What is one percent?

One percent is not merely a number on a balance sheet. 

One percent is the girl in Africa who gets to go to school, thanks to you.  One percent is the AIDS patient who gets her medicine, thanks to you. One percent is the African entrepreneur who can start a small family business thanks to you. One percent is not  redecorating presidential palaces or money flowing down a rat hole. This one percent is digging waterholes to provide clean water.

One percent is a new partnership with Africa, not paternalism towards Africa, where increased assistance flows toward improved governance and initiatives with proven track records and away from boondoggles and white elephants of every description.

America gives less than one percent now.  Were asking for an extra one percent to change the world. to transform millions of lives—but not just that  and I say this to the military men now – to transform the way that they see us. 

One percent is national security, enlightened economic self interest, and a better safer world rolled into one. Sounds to me that in this town of deals and compromises, one percent is the best bargain around.

These goals—clean water for all; school for every child; medicine for the afflicted, an end to extreme and senseless poverty—these are not just any goals; they are the Millennium Development goals, which this country supports.  And they are more than that.  They are the Beatitudes for a Globalised World.

Said by Bono during the breakfest conference in front of the entire USA