An Altar Call from Bill and Melinda Gates

Last week, my wife Joy and I were front and center when Bill and Melinda Gates launched their new Living Proof campaign in Washington, D.C. I have to imagine that this campaign launch sounded a lot like one of Microsoft's shareholder meetings. It was replete with charts, graphs, well-defined metrics for success, best practices, and market projections. But present throughout Bill and Melinda Gates' talk on the state of global health and poverty were not just numbers but the real people whose lives are being saved every day by their U.S. investments in global health. As the Living Proof Web site states,

Much of what people read and hear is bad news -- terrible statistics and sad stories. The purpose of the Living Proof Project is to share good news: Together, we can help the world's poorest people improve their lives. We know, because we've seen living proof. People's lives are improving in measurable ways