some things change along the way.
梅琳达:比尔之前总是想在他六十岁以后加入基金会, 实际上,离六十有一点儿距离, 所以,有些想法是会改变的。
CA: So it started there, but it got accelerated. So that was '93, and it was '97, really, before the foundation itself started.
克里斯:那么,基金会创立后,得到了飞速发展。 那是93年,然后是97年,真的, 在基金会开始之前。
MA: Yeah, in '97, we read an article about diarrheal diseases killing so many kids around the world, and we kept saying to ourselves, "Well that can't be. In the U.S., you just go down to the drug store." And so we started gathering scientists and started learning about population, learning about vaccines, learning about what had worked and what had failed, and that's really when we got going, was in late 1998, 1999.
梅琳达:是的,在97 年,我们读到一篇文章, 文章是关于全球范围内,腹泻病导致如此多的孩子死亡, 我们一直对自己说, “那不可能。 在美国,你只要去药店就行了。” 于是我们开始召集科学家们, 开始学习人口分布、疫苗, 了解了什么取得过成效、什么失败了, 那时才是我们真正开始慈善事业, 是在1998年后期,1999年。 克里斯:那么,你们手握大笔资金,
CA: So, you've got a big pot of money and a world full of so many different issues. How on Earth do you decide what to focus on?
面对一个充满了各种问题的世界。 你们到底是怎样决定专注于哪方面的慈善事业呢? 比尔:我们决定要专注于两方面,
BG: Well, we decided that we'd pick two causes, whatever the biggest inequity was globally, and there we looked at children dying, children not having enough nutrition to ever develop, and countries that were really stuck, because with that level of death, and parents would have so many kids that they'd get huge population growth, and that the kids were so sick that they really couldn't be educated and lift themselves up. So that was our global thing, and then in the U.S., both of us have had amazing educations, and we saw that as the way that the U.S. could live up to its promise of equal opportunity is by having a phenomenal education system, and the more we learned, the more we realized we're not really fulfilling that promise. And so we picked those two things, and everything the foundation does is focused there.
无论全球是如何地不平等, 我们看到了儿童死亡的问题, 没有足够的营养供儿童活下来, 因此,那些陷入这种困境的国家, 因为有一定的儿童死亡率, 父母就会生非常多的孩子, 这些国家的人口便会巨幅增长, 那些孩子病得很厉害, 根本不可能受到教育,也不会养活自己。 因此,这是全球范围内(我们关注的慈善事业)。 而在美国, 我们两人都受过了不起的教育, 我们知道,美国要实现平等教育的诺言, 需通过建立非凡的教育体系。 我们知道得越多,我们越意识到美国并没有在实现诺言。 于是我们选择了这两方面, 基金会做的每一件事都专注在这两方面。 克里斯:我之前请你们每个人挑出一张
CA: So, I asked each of you to pick an image that you like that illustrates your work, and Melinda, this is what you picked. What's this about?
用来说明你的工作的图片, 梅琳达,这是你选择的图片, 这是关于什么的呢? 梅琳达:我,当我旅行的时候,
MG: So I, one of the things I love to do when I travel is to go out to the rural areas and talk to the women, whether it's Bangladesh, India, lots of countries in Africa, and I go in as a Western woman without a name. I don't tell them who I am. Pair of khakis. And I kept hearing from women, over and over and over, the more I traveled, "I want to be able to use this shot." I would be there to talk to them about childhood vaccines, and they would bring the conversation around to "But what about the shot I get?" which is an injection they were getting called Depo-Provera, which is a contraceptive. And I would come back and talk to global health experts, and they'd say, "Oh no, contraceptives are stocked in in the developing world." Well, you had to dig deeper into the reports, and this is what the team came to me with, which is, to have the number one thing that women tell you in Africa they want to use stocked out more than 200 days a year explains why women were saying to me, "I walked 10 kilometers without my husband knowing it, and I got to the clinic, and there was nothing there." And so condoms were stocked in in Africa because of all the AIDS work that the U.S. and others supported. But women will tell you over and over again, "I can't negotiate a condom with my husband. I'm either suggesting he has AIDS or I have AIDS, and I need that tool because then I can space the births of my children, and I can feed them and have a chance of educating them."
