Billion-dollar donations for a happy and healthy world for children
ARK Zuckerberg was a Harvard dropout who co-founded Facebook and became a billionaire in 2007, amassing a fortune that is now estimated at $45.4 billion. Last week, on the birth of their daughter Maxima, he and his wife Priscilla Chan posted on their Facebook page a pledge that they were going to give away 99 percent of their wealth to help make a happy and healthy world for their child.
Before Zuckerberg, there was billionaire investor Warren Buffett, said to be the world’s fourth-richest person with a fortune of $64.5 billion, who has pledged to give away 99 percent of his wealth to charity. In the last ten years, he has given away $25.5 billion. Last year alone, Buffett donated $2.8 billion to various charities, following headline-making news by Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal who said he would give his entire $32-billion fortune to philantrophic causes over the next few years.
And then there is Bill Gates who co-founded Microsoft, said to be the world’s largest software business. Since 1987, Gates has been at the top or near the top of Forbes’ annual list of the wealthiest people in America, with his wealth estimated at over $101 billion in 1999. With his wife, he set up the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000. As of 2013, Gates had given $28 billion to the foundation which today undertakes aid projects for the poor around the world in the fields of agricultural development; water, sanitation, and hygiene; aid for earthquake victims; research in AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria; education and libraries.
The International Rice Research Institute in Laguna has received aid from the Gates Foundation amounting to $19.9 million for rice research, in pursuit of a goal to increase the world’s rice production by 70 percent in the next two decades to support the increasing world demand for this staple food of millions of people in Asia.
In 2010, Zuckerberg, Gates, and Buffett signed what they called “The Giving Pledge,” in which they promised to donate to charity at least half of their wealth over the years and invited others among the wealthy to also donate at least 50 percent of their wealth to charity. In 2014, Zuckerberg and his wife gave $25 million for Ebola research following the outbreak of the epidemic in West Africa. Last December 1, they made their pledge to donate 99 percent of their wealth to a new charitable foundation for health and education.
It is inspiring to read about such huge donations to charity and other humanitarian work. We hope that their examples will inspire other rich people in the world, including our own, to share their blessings with the world’s neediest and poorest people and, as the Zuckerbergs said on the birth of their daughter Maxima, help bring about a happy and healthy world for her and other children of the world.