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How we can think beyond just our own moms on Mother's Day

On Mother's Day, we tend to focus on the moms we know. But Mother's Day is also an occasion to honor the daily heroism of moms around the world. It's easy to assume the important decisions about the world's future are made in boardrooms or the halls of government. But the truth is that millions of women are changing the world in quiet ways by working tirelessly to improve life for themselves and their families.

This Mother's Day, let's support all moms by helping to ensure these things:

1. Women and girls have decision-making authority.

Chandrika Devi cradles her 15-day-old child in her home in Samda village, Saharsa district, Bihar, India. Photo by Prashant Panjiar/Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.


Women must have an equal voice in determining the future, whether that's for themselves, their families, or their country. That means something as basic as a girl being able to decide to wait until she's an adult to get married. Every year, 15 million girls are married before their 18th birthday. Our daughters and sisters deserve better.

2. Every girl has access to an education.

A new-mother group meets in the Korogocho community. Photo by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation photographer.

One of the great achievements of the past generation is that the number of girls and boys enrolled in primary schools is finally equal. Now we have to make sure that all girls are able to continue their education for as long as they want in order to achieve their goals.

3. Women are free to decide if and when to get pregnant.

A community health worker speaks about contraceptive use during a home visit in Korogocho. Photo by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation photographer.

I will never forget a conversation I had with Maryanne, a mother who lives in a slum outside Nairobi, Kenya. She uses contraceptives, she said, because "I want to bring every good thing to one child before I have another." That desire — to bring every good thing to our children — is universal. All mothers should have the ability to fulfill it.

4. No woman has to choose between her career and her family.

At the Osu Maternity Home in Accra, Ghana, Rebecca Martey breastfeeds her newborn son, Gerald. Photo by Olivier Asselin/Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The income mothers earn is often critical to their families' well-being. In recognition of this fact, all but nine countries in the world provide paid leave for new moms. The United States is one of the nine that doesn't. We can do better.

5. Women have access to financial services.

A woman who had just given birth to premature twins at Turay Yaradua maternal and children's hospital in Katsina, Nigeria, looks at the camera. Photo by Pep Bonet/Noor/Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

In developing nations, women are 20% less likely than men to have a formal bank account, but they invest 90% of their earnings in their family's future. When mothers have power over their finances, everybody wins.

This Mother's Day, I challenge you to help make the world better for moms everywhere.

Melinda French Gates, co-chair and trustee of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, visits Mbagathi Hospital. Photo by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation photographer.

There are hundreds of amazing advocacy organizations around the world. You can find the one that fits with your personal passions, but here's a short list of groups I like to get you started: Population Services International, Tostan, Girls Not Brides, and Heifer International. Happy Mother's Day!

Share these great thoughts to celebrate and support moms the world over this Mother's Day!

A pitbull stares at the window, looking for the mailman.


Dogs are naturally driven by a sense of purpose and a need for belonging, which are all part of their instinctual pack behavior. When a dog has a job to do, it taps into its needs for structure, purpose, and the feeling of contributing to its pack, which in a domestic setting translates to its human family.

But let’s be honest: In a traditional domestic setting, dogs have fewer chores they can do as they would on a farm or as part of a rescue unit. A doggy mom in Vancouver Island, Canada had fun with her dog’s purposeful uselessness by sharing the 5 “chores” her pitbull-Lab mix does around the house.

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Representative Image from Canva

Let's not curse any more children with bad names, shall we?

Some parents have no trouble giving their children perfectly unique, very meaningful names that won’t go on to ruin their adulthood. But others…well…they get an A for effort, but might want to consider hiring a baby name professional.

Things of course get even more complicated when one parent becomes attached to a name that they’re partner finds completely off-putting. It almost always leads to a squabble, because the more one parent is against the name, the more the other parent will go to bat for it.

This seemed to be the case for one soon-to-be mom on the Reddit AITA forum recently. Apparently, she was second-guessing her vehement reaction to her husband’s, ahem, avant garde baby name for their daughter, which she called “the worst name ever.”

But honestly, when you hear this name, I think you’ll agree she was totally in the right.

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An English doctor named Edward Jenner took incredible risks to try to rid his world of smallpox. Because of his efforts and the efforts of scientists like him, the only thing between deadly diseases like the ones below and extinction are people who refuse to vaccinate their kids. Don't be that parent.

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An average of about 19 people go overboard every year, and only around 28% survive. Cruise ship lawyer Spencer Aronfeld explained the phenomenon in a viral TikTok video, in which he also revealed the secret code the crew uses when tragedy happens.

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Kudos to the heroes who had 90 seconds to save lives in the Key Bridge collapse

The loss of 6 lives is tragic, but the dispatch recording shows it could have been so much worse.

Representative image by Gustavo Fring/Pexels

The workers who responded to the Dali's mayday call saved lives with their quick response.

As more details of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore emerge, it's becoming more apparent how much worse this catastrophe could have been.

Just minutes before 1:30am on March 26, shortly after leaving port in Baltimore Harbor, a cargo ship named Dali lost power and control of its steering, sending it careening into a structural pillar on Key Bridge. The crew of the Dali issued a mayday call at 1:26am to alert authorities of the power failure, giving responders crucial moments to prepare for a potential collision. Just 90 seconds later, the ship hit a pylon, triggering a total collapse of the 1.6-mile bridge into the Patapsco River.

Dispatch audio of those moments shows the calm professionalism and quick actions that limited the loss of life in an unexpected situation where every second counted.

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Yale's pep band had to miss the NCAA tournament. University of Idaho said, 'We got you.'

In an act of true sportsmanship, the Vandal band learned Yale's fight song, wore their gear and cheered them on.

Courtesy of University of Idaho

The Idaho Vandals answered the call when Yale needed a pep band.

Yale University and the University of Idaho could not be more different. Ivy League vs. state school. East Coast vs. Pacific Northwest. City vs. farm town. But in the first two rounds of the NCAA basketball tournament, extenuating circumstances brought them together as one, with the Bulldogs and the Vandals becoming the "Vandogs" for a weekend.

When Yale made it to the March Madness tournament, members of the school's pep band had already committed to other travel plans during spring break. They couldn't gather enough members to make the trek across the country to Spokane, Washington, so the Yale Bulldogs were left without their fight song unless other arrangements could be made.

When University of Idaho athletic band director Spencer Martin got wind of the need less than a week before Yale's game against Auburn, he sent out a message to his band members asking if anyone would be interested in stepping in. The response was a wave of immediate yeses, so Martin got to work arranging instruments and the students dedicated themselves to learning Yale's fight song and other traditional Yale pep songs.

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