我喜欢做的事情之一是到边远的地方跟女人们聊天, 无论是在孟加拉国、印度、非洲的许多国家, 我以一个匿名的西方女子跟她们来往。 我不说自己是谁,我穿着卡其裤。 我旅行地越多,(我越)一直听到她们 一遍一遍又一遍地(说同一句话), “我想能够使用这个针剂。“ 我本想去那跟她们说儿童疫苗的事, 而她们会把谈话引到“我要得到的针剂呢?” 她们提到的针剂叫做避孕针(Depo-Provera) 起到避孕的作用。 我回来后,跟全球的健康专家谈话, 他们说,“喔,不,避孕药在发展中国家储备充分。” 好吧,你必须在报告里挖掘得更深一些, 这是那个专家小组给我的结论, 数据表明,她们最想用的东西在一年中有200多天缺货, 这就解释了她们为何会这样对我说, “我瞒着我丈夫,走了10千米, 我走到诊所,那儿什么都没有了。” 因为美国和其他国家对艾滋病的(研究、宣传等)工作, 在非洲,避孕套是有库存的。 但她们会一遍一遍地告诉你, “我不能就避孕套问题跟我丈夫讨价还价。 (让他带避孕套)要么暗示他,要么暗示我有艾滋病, 因此我需要工具(来避孕), 让孩子们出生的间隔长一些, 这样我就能养育他们,还有机会教育他们。” 克里斯:梅琳达,你是罗马天主教徒,
CA: Melinda, you're Roman Catholic, and you've often been embroiled in controversy over this issue, and on the abortion question, on both sides, really. How do you navigate that?
就此问题你常被卷入争议中, 还有流产的问题,这两方面,真的。 你是如何应对的呢? 梅琳达:确实,我想这确实是个重要的问题,
MG: Yeah, so I think that's a really important point, which is, we had backed away from contraceptives as a global community. We knew that 210 million women were saying they wanted access to contraceptives, even the contraceptives we have here in the United States, and we weren't providing them because of the political controversy in our country, and to me that was just a crime, and I kept looking around trying to find the person that would get this back on the global stage, and I finally realized I just had to do it. And even though I'm Catholic, I believe in contraceptives just like most of the Catholic women in the United States who report using contraceptives, and I shouldn't let that controversy be the thing that holds us back. We used to have consensus in the United States around contraceptives, and so we got back to that global consensus, and actually raised 2.6 billion dollars around exactly this issue for women. (Applause)
我们全球的大家庭,在避孕方面退步了。 我们知道有2.1亿名妇女在说她们想要得到避孕工具, 即使在美国,(有些情况下)因为政治上的争议, 我们并没有给女们提供避孕用品, 对我来说那是一宗犯罪, 我一直在找寻一个能把此事上升到全球高度去推进的人, 最后我意识到,这个人就是我,我必须要这么做。 即使我是一个天主教徒, 我相信避孕用品(是可以使用的), 就像在美国的声称在用避孕用品的大多数天主教妇女, 我不应该让那些争议成为阻止我们的理由。 在美国,我们曾经就避孕问题达成一致, 于是我们力图让全球达成一致, 事实上我们就这个问题筹集到26亿美元。 (掌声)
CA: Bill, this is your graph. What's this about?
克里斯:比尔,这是你的图表。这个图说明了什么?
BG: Well, my graph has numbers on it. (Laughter) I really like this graph. This is the number of children who die before the age of five every year. And what you find is really a phenomenal success story which is not widely known, that we are making incredible progress. We go from 20 million not long after I was born to now we're down to about six million. So this is a story largely of vaccines. Smallpox was killing a couple million kids a year. That was eradicated, so that got down to zero. Measles was killing a couple million a year. That's down to a few hundred thousand. Anyway, this is a chart where you want to get that number to continue, and it's going to be possible, using the science of new vaccines, getting the vaccines out to kids. We can actually accelerate the progress. The last decade, that number has dropped faster than ever in history, and so I just love the fact that you can say, okay, if we can invent new vaccines, we can get them out there, use the very latest understanding of these things, and get the delivery right, that we can perform a miracle.
比尔:我的图表上面有数字。 (笑声) 我很喜欢这个图表。 图表上的数字是每年在五岁前死去的孩子的数目, 你会发现,这真的是一个极为成功的故事, 而它并不广为人知, 我们有着难以置信的进展。 在我出生后不久的年份,这个数字是2000万, 如今下降到约600万。 这主要是一个疫苗的故事。 天花曾每年杀死几百万个孩子。 天花已被根除了,所以这个数字降到了零。 麻疹曾每年杀死几百万人。 现在下降到几十万人。 总之,这张图上,你希望数字下降的趋势会持续, 利用新的疫苗,让孩子接种疫苗,这个愿望可以实现。 事实上,我们可以加快这个进程。 过去十年, 这个数字下降的速度是前所未有的, 因此,我很喜欢这个事实, 你可以说,行,如果我们可以发明新的疫苗, 我们能够实现愿望, 利用疫苗最新的研究成果, 确保疫苗有效的配送,这样我们就能创造奇迹。 克里斯:我说,你在这上面做了计算,
CA: I mean, you do the math on this, and it works out, I think, literally to thousands of kids' lives saved every day compared to the prior year. It's not reported. An airliner with 200-plus deaths is a far, far bigger story than that. Does that drive you crazy?
