===========================================================================
President Bush Attends 2008 Bishop John T. Walker Memorial Dinner
===========================================================================

For Immediate Release Office of the Press Secretary November 12, 2008

President Bush Attends 2008 Bishop John T. Walker Memorial Dinner
Washington Hilton Hotel Washington, D.C.

ÿÿWhite House News
ÿÿPhotos

ÿÿÿÿÿ In Focus: Africa

7:19 P.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Frank, and thanks for this great honor. I accept
it gratefully, but it ought to be offered to the American people.

Laura and I are thrilled to be with you. I am always a better man when my
wife is by my side. (Laughter and applause.)

I want to thank Jules Coles, the President of Africare. Maria Walker, the
widow of Bishop John Walker. I was thinking coming over -- let's see, I'm
George Walker Bush -- (laughter.) I don't know -- what do you think?
(Laughter.) Anyway, Ms. Walker, thank you very much for joining us.

I want to thank the members of the Africare Board of Directors for this
honor, but more importantly, for the work you do in Africa.

I thank my friend, Congressman Don Payne, who's one of the leading --
(applause) -- the leading authorities in the United States Congress on
African affairs. I'm pleased members of my administration have joined me
and Laura here tonight.

Henrietta Fore, Administrator of USAID. (Applause.) The head of the
Millennium Challenge Corporation, Ambassador John Danilovich. (Applause.)
The U.S. Malaria Coordinator, Rear Admiral Tim Ziemer -- thank you for
coming, Admiral. (Applause.)

I'm pleased to be here with Lloyd Pierson, President and CEO of African
Development Foundation; Ron Tschetter, Director of the mighty Peace Corps.
(Applause.)

Laura and I have the privilege of hosting Bill Frist and his wife Karen at
the White House tonight. Make sure you make your bed, Senator, but we thank
for coming. (Laughter and applause.)

I want to thank members of the Diplomatic Corps. We are proud you are here
tonight.

I'm in pretty good company when it comes to this Humanitarian Service
Award. Jules said, man, you're hanging out with some good folks. Last
year's award winner went to -- recipient was President Ellen Johnson
Sirleaf of Liberia, a great woman. (Applause.) Last year's dinner speaker
was, in fact, my wife, Laura. And frankly, knowing both women, I am not
sure which is a harder act to follow. (Laughter.)

I really am glad Laura is here because our work in Africa -- and I say our
collective work in Africa is a labor of love for us. Laura and I have been
to Africa a lot. She has worked in an effective way to help promote
education and health. Our girls, Barbara and Jenna, have done a lot of work
to help promote dignity on the continent of Africa, particularly with those
folks living with HIV/AID. I am proud of their work, and I'm proud of the
work of millions of our fellow citizens. It is amazing to me that when you
go to Africa the number of Americans you meet who are living out the
universal call to love a neighbor like you'd like to be loved yourself --
who are hearing that admonition that "to whom much is given much is
required." (Applause.)

I appreciate those who support Africare. I thank you for your work in
caring for orphans in Uganda, or fighting polio in Angola, or resettling
refugees from Sudan. I thank you for the work you do in 20 nations on the
continent of Africa. And in that work, you are carrying out the vision of
the man we honor, Bishop John Walker.

When he was a young clergyman in the '60s, he traveled to Uganda. He was
welcomed in the homes of people who needed his message of love. That
experience convinced Bishop Walker that Africa's greatest treasure is not
its spectacular scenery or natural resources -- but it is the determined
spirit of its people. (Applause.)

Bishop Walker understood that disease and poverty and injustice are great
challenges -- but he also knew that the people of Africa have the talent
and ambition and resolve to overcome them. And frankly, that has been the
heart of our policy toward Africa. We do not believe in paternalism; we
believe in partnership, because we believe in the potential of the people
on the continent of Africa. (Applause.)

I've had a lot of uplifting experiences as the President. And one of the
most uplifting has been to witness a new and more hopeful era dawning on
the continent. Over the past eight years, it's been moving to watch
courageous Africans root out corruption, and open up their economies, and
invest in the prosperity of their people. The United States stands with
these leaders as partners and friends and allies in hope through the work
of the Millennium Challenge Account.

On my trip to Africa this February, I joined President Kikwete of Tanzania
to sign a five-year, nearly $700 million Millennium Challenge Compact,
which will help build up Tanzania's infrastructure. And as part of this
compact, Africare is helping to extend electricity to homes and businesses
in some of the most remote areas of the country. My fellow citizens need to
hear what President Kikwete said. He said that the Millennium Challenge
program is a "source of pride" -- "making it possible for
the people of
Tanzania to chart a brighter future."

Notice he didn't say, making it possible for the American people to chart a
brighter future for Tanzania. He said, making it possible for the citizens
of Tanzania to chart their own future. (Applause.)

