Philanthropy

I was amazed to see the news two days back that Mr. Warren Buffet has decided to donate around USD $37b to Gates Foundation.

Just tried to estimate how much is this amount, around 25% of indian Foreign Currency reserves, around 30% of market capitalization of BSE and so on. So we get that the sum donated by Mr. Buffet is pretty huge. Now i hear that Mr. Jackie Chan has decided to donate half of of his wealth that works out to be around 500m HongKong Dollars.

What is the reason that a person decides to donate his hard earned wealth? and why such spurt now?Answers to these questions may be with the donars only, we may just do some guess work.
Are they following the Maslow's theory of Motivation taht everybody seeks next level of needs and finally Self-actualization?

Interesting thing is that the announcement came right after Mr. Gates's announcement of retirement from day to day activities of Microsoft within two years. What ever be the reason i just want to laud the gesture as the Foundation will use this money to try and eradicate top 20 deceases from the world. Top priority is AIDS, which has brought down life expectancy in South Africa to aroud 40 years.
These people may have just staarted a trend and many will follow soon. These initiatives will go long way in making sure that the world's worst problems get the proper attention and proper resources.
Just hope that there are more of Mr. Buffet and Mr. Gates who have some concern for the poor and under privileged childern of God...!