它确实有了成果,我想,从报告上看来, 跟前一年相比,每天都有几千个孩子得以拯救。 这个事实没有被报告过。 200多人丧生的飞机失事都是更大的新闻。 为此你会抓狂吗? 比尔:是的,因为拯救儿童的慈善活动一直低调。
BG: Yeah, because it's a silent thing going on. It's a kid, one kid at a time. Ninety-eight percent of this has nothing to do with natural disasters, and yet, people's charity, when they see a natural disaster, are wonderful. It's incredible how people think, okay, that could be me, and the money flows. These causes have been a bit invisible. Now that the Millennium Development Goals and various things are getting out there, we are seeing some increased generosity, so the goal is to get this well below a million, which should be possible in our lifetime.
这是孩子啊,一次一个, 夺去孩子生命的,有98%无关乎自然灾害。 然而,当遇到自然灾害时,人们会变得尤为慷慨。 人们的想法——好吧,或许包括我——和慈善基金的流向 真是让人摸不着头脑。 这些原因或多或少地不为人知。 现在如“千年发展目标”等各样的行动在进展, 我们看到越来越多的慷慨的举措, 所以我们的目标是让这个数字降到100万以内, 在我们有生之年是可以实现的。
CA: Maybe it needed someone who is turned on by numbers and graphs rather than just the big, sad face to get engaged. I mean, you've used it in your letter this year, you used basically this argument to say that aid, contrary to the current meme that aid is kind of worthless and broken, that actually it has been effective.
克里斯:需要加入到这个行动中来的, 或许得是一个能为数字和图表所打动的人, 而不是徒有一张忧国忧民的脸的人。 我的意思是,今年你已经把它用在了你的公开声明中, 你用这个论断来表明, 与认为救助是无价值且无效的现代观念相反, 救助的确是有效的。 比尔:是的,人们可以理解,
BG: Yeah, well people can take, there is some aid that was well-meaning and didn't go well. There's some venture capital investments that were well-meaning and didn't go well. You shouldn't just say, okay, because of that, because we don't have a perfect record, this is a bad endeavor. You should look at, what was your goal? How are you trying to uplift nutrition and survival and literacy so these countries can take care of themselves, and say wow, this is going well, and be smarter. We can spend aid smarter. It is not all a panacea. We can do better than venture capital, I think, including big hits like this.
有些用心良苦的救助没有善终, 有些用心良苦的风险投资进展不顺, 你不该就此断言,好吧,因为此, 因为之前的努力都没好结果, 救助就是一个得不偿失的努力。 你的关注点应是,目标是什么? 你怎样努力来提升孩子的营养水平、存活率和读写能力, 来让这些国家自己解决问题, 你会说,哇,这样进展下去不错, 要变得更聪明一些。 我们可以明智地进行救助。 这不全是灵丹妙药, 我想,我们可以比风险投资做得更好, 包括像这样的重要的举措。 克里斯:传统观念认为夫妇一起很难工作。
CA: Traditional wisdom is that it's pretty hard for married couples to work together. How have you guys managed it? MG: Yeah, I've had a lot of women say to me, "I really don't think I could work with my husband. That just wouldn't work out." You know, we enjoy it, and we don't -- this foundation has been a coming to for both of us in its continuous learning journey, and we don't travel together as much for the foundation, actually, as we used to when Bill was working at Microsoft. We have more trips where we're traveling separately, but I always know when I come home, Bill's going to be interested in what I learned, whether it's about women or girls or something new about the vaccine delivery chain, or this person that is a great leader. He's going to listen and be really interested. And he knows when he comes home, even if it's to talk about the speech he did or the data or what he's learned, I'm really interested, and I think we have a really collaborative relationship. But we don't every minute together, that's for sure. (Laughter)
你们是如何做到的? 梅琳达:是的,有很多女人对我说, “我真觉得我没法儿跟我丈夫一起工作, 在一起就是不行。” 你知道,我们很享受一起工作,并且我们不...... 我和比尔共同见证了这个基金会不断发展、壮大, 事实上,我们为基金会一同出差的次数 并没有比尔还在微软工作时的多, 我们更多的时候是分开奔波的, 但我总是知道当我回家的时候, 比尔会对我所学到的东西感兴趣, 不管是关于女人还是女孩子们, 或是疫苗供应链的新闻, 或是某个杰出的领导。 他会听我讲述,会真的很感兴趣。 并且他知道当他回家的时候, 即使是谈论他做过的演讲, 或谈论些他了解的数据之类的东西, 我也会很感兴趣, 我想我们有着真正互助合作的关系。 但是我们不会每分钟都在一起,那是肯定的。 (笑声) 克里斯:但现在你们是在一起的,对此我们都很高兴。
CA: But now you are, and we're very happy that you are. Melinda, early on, you were basically largely running the show. Six years ago, I guess, Bill came on full time, so moved from Microsoft and became full time. That must have been hard, adjusting to that. No?
