Gates Foundation Pledges $220 Million for Women, Children, Adolescents
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has announced commitments totaling $220 million in support of efforts to empower women and save the lives of thirty-eight million women, children, and adolescents by 2030.
Announced on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly meeting, the commitments include a $200 million pledge to the World Bank's Global Financing Facility Trust Fund in support of the UN's Every Woman Every Child initiative, launched in 2010 to address the major health challenges women, children, and adolescents face. With the goal of expanding the financing facility to fifty countries over the next five years, the fund aims to raise $2 billion to help close the estimated funding gap of $33 billion a year. Each dollar invested in the GFF Trust Fund leverages domestic government resources, financing from the World Bank's International Development Association and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, aligned external financing, and private-sector resources. To date, eleven projects supported by $307 million in GFF Trust Fund grants and linked to $1.8 billion in IDA/IBRD financing have been approved. ...