Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg and his wife,
Priscilla Chan, have donated $5 million to help undocumented immigrants attend
college, Zuckerberg said in a post on his Facebook page.
The donation is aimed at helping 400 youth in the Bay Area
over the next five years through TheDream.US, a nonprofit founded in 2013 to
provide scholarships to college-bound youth who came to the United States
illegally as children.
"Without documentation, it’s often a struggle to get a college education, and they don’t have access to any kind of federal aid," Zuckerberg said Wednesday. "We ought to welcome smart and hardworking young people from every nation, and to help everyone in our society achieve their full potential."
His focus on the Bay Area, where Facebook is headquartered,
was meant to help TheDream.US expand its national reach, he added. Within a few
hours of the announcement, his Facebook post had attracted 66,000 “Likes.”
The gift from the Facebook founder and billionaire
entrepreneur is far from his largest. His $75-million donation to a San
Francisco hospital in February is believed to be the biggest private donation
to a county-run public medical facility.
In 2013, Zuckerberg made the largest donation of the year
among wealthy American philanthropists, according to the Chronicle of
Philanthropy, giving Facebook stock valued at roughly $1 billion to the Silicon
Valley Community Foundation.
Other Silicon Valley executives have similarly pledged significant
donations in recent years as their companies profit from the Bay Area’s booming
tech sector.
31 years old Zuckerberg, has long supported immigrant rights, and
co-founded the lobbying group FWD.us in 2013 with Bill Gates and other tech
executives. One of the organization’s top objectives is to advocate for
comprehensive immigration reform.
It has also lobbied on behalf of Deferred Action for
Childhood Arrivals, a government program benefiting immigrants who came to the
country illegally as young children -- the same people poised to benefit from
Zuckerberg's scholarship funds.
Forbes as of Wednesday, valued Zuckerberg’s worth at $36 billion.
Credit;
latimes
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