梅琳达,早些时候,台前幕后基本上由你来掌控, 我猜,是六年前, 比尔才变成全职的,他从微软过来,全职在基金会工作。 适应这个改变肯定很不容易。不是吗? 梅琳达:是啊,事实上,我想,
MG: Yeah. I think actually, for the foundation employees, there was way more angst for them than there was for me about Bill coming. I was actually really excited. I mean, Bill made this decision even obviously before it got announced in 2006, and it was really his decision, but again, it was a beach vacation where we were walking on the beach and he was starting to think of this idea. And for me, the excitement of Bill putting his brain and his heart against these huge global problems, these inequities, to me that was exciting. Yes, the foundation employees had angst about that. (Applause)
对于比尔的到来,基金会的雇员们会有更多的担忧, 要远比我的担忧多。 我其实很兴奋。 我是说,比尔在2006年宣布此项决定之前就下决心了, 而且,这的确是他的决定, 但还是要强调,那是在海滩度假时, 当我俩在海边漫步时, 他才开始有这个想法。 对我来说,这种兴奋, 比尔将他的智慧和心血浇灌在 这些世界性的难题和不平等问题, 对于我来说,确实感到激动。 是的,基金会的雇员们对此是担心的。 (掌声) 克里斯:这很酷。
CA: That's cool.
梅琳达:但那种担心在他加入我们三个月后就消失了。
MG: But that went away within three months, once he was there.
比尔:包括一些雇员(也消失了)。
BG: Including some of the employees.
梅琳达:那就是我说的,雇员们,
MG: That's what I said, the employees, it went away for them three months after you were there.
你去了三个月以后, 那种担心就消失了。 比尔:不,我是开玩笑的。 梅琳达:哦,你是说,雇员们没有离开。
BG: No, I'm kidding. MG: Oh, you mean, the employees didn't go away.
比尔:有几个走了,但是——
BG: A few of them did, but — (Laughter)
(笑声) 克里斯:你们会谈论什么呢?
CA: So what do you guys argue about? Sunday, 11 o'clock, you're away from work, what comes up? What's the argument?
比如周日,11点钟, 你们没在工作, 会发生什么?会讨论些什么?
BG: Because we built this thing together from the beginning, it's this great partnership. I had that with Paul Allen in the early days of Microsoft. I had it with Steve Ballmer as Microsoft got bigger, and now Melinda, and in even stronger, equal ways, is the partner, so we talk a lot about which things should we give more to, which groups are working well? She's got a lot of insight. She'll sit down with the employees a lot. We'll take the different trips she described. So there's a lot of collaboration. I can't think of anything where one of us had a super strong opinion about one thing or another?
比尔:因为我们从一开始就一起建立这个基金会, 这是很棒的合作关系。 在微软的早期,我跟保罗·艾伦也是如此。 在微软扩张的时候,我跟史蒂夫·鲍尔默也是如此。 现在是跟梅琳达,我们甚至是更好的合作伙伴, 我们会谈论些,比如,哪件事我们需要投入更多, 那个团队做得比较好? 她很有洞察力, 她会经常坐下来跟雇员们沟通。 像她描述的那样,我们会去不同的地方出差。 因此,我们会有很多合作。 我想不出哪怕一件事, 我或她会对某个问题有很执拗的意见。
CA: How about you, Melinda, though? Can you? (Laughter) You never know.
克里斯:你觉得呢?梅琳达,你能分享一些吗?(笑声) 这可说不好。
MG: Well, here's the thing. We come at things from different angles, and I actually think that's really good. So Bill can look at the big data and say, "I want to act based on these global statistics." For me, I come at it from intuition. I meet with lots of people on the ground and Bill's taught me to take that and read up to the global data and see if they match, and I think what I've taught him is to take that data and meet with people on the ground to understand, can you actually deliver that vaccine? Can you get a woman to accept those polio drops in her child's mouth? Because the delivery piece is every bit as important as the science. So I think it's been more a coming to over time towards each other's point of view, and quite frankly, the work is better because of it.
梅琳达:是这样的。 我们从不同的角度来看问题, 事实上我认为这是非常好的。 比尔会关注大数据,说: “我想基于这些全球性的数据来行动。” 我呢,我会用直觉来看问题, 我实地探访了很多人, 比尔教给我的是,要把我的直觉跟全球性的数据作比较, 看看是不是吻合, 而我认为我教给他的是, 凭着数据,亲身去跟人们交流,去理解, 那种疫苗的供应流程可行吗? 你能让一个女人接受喂孩子小儿麻痹症药剂吗? 因为药品的供应跟科学研究同等重要。 因此,我认为,逐渐地, 彼此的观点会靠近对方的观点, 很坦率地讲,我们的工作因此而更加出色了。 克里斯:那么,在疫苗和小儿麻痹症等方面,
CA: So, in vaccines and polio and so forth, you've had some amazing successes. What about failure, though? Can you talk about a failure and maybe what you've learned from it?
