Can you imagine what sixty-six Billion dollars looks like? What could you do with just a 1/1000th of it? $66 million! But $66,000 million! It costs less than a quarter of that to run Northern Ireland each year, its schools, roads, art galleries and social services for one and a half million people. But what would you do with that sort of money? What if you started a business and in 20 years you earned enough money to be so rich that you could put half of that amount aside, and still live the life of the fabulously rich. Or give $31 billion of your own personal fortune to someone else to spend on good causes.
Microsoft earned Bill Gates enough money for him to start his foundation with half of the $66 Billion. Another man, called Warren Buffet, decided not to start his own charitable foundation, but preferred to give his money to Bill, and Bill’s wife Melinda, to spend on their chosen charities, that is curing Malaria and helping child poverty – with $66 billion.
Harvard University has discovered that it is short $8 Billion in its budget for this year. That is half of what it costs to run Northern Ireland! There are a series of crises budget meetings taking place around the University as they all figure how they are going to cut expenditure. Harvard is a charitable foundation as well, investing a huge amount of money to enable it to support education, knowledge, and the ideal of its motto “Veritas”, or truth. One way it does this is to provide financial support to help pay 2/3’s of the $60,000 per year fees. 27,000 people applied for Harvard scholarship grants this year, more than last year’s. However, only 1/10th will be successful – that is 2,700 people, leaving 24,500 disappointed applicants.
I wonder if $66 Billion is enough to cure Malaria?
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