... Second thing we ought to do is get the kids of the world in school. There are a hundred million children who never go to school. In a poor country, one year of schooling is worth ten percent to twenty percent increased income for life, every year. We can do this for not much money. Brazil, a developing country, has ninety-seven percent of its kids in school. Why? Because they pay the mothers-not the fathers, the mothers-in the thirty percent of the poorest families a fixed amount a month if they send their kids to school. And they get a little card, it looks like a credit card, it says Bolsa-Escola on it, and if then once a month they get a certificate from school that their kid was their eighty-five percent of the time. They show up at the local lottery office and they get their cash. So not surprisingly, they're all in school. It's not rocket science. Ten years from now, you can remember this, ten years from now you check how Brazil's doing compared to other developing countries because they did this today. In my last year as president we got 300 million dollars, not much in a 1.7 trillion dollar budget, to feed six million children a good meal every day for a year, if but only if they come to school. I just got the first report on it from Senator McGovern and Senator Dole, and Congressman McGovern from Massachusetts who are handling this program, and it's amazing. Kids are flooding into schools who didn't go before because they come from families that don't have the ability to give them a good meal every day. You know, this is cheap. This is a lot cheaper than going to war, and it makes a big difference. I should also point out that one of the big problems we're having right now in the conflict in Afghanistan is the impact of the so-called Madrassas in religious schools on the mindset of the children. You've probably all seen stories about it, but it's not true that those kids were sent to those schools because their mothers and fathers thought Usama Bin Laden was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Most of them went there because their regular schools closed when the government couldn't fund them anymore. And I saw a story about one boy whose brother the parents paid for and couldn't get a job, so they just didn't pay for this kid to go to a private school so he ends up in Madrassa being indoctrinated instead of educated. We ought to pay to send these kids to school. A lot cheaper than going to war, and builds you a better life.

... Same argument applies to AIDS. Secretary General Kofi Annan's asked for seven billion dollars a year for a global fund to fight infectious diseases. I tell you, I've done a lot of work in this area. We can turn this epidemic around in three years. Brazil cut the death rate in half in three years with medicine and prevention. Uganda, with no medicine cut the death rate in half in five years. We do not have to have 100 million AIDS cases in five years. We do not have to let countries be consumed by this. I promise you, fledgling democracies will be destroyed by this. They will not be able to sustain an AIDS caseload of 100 million. And we don't have to have it happen. We ought to fund this program. It's not very much money.

... I further think we must do more about democracy. Ten years ago I said it ought to matter to us how people govern themselves because democracies by and large don't go to war with each other, don't sponsor terrorist acts against each other, and are more likely to be reliable partners, protect the environment, and abide by the law. Democracy is a stabilizing force. It provides a nonviolent means for resolving disputes. I believe that. And it's no accident that most of these terrorists come from non-democratic countries. If you live in a country where you're never required to take responsibility for yourself, where you never even have to ask whether there's something you should be doing to solve your own problems, then people are kept in a kind of a permanent state of collective immaturity and it becomes quite east for them to believe that someone else's success is the cause of their distress. Now I've already told you I think we ought to be doing more to help, but there's some people you can't help if they don't help themselves. And I think this is a very, very important point. I have seen so many instances where peoples simply did not have any reference point because they were never required to take responsibility for themselves. If your families had raised you and they were so worried that you were going to hurt yourself that from the time that you were six 'til the time it came time for you to go to Georgetown they never let out of house, you would have still been six emotionally, if you had never been able to leave the house. That's what it's like if you never get to have a say in your own life. I also think it's important when countries make a decision to be democracies that we recognize we ought to help them. I just got back from Spain where King Juan Carlos and Mikhail Gorbachov sponsored a conference designed specifically to help countries succeed once they choose democracy. You've got to deliver economic growth and honest government, and it's not as easy as it sounds.

(Some Remarks as delivered by President William Jefferson Clinton Georgetown University). November 7, 2001