In 2008, we asked: what would help? And help the most?
People from more than 170 countries submitted over 150,000 ideas in response. From that group, we narrowed down the list to 16 top idea themes addressing important common goals.
The public voted for the top five ideas and we reviewed concrete proposals to tackle them. We gave a total of $10 million to five inspiring organizations working on solutions to each of these global challenges:
Project funded: The Khan Academy is a non-profit educational organization that provides high-quality, free education to anyone, anywhere via an online library of more than 1,600 teaching videos. We allocated $2 million to support the creation of more courses and to enable the Khan Academy to translate their core library into the world’s most widely spoken languages.
Project funded: FIRST is a non-profit organization that promotes science and math education around the world through team competition. Its mission is to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders by giving them real world experience working with professional engineers and scientists. We allocated $3 million to develop and jump start new student-driven robotics team fundraising programs that will empower more student teams to participate in FIRST.
Project funded: Public.Resource.Org is a non-profit organization focused on enabling online access to public government documents in the United States. We allocated $2 million to Public.Resource.Org to support the Law.Gov initiative, which aims to make all primary legal materials in the United States available to all.
Project funded: Shweeb is a concept for short to medium distance, urban personal transport, using human-powered vehicles on a monorail. We allocated $1 million to fund research and development to test Shweeb’s technology for an urban setting.
Project funded: The African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) is a center for math and science education and research in Cape Town, South Africa. AIMS’ primary focus is a one-year bridge program for recent university graduates that helps build skills and knowledge prior to Masters and PhD study. We allocated $2 million to fund the opening of additional AIMS centers to promote graduate level math and science study in Africa.
Each idea is a broad, ambitious, many-year mission. We hope you will follow the progress on their websites. Thank you to everyone who supported Project 10^100 by voting on ideas or submitting your own. Your participation has helped make these ideas come to life.
And, as always, may those who help the most win.
Posted October 2011