A Conversation About How We Change the World

By Melinda Gates

This post originally appeared on the Gates’ Foundation’s blog, Impatient Optimists, here. Reposted with persmission.

I’m gearing up for a big week next week. And I hope you can join me in an on-going conversation online, throughout the week, because I need your voice to make a difference. I’ll be in New York City and am excited to talk with everyone from world leaders at the UN General Assembly (UNGA) annual session to social good advocates at the Social Good Summit about how the world is doing when it comes to improving life for the poorest people. I’m also eager to try something new. I’ll be a “keynote listener” at the Social Good Summit, where I’ll share the stage with and learn from some incredible activists from around the world doing cutting-edge work using social media for social good.

It’s such an important time to have these challenging conversations. We are nearing the 2015 deadline for the Millennium Development Goals, a report card first agreed upon in 2000, that tell us how the world is doing on everything from eradicating extreme hunger to reducing the number of children who die every year.

Here’s the great news: we’ve made amazing progress, as you’ll see in the slideshow below.

I know we still have a lot of work to do. But I want to make sure we take a moment to reflect on what’s already been accomplished. My hope is that all of us will use these successes and commit to doing everything in our power to keep them going, now and into the next fifteen years.