“I will continue to
serve as Facebook’s CEO for many, many years to come,” Zuckerberg wrote, “but
these issues are too important to wait until you or we are older to begin this
work.” The money will be channelled into
the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a newly formed group that will initially focus
on education and health. It was also clear from Zuckerberg’s letter that he and
his wife had learned lessons from their earlier philanthropic attempts and plan
to move in a new direction.
Zuckerberg’s
announcement stands out because of his relative youth — he’s just 31 — and the
gift’s massive size. The donation also comes at a time when the world’s
wealthiest business leaders seem to be challenging each other to give away
their fortunes before they die. Just a few days ago, Zuckerberg joined Bill
Gates and a number of other tech titans to boost clean-energy and climate
research. In 2010, Gates and Warren
Buffett launched the Giving Pledge to encourage billionaires to donate the bulk
of their wealth to charity. Gates, the former Microsoft leader, already has
given away $31.5 billion, mostly to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Buffet has given away more than $22 billion of his Berkshire Hathaway stock and
plans to eventually donate nearly his entire fortune.
More than 130
billionaires worldwide have joined them, including Judy Faulkner, founder of
electronic health records company Epic, who reportedly said she plans to give
away 99 percent of her money. Also this year Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal,
one of the richest men in the world, , said the pledge inspired him to
eventually give away his entire fortune, more than $30 billion. Zuckerberg
quietly committed to this pledge too, although his Nov. 9 letter didn’t reveal
the scale of his intentions.
The FB couple
revealed their plans in a lengthy “letter to our daughter” published on
Facebook, the social network Zuckerberg co-founded while a student at Harvard
and which today has 1.5 billion monthly active users worldwide. Their
daughter’s full name is Maxima Chan Zuckerberg, and she was born just before
Thanksgiving, weighing 7 pounds, 8 ounces, according to a Facebook spokeswoman.
In the open letter,
Zuckerberg and Chan talked about the potential that technology offers to
re-engineer the way children learn. “Our generation grew up in classrooms where
we all learned the same things at the same pace regardless of our interests or
needs,” they wrote. Zuckerberg and Chan have given $15 million to AltSchool, a
for-profit corporation founded by a former Google executive working to create a
network of schools that use technology to personalize instruction. The couple
also has given $120 million to traditional public schools and public charter
schools in the San Francisco Bay Area.
But Zuckerberg’s
first foray into education philanthropy was in itself a learning experience. In
2010, he gave $100 million to remake public schools in Newark, N.J., with with
mixed results. Critics of that effort said the plan faltered in part because it
was a top-down approach that called for wholesale changes in the city’s public
schools with plans crafted by outsiders, not community members.
In their letter to
Max, Zuckerberg and Chan talked about the value of learning from mistakes. Zuckerberg
and Chan, a pediatrician and onetime teacher, plan to open a private,
tuition-free school for low-income children in East Palo Alto, Calif., that
will integrate health care and support for families with classroom learning. While the letter to their daughter Max was
obviously intended for a much wider audience, revealing their ambition to fund
billions of dollars in new philanthropic works, the couple ended their note in
a more personal, quiet fashion.
It was signed simply, “Love, Mom and Dad.” Appreciations to Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan.
With regards – S. Sampathkumar 2nd Dec 2015.
Contents largely reproduced from Washingpost.com
