Moment of Lift

Let me start by saying Melinda Gates is a brilliant, remarkable woman. What she and her husband have done for the world is absolutely incredible and almost hard to fathom. What they're focusing on now - lifting up WOMEN - is the most remarkable approach of all. 

This book has been called one of the best of the year. I read it after watching her on the David Letterman Netflix show (which the title for is so long, I can't remember it and I'm too lazy to Google it right now.) Bottom line: I needed to read more about her mission and her message. 

What the Gates Foundation is doing is not simply empowering women in the "You Go, Girl" kind of way in which that phrase is often associated. They're literally lifting communities out of poverty by lifting up the women through education, access to contraception and other means.

For example... Access to contraception that most of us take for granted can change an entire society. The less control women have over when they'll have children and how many, the more likely women are to die in childbirth, have children they can't feed and have children who don't make it past the first year of life. This book points out that no country in the last 50 years has emerged from poverty without expanding access to contraceptives. 

Think about that.

The kind of family planning we have the luxury of experiencing can literally lift a society out of poverty.

This book is filled with that kind of information and so much more about how simply given women some control in their families and communities is what will eventually change the world.

Gates does this not through preaching in this book, but through examples of the women she's met. The stories she tells are heartbreaking and inspiring. She talks about how cultural traditions often put women and children in danger and how breaking through those traditions takes not a billionaire's donation, but the "buying in" of those communities.

It's fascinating and awe-inspiring work. It's so big, it's hard to even comprehend. Gates takes it down to a personal level in this book and the change feels almost accessible to the rest of us.

All that said, I found myself bored by the end of the book. That's horrible to say, but I got more out of her interview with Letterman and shorter stories I've read of the work. Here, it felt repetitive after the first half or so and I found my mind wandering. That's not a comment on the work, please don't confuse the two. I just feel you can get the same feel for what's being done through interviews and articles without needing to invest your time in the entire book.