3 ways Jimmy Carter changed the world for the better
From pioneering the use of solar energy to helping to eradicating disease, here are just a few ways the 39th U.S. president has made the world a better place.
In 2016, National Geographic published a particularly unusual letter to the editor: a dispatch from none other than former president of the United States Jimmy Carter.
In a story about efforts to eradicate blindness worldwide, Nat Geo hadn’t mentioned preventable blindness due to infections spread by flies and parasites, the 39th president noted—and his nongovernmental organization, the Carter Center, had administered nearly 60 million treatments to prevent such infections just that year.
(Read Jimmy Carter's full letter to National Geographic.)
It was pure Jimmy Carter: gentle in tone, pragmatic in approach, and deferential to changemakers working to improve the world for all. But characteristically, it downplayed the president’s own contributions to making the
