one white guy

Melinda Gates visiting a nutrition center in Bangladesh

I’ve really enjoyed this article series on Nicholas Kristof’s NY Times blog bringing reader questions to philanthropist Melinda Gates. You should give both parts a good read for some great insight into the work the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation supports abroad and why this work is necessary. (Connection: the Gates’ were critical partners in IJM’s Project Lantern in the Philippines.)

I was particularly struck today by this question and response:

Reader Cosima Bartlett (to both Nick and Melinda): Why do you not concentrate more of your efforts on American children who are so lacking in so many important areas as statistics now show?

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. [Source]

I think this was a great challenge for me to consider why I feel compelled to work in Uganda and less so to work in America. Kristof’s right that poverty in the developing world is very different from in the US, but I think I resonate most with the birth lottery question. It’s why I get so choked up about the kids I worked with in Kenya and with the widows we help here in Uganda. It reminds me that, while we were never ”wealthy” growing up, I entered a life of privilege and stability just be being randomly born white and in a Western country. The imbalance of that lottery gets me fired up every time.

It’s also a challenge to re-examine my motives. Am I caught up in the glamour and romanticism of working in Africa when I could be just as effective domestically? When I talk about my experiences, am I looking for some social approval for my choices or the start of an honest dialogue? These questions are crucial as I develop life goals and as I write on this site.

Either way, I think it’s critically important that everyone identifies what moves them. Kristof spoke at Elon University, my alma mater, a few years ago and said, “The ultimate aspiration is to connect to some cause larger than yourself and try to make a difference in doing that.” I care about social justice in the developing world; for my friend Nicole, it’s spinal cord injury patients in Colorado. I’m not gifted and moved where she is gifted and moved, and the world gets a little better because of it. As long as people are pursuing causes that engage them, I think we won’t need a complicated debate on home versus abroad. As long as people are taking action, I’m happy.

*Read more from Nicholas Kristof on his blog On the Ground by The New York Times.