A millennial named Bush

The time–honored way to speak of young people is with horror. They’re wild, reckless, irresponsible, narcissistic, immoral and hopeless – and always have been.

Now along comes this generation of millennials, and we have a problem. They are raised on “service projects,” apply to Teach for America in torrents and donate to charity at a higher rate (87 percent) than their elders. Basically, they’ve stabbed us older generations in the back with their idealism and altruism, robbing us of the opportunity to feel superior.

One of the exemplars of this trend, also catering to it, is Barbara Bush, 33. Yes, President George W. Bush’s daughter – the one you perhaps last heard of when she was busted for underage drinking in 2001.

Tha t was a relief, for it indicated some youthful irresponsibility for us to cluck–cluck at: A daughter and granddaughter of presidents, and she provokes a scandal!

But Barbara joined her father on a 2003 trip to Africa and was staggered by the human toll of AIDS in Uganda. “That inequity blew my mind,” she recalled.

So she returned to Yale and took health classes, and then quietly took a job (while her father was still in the White House) in a South African hospital, often working with children with AIDS.

After her return, she and five friends began brainstorming about how to help recruit more people to global health. Her connections opened doors – she’s frank about that – and they ended up starting Global Health Corps, initially intended as a kind of Teach for America for global health. Bush became chief executive at age 26.

Today Global Health Corps is booming. It receives nearly 6,000 applications a year for fewer than 150 positions as fellows. Half of the fellows are American and half foreign, mostly African, and the pro-