Melinda Gates urges girls to find way to save the world

It's not surprising that Forest Ridge School of the Sacred Heart would appeal to Melinda Gates. Every student gets a laptop, freshmen study physics and seniors take trips to Uganda for volunteer work. The Bellevue Catholic school for girls gives parents brochures listing the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.

Gates, who attended an all-girls Catholic academy in Dallas, spoke to students this week as part of the school's 100th anniversary celebration. The co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation urged girls to find ways to help solve global problems.

The world is full of massive inequality, she said, but society has the means to change that.

"There's huge hope, and that's because of the promise of science and technology," she said. "Those two, in combination, are making problems much easier to solve than when I was your age."

When the school opened, Gates noted, Seattle was still a frontier town and women didn't have the right to vote.

"You couldn't get a latte if your life depended on it," she added.

More recently, its proximity to a growing Microsoft and Eastside technology industry has brought an influx of diverse families with tech-savvy parents and confident children. The Gateses recently enrolled their oldest daughter in the school.

These days, Forest Ridge students walk around citing research that shows they perform better at math without boys in the classroom, alumna Margaret Lane said.

Gates said her own role model, a high-school teacher, was a single mother raising three children and earning her Ph.D. in computer science at night.

"She saw I had a talent for math," Gates said. "She made sure I knew it, and she made sure I cultivated it."

The teacher acquired 10 Apple computers for the school, and together they learned about programming.

Gates urged the girls to use their education and skills to advance opportunities for the less fortunate.

She related her experiences visiting struggling neighborhoods in Los Angeles last year, and traveling to Africa, Bangladesh and India.

"I'm so struck with what we have in common with people in those countries despite our extraordinarily different circumstances," she said.

She met women living in a one-room shack who had nothing to offer but a small mat for her to sit on across the floor from them.

"I so love talking with them," she said. "In those moments in their home, you can so clearly see and understand how much they completely love their children ... what they want so desperately for their children is to have a healthy life and be happy."

She mentioned the Gates Foundation's work on malaria, a disease that kills 2,000 children a day, the equivalent of two school gymnasiums full of people, she said.

"If you're like me, making that personal connection is something that will change your life. I can't go to Africa every time and not come back a changed person," she said. "If you open yourself up to what you see there and let it inside, you cannot go back."

She told students to adopt a social problem like homelessness or a disease like HIV/AIDS.

"Spend a few hours online, e-mail the experts, follow the debates, share what you learn with your friends," she said. "Go out and find the toughest problems. They are solvable. You have a lifetime to work on them."

Gates herself is already a role model at the school, whose students were once known as "a bunch of nerdy girls up on the hill in uniforms," driven around in limousines, said graduate Danielle Matthews, 20.

The reality is much different, and service to society has been an integral part of the curriculum, she said. "Going to the school, you want volunteering to be part of your life," she said.

After her talk, Gates mingled with parents, teachers and alumnae.

"This is Melinda Gates standing here at the same school where they are," said Liz Dickson, whose daughter is a junior at Forest Ridge. "I think it's very inspirational."

Added alumna Kathleen Matthews, 18, "She makes it sound so easy."

Kristi Heim: 206-464-2718 or kheim@seattletimes.com