你们已取得了不可思议的成就。 但是,失败呢? 你们能否谈一次失败的经历, 或许,进一步谈谈从中学到了什么? 比尔:是的,幸运的是,我们能提供一些失败的经历,
BG: Yeah. Fortunately, we can afford a few failures, because we've certainly had them. We do a lot of drug work or vaccine work that you know you're going to have different failures. Like, we put out, one that got a lot of publicity was asking for a better condom. Well, we got hundreds of ideas. Maybe a few of those will work out. We were very naïve, certainly I was, about a drug for a disease in India, visceral leishmaniasis, that I thought, once I got this drug, we can just go wipe out the disease. Well, turns out it took an injection every day for 10 days. It took three more years to get it than we expected, and then there was no way it was going to get out there. Fortunately, we found out that if you go kill the sand flies, you probably can have success there, but we spent five years, you could say wasted five years, and about 60 million, on a path that turned out to have very modest benefit when we got there.
因为我们确实有这样的故事。 有很多药品和疫苗的工作,明摆着要经历多次失败。 比如有一个广受公众关注的例子, 是需要更高质量的避孕套的例子, 我们有无数个想法。 也许只有几个能成功。 我们非常天真,我肯定是太天真, 关于治疗在印度的名为内脏利什曼病的药物, 我以为,一旦我们有了这个药物, 我们就可以消灭这个疾病。 但发现患者需要每天注射针剂,连续十天。 这项计划要比预期的多消耗了三年时间, 但还没有办法实现目标。 幸运的是,我们发现如果杀死沙蝇, 就很有可能会成功, 但我们花了五年时间, 可以说是浪费了五年, 并且浪费了约6000万美元, 在我们实现目标后,发现取得的成效平平。 克里斯:你们在教育方面差不多每年投入10亿美金,
CA: You're spending, like, a billion dollars a year in education, I think, something like that. Is anything, the story of what's gone right there is quite a long and complex one. Are there any failures that you can talk about?
我想,差不多是这个数目, 有没有这样的故事,历时经久而且绕了些圈子? 有没有可供你们分享的失败的经历? 梅琳达:好吧,我要讲讲我们的一次巨大的教训。
MG: Well, I would say a huge lesson for us out of the early work is we thought that these small schools were the answer, and small schools definitely help. They bring down the dropout rate. They have less violence and crime in those schools. But the thing that we learned from that work, and what turned out to be the fundamental key, is a great teacher in front of the classroom. If you don't have an effective teacher in the front of the classroom, I don't care how big or small the building is, you're not going to change the trajectory of whether that student will be ready for college. (Applause)
早期的时候,我们觉得这些小规模学校是出路, 小规模的学校的确有帮助。 它们降低了缀学率, 这些学校里,暴力和犯罪率更低。 但我们从这项工作里学到的是, 教室讲台上伟大的老师是关键所在, 如果教室讲台上没有一位杰出的老师, 我不会在乎教学楼是高还是矮, 都不会改变学生成长的轨迹, 不会改变孩子是否会考上大学。 (掌声)
CA: So Melinda, this is you and your eldest daughter, Jenn. And just taken about three weeks ago, I think, three or four weeks ago. Where was this?
克里斯:梅琳达,这是你和你最大的女儿,简。 就在三个星期前照的,我想, 是三到四周以前。这是哪里? 梅琳达:我们去了坦桑尼亚。
MG: So we went to Tanzania. Jenn's been to Tanzania. All our kids have been to Africa quite a bit, actually. And we did something very different, which is, we decided to go spend two nights and three days with a family. Anna and Sanare are the parents. They invited us to come and stay in their boma. Actually, the goats had been there, I think, living in that particular little hut on their little compound before we got there. And we stayed with their family, and we really, really learned what life is like in rural Tanzania. And the difference between just going and visiting for half a day or three quarters of a day versus staying overnight was profound, and so let me just give you one explanation of that. They had six children, and as I talked to Anna in the kitchen, we cooked for about five hours in the cooking hut that day, and as I talked to her, she had absolutely planned and spaced with her husband the births of their children. It was a very loving relationship. This was a Maasai warrior and his wife, but they had decided to get married, they clearly had respect and love in the relationship. Their children, their six children, the two in the middle were twins, 13, a boy, and a girl named Grace. And when we'd go out to chop wood and do all the things that Grace and her mother would do, Grace was not a child, she was an adolescent, but she wasn't an adult. She was very, very shy. So she kept wanting to talk to me and Jenn. We kept trying to engage her, but she was shy. And at night, though, when all the lights went out in rural Tanzania, and there was no moon that night, the first night, and no stars, and Jenn came out of our hut with her REI little headlamp on, Grace went immediately, and got the translator, came straight up to my Jenn and said, "When you go home, can I have your headlamp so I can study at night?"
