The Influence of the Wealthy

Last week, I found an interesting article about Mark Zuckerberg. As the creator and CEO of Facebook, he is one of the richest people in the world. Yet despite this, he rarely splurges on what we would think he would- mega-mansions, yachts, fancy cars. Rather, most of his money is given away to various charities and organizations. In 2010 Zuckerberg signed Giving the Pledge, in which he vowed to give away more than half of his money. He also has given almost $100 million to Newark public schools.

One particularly interesting project Zuckerberg is involved in is Code.org  This project serves as a beginning platform to encourage learning about coding and understand how it works. People of all ages can participate in the "Hour of Code" in which they go through various exercises that teach more about coding and how to do it.  The set up of the coding is quite similar to that of Scratch.  Upon completing the Hour of Code, participants are told various ways to continue to learn about coding. Resources given include an Intro to Computer Science Course, Tynker,  Scratch, Lightbot, and App Inventor.

And Zuckerberg is just one of many influential people involved in this project. The founder of Dropbox has donated money and various celebrities appear in their videos. But Zuckerberg in particular is listed as a founding donor of Code.org. And while the exact amount he has given is unknown, it it can be sure that with the support of the founder of Facebook, Code.org is having quite a bit of success. 

Alongside Code.org, he has also invested in other educational programs through school-improvement effort known as Startup: Education. With a $100 million donation, the effort has assisted a Massachusetts-based startup that analyzes data from teachers, parents and students to better advance schools. Also, last December,the effort also gave support to EducationSuperhighway,which is a nonprofit to help bring faster online connections to schools. 

While it certainly is extremely generous of Zuckerberg to say the least, what I find particularly interesting is the role of wealthy individuals providing supports for education. Bill Gates is another excellent example- one of the primary goals of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is to expand educational opportunities and give better access to information technology. Donations have ranged anywhere from $3.5 million to $1.5 billion.