Jenna Boures
Staff Writer Mark Zuckerberg has connected people all over the world with the creation of Facebook. Now the young CEO and his wife Priscilla Chan are giving back to the community by donating $120 million to San Francisco schools.
The generous donation comes from “the $1.1 billion in Facebook stock the couple pledged last year to the nonprofit Silicon Valley Community Foundation,” USA Today reported. The donation, made in 2013, was the biggest of the year and illustrated the couple’s commitment to education.
The couple’s foundation “Startup: Education” looked to school administrators and community figures to determine where their donation would benefit the school most. The donation will be spread out incrementally over the next five years and will help fund “principal training, classroom technology and helping students transition from 8th to 9th grade.”
While Zuckerberg is busy tending to his billion dollar social network, Chan works as a pediatrician, mainly serving underprivileged immigrant families.
“I just think that philanthropy is a fancy way to say that you care about others and that you want to serve others. And that’s been a part of me for as long as I can remember,” said Chan. “(We) have this amazing opportunity it’s really important to me that we use this opportunity to continue to give back and create even more change to affect other people’s lives.”
The couple’s previous $100 million donation to the Newark, New Jersey school system has garnered criticism for its lack of results despite the implementation four years ago. President of the Urban League of Essex County, Vivian Cox Fraser, put it simply: “Everybody’s getting paid, but Raheem still can’t read.” Despite the backlash, Zuckerberg did not expect to see soaring results this early.
“The schools and programs that the folks put in place, only now are they ramping up and students are starting to go through them. So you won’t know what the outcomes are until like 5, 7, 10 years from now,” he said.
While New Jersey test scores aren’t showing an increase, influential teachers are receiving a much-deserved raise.
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