简去过坦桑尼亚。 事实上我们所有的孩子都去过非洲好几次, 我们做了一些不同寻常的事情, 那就是我们决定与当地一家共度三个白天两个夜晚。 安娜和思奈尔是父母。 他们邀请我们住在他们的家里。 事实上,我想,在我们去之前, 山羊在他们小小的院落里一个特别小的棚屋里住过。 我们跟他们一家住在一起, 我们真正知道了在坦桑尼亚的农村,生活是什么样子。 到那儿只访问半天或大半天, 跟在那儿住一夜的差别是巨大的, 我来给你作个解释。 他们有六个孩子,当我跟安娜在厨房里聊天, 我们那天在棚屋里花了五个小时煮饭, 当我跟她谈话的时候,她已经跟丈夫完全计划好了, 让孩子出生的间隔大一些, 他们是很相爱的夫妻。 这是马赛战士和她的妻子, 他们已经决定结婚了。 很明显,他们互相尊敬并且相爱。 他们的孩子,他们的六个孩子, 中间的两个是双生子,13岁, 一个男孩,还一个女孩叫格雷斯。 我们会出去砍木头, 做格雷斯和她母亲所做的一切, 格雷斯已不再是个孩子了,已经成为青少年, 但还没成年。 她非常非常地害羞。 她一直想跟我和简说话。 我们一直想让她参与进来,但她很害羞。 而在晚上, 当坦桑尼亚的农村所有的灯都熄灭以后, 那天晚上也没有月亮, 那第一个晚上,也没有星星, 简从我们的棚屋出来 带着她的REI头顶小灯, 格雷斯立即过来了, 还拿着翻译机, 直接来到我和简的身边说, “等你要回家时, 你的头顶小灯能留给我吗? 那样我就能在晚上学习了。” 克里斯:喔,哇。
CA: Oh, wow.
梅琳达:她父亲告诉过我,
MG: And her dad had told me how afraid he was that unlike the son, who had passed his secondary exams, because of her chores, she'd not done so well and wasn't in the government school yet. He said, "I don't know how I'm going to pay for her education. I can't pay for private school, and she may end up on this farm like my wife." So they know the difference that an education can make in a huge, profound way.
他非常担心她不会像他儿子那样通过考试, 因为她要做家务,学习并不好, 还没有进公立学校。 他说,“我不知道该怎样付她的教育费用。 我付不起私立学校, 她也许会像我的妻子一样在这个农场终老。“ 当然,他们知道教育能改变命运, 能在很大程度上改变命运。
CA: I mean, this is another pic of your other two kids, Rory and Phoebe, along with Paul Farmer. Bringing up three children when you're the world's richest family seems like a social experiment without much prior art. How have you managed it? What's been your approach?
克里斯:我说,这是另一张照片, 你们其他的两个孩子,罗易和菲比, 跟保罗·法默在一起。 作为全世界最富有的家庭,抚养三个孩子, 看起来像一个社会学试验, 而这没有太多先例。 你是怎样教育孩子的? 你的方法是什么?
BG: Well, I'd say overall the kids get a great education, but you've got to make sure they have a sense of their own ability and what they're going to go and do, and our philosophy has been to be very clear with them -- most of the money's going to the foundation -- and help them find something they're excited about. We want to strike a balance where they have the freedom to do anything but not a lot of money showered on them so they could go out and do nothing. And so far, they're fairly diligent, excited to pick their own direction.
比尔:好吧,总的来说,孩子们得到了极好的教育, 但你必须确保他们对自己的能力要有认识, 他们要做什么,要走向哪里, 我们育儿的理念非常清晰—— 大部分的资产都会捐给基金会—— 而我们会帮助他们找到他们热爱的东西, 我们力求达到一种平衡, 让他们有自由做任何事情, 但不是单纯地把钱倾倒在他们身上, 否则他们可能在外面无所事事。 目前为止,他们相当勤奋, 很兴奋地选择他们自己的方向。 克里斯:你之前很小,心地保护他们的隐私, 出于众所周知的原因
CA: You've obviously guarded their privacy carefully for obvious reasons. I'm curious why you've given me permission to show this picture now here at TED. MG: Well, it's interesting. As they get older, they so know that our family belief is about responsibility, that we are in an unbelievable situation just to live in the United States and have a great education, and we have a responsibility to give back to the world. And so as they get older and we are teaching them -- they have been to so many countries around the world — they're saying, we do want people to know that we believe in what you're doing, Mom and Dad, and it is okay to show us more. So we have their permission to show this picture, and I think Paul Farmer is probably going to put it eventually in some of his work. But they really care deeply about the mission of the foundation, too.
