On Friday I went to the North Country of New Hampshire to a place called Bretton Woods. At Bretton Woods, in 1944 at the Mount Washington Hotel, the leaders of the free world gathered for a huge international conference on global economic stability.

After the greatest generation fought long and hard in the Second World War, they realized that poverty and disease in the world were not in country’s interest. So they held a conference at this hotel and created the IMF and the World Bank. These institutions, still called the Bretton Woods Institutions, were not designed to create economic prosperity, so much as they were a call for economic stability and security around the free world.

It is now up to us, the next great generation, to renew and realize the promise of a better world for all. An additional one percent of our money, spent wisely in effective ways like PEPFAR, the UN Global Fund and the Millennium Challenge, will help to reverse the spread of AIDS and make extreme poverty history. It will help transform a continent, and save the lives of millions.

Our efforts with ONE are rooted in science and in medicine; we are rooted in good will and in patriotism. But it is also important to recognize that our efforts are also rooted in history. It is important to look back and recognize the sacrifice that other generations made, and learn from the wise lessons they have passed on to us.

You can read from the plaques outside the Gold Room at the Mount Washington Hotel where the historic documents were signed, and American global leadership was proven to the world.

From Bretton Woods, NH, to Africa, and from the Greatest Generation, on to our generation, the promise of a better world lives on. We can do this…we are going to do this. Write letters to Congress, call down to DC, send an email to your elected leader. Prove what being an American is to the world.