It is uplifting to see people freed from hunger and thirst. And I'm proud
of the fact that the American people have supported programs to help feed
tens of millions of people on the continent. And I appreciate the work of
people here in Africare for helping on that work. Your organization has
partnered with our government to address the lack of clean and safe
drinking water. This is one of the greatest challenges to development in
African nations -- and through your efforts this evening you're helping to
overcome it.

On a way -- one way our country is working with African governments is to
provide safe water through private-public partnerships, and one such
innovative program is called the PlayPumps Alliance. Mr. Dale Jones of
PlayPumps, International, is with us today. You probably may not have heard
of PlayPumps Alliance -- it's kind of hard for me to say. (Laughter.) But
here's the way it works. PlayPumps are children's merry-go-rounds attached
to a water pump and a storage tank -- and so when the wheel turns, clean
water is produced. Laura and Jenna helped to get one of these new pumps
moving during their visit to a Zambian school. As the wheel spun, children
on the merry-go-round shouted and laughed with joy -- at the same time,
they helped to keep their friends in good health.

There are innovative ways to express the compassion of the American people
on the continent of Africa. And I want to thank PlayPumps, International
for being one of the innovators. (Applause.)

On my trips to Africa, it has been uplifting to see people fulfilling their
God-given potential thanks to a good education. The Africa Education
Initiative was mentioned, but a part of that initiative is the fact that
we've trained 700,000 teachers, distributed more than 10 million textbooks,
and provided hundreds of thousands of scholarships to help girls go to
school.

In Liberia, I met a woman named Deddeh Zaizay, who told me that her husband
had abandoned her and her three children because she was illiterate. Deddeh
is learning to read. She proudly declared in front of the President of
Liberia that she plans to go to college. And she has set her sights high --
she wants to be the President of Liberia one day. (Laughter and applause.)

I do not see how you can have a hopeful life if your mother and father is
dying of HIV/AIDS, or your baby is dying needlessly because of a mosquito
bite. And so we have taken a strong stand against deadly disease. Through
the Malaria Initiative, we've partnered with African nations to
dramatically reduce infection rates and save lives. Laura and I saw the
good work of the American people and the good work of Africare firsthand in
Tanzania's Meru District Hospital. New mothers bring their babies into this
hospital; they have them tested for malaria and HIV. Nurses distribute bed
net vouchers, where mothers can use to buy insecticide-treated bed nets.

Laura and I met the mothers. I cannot tell you the expression of pride they
had on their face when they held their babies up and said, my baby is
healthy. Nothing more hopeful than to see the joy on a mother's face,
realizing that her baby has escaped the scourge of the deadly disease of
malaria. I thank all those in this audience, and around our nation, who
have helped this Malaria Initiative become robust and effective.

And then, of course, there's the extraordinary story -- stories related to
PEPFAR. We launched the initiative in 2003; only 50,000 people in
Sub-Sahara Africa were receiving antiretroviral treatment. Today, as was
mentioned, we support treatment for nearly 1.7 million people in the
region. (Applause.) Africare is making vital contributions to this effort.
And with your help, people across Africa now speak of a Lazarus effect:
Communities once given up for dead are being brought back to life.

Laura and I have seen this miracle with our own eyes. I'm sure many of you
have, as well. She traveled to South Africa in 2005 -- Laura visited a
PEPFAR-supported clinic for HIV-positive pregnant women. There, she met
Kunene Tantoh. When Kunene first arrived at the clinic, she virtually had
no immune system left. But with the treatment she received, Kunene
survived. Not only did she survive, two years later she was in the Rose
Garden at the White House. She brought with him -- she brought with her,
her son, Baron. She wanted Laura and me to see an HIV-free baby. Baron is a
reminder of the many lives that have been touched and saved by the
compassion of the American people. And he represents the bright and
promising future awaiting the folks in Africa.

In our visits to the continent, we have been overwhelmed by the affection
and gratitude that the African people show to the American people. Oh, a
lot of people are out there saying, why should I care about Africa? What
good does it do me, Mr. President, for our government to support Africa?
Well, I'll tell you what good it does. One, it is in our national security
interest that we defeat hopelessness. It is in our economic interest that
we help economies grow. And it is in our moral interest that when we find
hunger and suffering, the United States of America responds in a robust and
effective way. (Applause.)

I thank Africare for being on the leading edge of this transformative
series of initiatives. I hope you feel as good about your contribution as I
feel as good about our government's contribution to doing what's right. I'm
honored to receive this aware. I am honored to be the President of the most
compassion, greatest nation on the face of the Earth. God bless you, and
God bless the people of America and Africa. (Applause.)

Thank you all. (Applause.)

END 7:33 P.M. EST


===========================================================================
Return to this article at:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/11/20081112-5.html