我很好奇你为什么准许我在TED展示这张照片。 梅琳达:好吧,这很有趣。 他们逐渐长大,也知道在我们家,责任是我们的信仰。 我们生活在美国,拥有优良的教育, 这简直是不可思议, 我们有责任回馈世界。 因此,当他们慢慢长大, 我们在教育他们—— 他们去过世界上那么多国家—— 他们说, 我们的确想让人们知道我们相信你们所做的一切, 爸爸,妈妈, 可以向社会更多地展现我们。 因此我们得到了他们的许可来展示这张照片, 我想保罗·法默很可能最终会把这照片放进他某个作品, 但真的,他们也非常关心基金会的使命。 克里斯:即便为基金会贡献了大量资产,
CA: You've easily got enough money despite your vast contributions to the foundation to make them all billionaires. Is that your plan for them?
你们还是可以很轻松地让孩子们成为亿万富翁, 这是你们对他们的规划吗? 比尔:不是,不是的。根本不会让他们如此成长。
BG: Nope. No. They won't have anything like that. They need to have a sense that their own work is meaningful and important. We read an article long, actually, before we got married, where Warren Buffett talked about that, and we're quite convinced that it wasn't a favor either to society or to the kids.
他们需要有一种概念, 即他们的工作有意义,而且重要。 早在我们结婚以前,我们读过一篇文章, 文章是巴菲特写的, 我们确信把财富留给孩子,对社会、孩子都不是善举。 克里斯:好吧,说到沃伦·巴菲特,
CA: Well, speaking of Warren Buffett, something really amazing happened in 2006, when somehow your only real rival for richest person in America suddenly turned around and agreed to give 80 percent of his fortune to your foundation. How on Earth did that happen? I guess there's a long version and a short version of that. We've got time for the short version.
在2006年发生了一件神奇的事情, 你的美国首富的唯一竞争者突然一百八十度大转弯, 同意将其80%的财产捐给你的基金会。 那到底是怎么发生的? 我猜讲这个故事可长可短, 我们只有时间来说短的。 比尔:好的,沃伦是我的好朋友,
BG: All right. Well, Warren was a close friend, and he was going to have his wife Suzie give it all away. Tragically, she passed away before he did, and he's big on delegation, and — (Laughter) — he said —
他那时还在说服他的妻子苏西同意把财产捐出去。 但不幸的是,在他捐款之前,她就去世了。 这样他就很高的有决策权了,并且 ——(笑声)—— 他说—— 克里斯:把它传到推特上。
CA: Tweet that.
比尔:如果他找到一个能妥善处理他的资产的人,
BG: If he's got somebody who is doing something well, and is willing to do it at no charge, maybe that's okay. But we were stunned. MG: Totally stunned. BG: We had never expected it, and it has been unbelievable. It's allowed us to increase our ambition in what the foundation can do quite dramatically. Half the resources we have come from Warren's mind-blowing generosity.
他会无条件地乐于捐出财产, (即便他捐给的基金会)也会是好的。 但是,(捐给了我们),我们的确很吃惊。 梅琳达:完全地震惊。 比尔:我们从没期待过他会捐给我们, 这简直难以置信。 这笔钱让我们可以拥有更高的志向, 让基金会可以做的事情大为不同。 我们的基金会一半的基金来源于沃伦“疯狂的”慷慨。 克里斯:我记得你作出过保证,
CA: And I think you've pledged that by the time you're done, more than, or 95 percent of your wealth, will be given to the foundation.
在你去世之前, 你将把你95%以上的个人资产捐给基金会。 比尔:是的。
BG: Yes.
克里斯:因为你和沃伦关系。这很神奇——
CA: And since this relationship, it's amazing— (Applause) And recently, you and Warren have been going around trying to persuade other billionaires and successful people to pledge to give, what, more than half of their assets for philanthropy. How is that going? BG: Well, we've got about 120 people who have now taken this giving pledge. The thing that's great is that we get together yearly and talk about, okay, do you hire staff, what do you give to them? We're not trying to homogenize it. I mean, the beauty of philanthropy is this mind-blowing diversity. People give to some things. We look and go, "Wow." But that's great. That's the role of philanthropy is to pick different approaches, including even in one space, like education. We need more experimentation. But it's been wonderful, meeting those people, sharing their journey to philanthropy, how they involve their kids, where they're doing it differently, and it's been way more successful than we expected. Now it looks like it'll just keep growing in size in the years ahead.
