[December 2005] Miscellany

[Laurent Van Winckel]

Google.org update
Google.org, the umbrella name for Google's philanthropic efforts, isbeginning its program activities. Google.org includes the work of theGoogle Foundation, some of Google's own projects, as well aspartnerships and contributions to for-profit and non-profit entities.The Google Foundation, which aims to support selected organizationswhose work addresses the challenge of global poverty in ways that areeffective, sustainable, and scalable, has recently funded two projects.

One, Acumen Fund, develops plans for delivering critical goods andservices to people earning less than $4 a day. The Fund has invested inproducing malaria bednets - a simple way to keep out malaria-bearingmosquitoes in Tanzania, where the threat of death from malaria isalarmingly high. (The bednets are simple netting devices embedded withinsecticide, which stops mosquitoes when people sleep beneath them.)The factory which Acumen supports employs +2,000 women who produce morethan 3 million long-lasting bednets every year.

A second grantee is PlanetRead, an organization seeking to improveliteracy in India using an extremely simple concept: same-languagesubtitling. By adding subtitles to Bollywood films and popular TVshows, people who have low literacy skills are able to get regularreading practice based on songs and shows they know by associating thewords on the screen with their meanings. Results have been verypositive, and the program will expand across 10 states in India,potentially reaching hundreds of millions of people.
http://www.google.org