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By Root 246 0

an extra year to study the special needs of children at the Yale Child Study Center and the university hospital. When she graduated, she decided not to pursue prestigious and more lucrative law firm opportunities and went to work for the Children’s Defense Fund to help poor children. When she came to Arkansas to be with me and taught in the law school, she ran the legal aid clinic and prison project. After we married and moved to Little Rock, while I was attorney general and governor, she co-founded the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families; served on the board of our Children’s Hospital and helped with its fund-raising drive (it became one of the nation’s ten largest children’s hospitals in a state with only 2.8 million people); brought an excellent preschool program from Israel to poor families in our state; headed a task force that increased access to health care for people in small towns and rural areas; and chaired a committee that developed higher standards for our schools. She also served on an American Bar Association commission on the status of women in the profession. Somehow she made time for all these volunteer efforts while she was working full-time as a lawyer, active in her local church, and fully involved in all Chelsea’s school and extracurricular activities. My wife was my first role model for what it means to be a public servant without public office.

Hillary did the things she did because she wanted to make a difference. And she did them because it made her happy to see another baby in a small town get health care, another young child smiling at her preschool graduation ceremony, another student from a rural school become the first in his family to go to college, another woman break through the glass ceiling at a law firm.

Now that we’ve switched places and I do public service as a private citizen, it’s the human impact that I find most rewarding too. I’ve included one picture in this book, opposite the title page, that says it all. It captures the beautiful face and bright eyes of a Cambodian orphan born with HIV. Basil was ten months old when this photo was taken. His mother died when he was only one month old, and her doctor arranged for him to be taken in by New Hope for Cambodian Children, an organization that cares for HIV-positive orphans and other vulnerable children. When Basil arrived at the home, he was six weeks of age and had both HIV and tuberculosis. His doctor, a Clinton Foundation fellow, treated him for both conditions, giving Basil lifesaving pediatric AIDS medication through my foundation’s partnership with UNITAID, which funds our efforts to treat children across the globe. Basil responded well to the treatment, gained weight, and, as you can see, is now healthy. He has a chance. That’s often all one person can give another. But it can make all the difference.

I wrote this book to encourage you to give whatever you can, because everyone can give something. And there’s so much to be done, down the street and around the world. It’s never too late or too early to start. In this book you’ll encounter givers old, young, and in between, rich, poor, and in between, highly educated, virtually illiterate, and in between. You’ll read about innovative organizations, about new ways of giving time and money, and about old-fashioned acts of individual generosity and kindness. I think you’ll find people with whom you can identify, groups you might want to join, companies you might want to buy from, projects you might want to start on your own. It is impossible to mention all the individuals and organizations doing good work in America and around the world. There are millions of them. Naturally, many of those I mention in this book I happen to know personally, through the work of my foundation, but I hope the people and groups profiled are diverse and representative enough to persuade you that everyone can and should be a giver.

As you read about a wide range of givers—from Bill Gates to McKenzie Steiner, a six-year-old girl who organized a drive to clean up the beach in her community