(掌声) 最近,你和沃伦四处游说其他的亿万富翁和成功人士, 让他们为慈善事业承诺捐出半数资产。 这进行得如何? 比尔:我们已经说服大概120人, 他们已作出承诺。 这件事情美妙的地方在于, 我们一年聚一次,互相谈论, 你雇了谁?你给了他们些什么? 我们并不是试图一致行动, 我的意思是,慈善的魅力在于不同思维火花的擦碰, 人们会有各自的选择, 我们了解之后,“哇。” 但那是了不起的。这就是慈善,各有各的方式, 即便是同样的领域,如教育,(也会有不同)。 我们需要更多地实践。 但这一直很棒,结识不同的人, 分享他们的慈善事业经历, 如何让他们的孩子介入, 他们在哪里做的不同, 这远比我们期待的更加成功。 现在看来,在未来几年,它会持续增长。 梅琳达:让人们看到其他人在通过慈善改变世界,
MG: And having people see that other people are making change with philanthropy, I mean, these are people who have created their own businesses, put their own ingenuity behind incredible ideas. If they put their ideas and their brain behind philanthropy, they can change the world. And they start to see others doing it, and saying, "Wow, I want to do that with my own money." To me, that's the piece that's incredible.
我的意思是,这些人已经创造了自己的事业, 将才智转化为不可思议的想法。 如果他们把才智付诸于慈善事业,他们可以改变世界。 他们看到其他人致力于慈善事业,说: “哇,我也想这样利用的我的财产。” 对我而言,这就是最美妙的事情。 克里斯:在我看来,事实上,对很多人来说,
CA: It seems to me, it's actually really hard for some people to figure out even how to remotely spend that much money on something else. There are probably some billionaires in the room and certainly some successful people. I'm curious, can you make the pitch? What's the pitch?
想清楚如何把这么多的钱花在别处是极其困难的事情。 这间屋子里可能有些亿万富翁, 还肯定有一些成功人士。 我很好奇,你能鼓动他们吗? 如何来鼓动?
BG: Well, it's the most fulfilling thing we've ever done, and you can't take it with you, and if it's not good for your kids, let's get together and brainstorm about what we can be done. The world is a far better place because of the philanthropists of the past, and the U.S. tradition here, which is the strongest, is the envy of the world. And part of the reason I'm so optimistic is because I do think philanthropy is going to grow and take some of these things government's not just good at working on and discovering and shine some light in the right direction.
比尔:好吧,慈善是我们做过的最有满足感的事情。 你不能带着钱(升天), 而且如果把钱留给孩子会对他们不好, 我们就一起“脑力风暴”,看看我们能做些什么。 因为慈善家过去的所作所为,世界已变得更加美好, 在美国这种传统深入人心,全世界都羡慕。 我之所以这么乐观, 部分原因是我确实相信慈善事业会持续发展, 承担一些政府不擅长做的事情, 发现希望所在,让光照亮在最需要的地方。 克里斯:世界上存在着严重的不平等,
CA: The world's got this terrible inequality, growing inequality problem that seems structural. It does seem to me that if more of your peers took the approach that you two have made, it would make a dent both in that problem and certainly in the perception of that problem. Is that a fair comment?
不平等的现象越来越多,似乎成了本质上的问题, 在我看来,如果有更多的人像你们两位这样致力于慈善, 就会让世界有所不同。 不仅会解决不平等的问题, 当然也会改变人们对于不平等的认识。 我这样说合理吗? 比尔:是的,如果你能将钱从最富有的人手里
BG: Oh yeah. If you take from the most wealthy and give to the least wealthy, it's good. It tries to balance out, and that's just.
转移到最贫穷的人手里,那就是好的。 要努力实现平衡,这就是平衡。 梅琳达:你在改变制度。
MG: But you change systems. In the U.S., we're trying to change the education system so it's just for everybody and it works for all students. That, to me, really changes the inequality balance.
在美国,我们在努力试着改变教育制度, 这是在帮助所有人, 所有学生都会因此受惠。 那对我来说,这就是改变了不平等。 比尔:那是最重要的。
BG: That's the most important. (Applause)
(掌声) 克里斯:我真的认为这儿的大部分人和世界上的诸多富翁
CA: Well, I really think that most people here and many millions around the world are just in awe of the trajectory your lives have taken and the spectacular degree to which you have shaped the future. Thank you so much for coming to TED and for sharing with us and for all you do.
都会为你们选择的人生道路而肃然起敬, 也为你们极大程度地改变未来而肃然起敬。 非常感谢你们来到TED, 跟我们分享你们所做的一切。 比尔:谢谢你。 梅琳达:谢谢你。
BG: Thank you. MG: Thank you. (Applause)
(掌声)
BG: Thank you. MG: Thank you very much. BG: All right, good job. (Applause)
比尔:谢谢你们。 梅琳达:非常感谢你们。 比尔:很了不起的工作。 (掌声)