Google came on the frontlines of the attack against coronavirus. The company announced $50 million for Covid 19 relief efforts quite early on, and is now adding another $50 million to that tally. This brings the company’s total to $100 million, which has been and will be used for “health and science, economic relief and recovery, and distance learning.”
The company has also announced a plan about how this money will be distributed over various fields.
First and foremost, Google plans to spend half of the capital for economic relief and recovery. That means that $25 million will be used to support people who have been laid off, businesses that are struggling and people who have been affected by the virus, indirectly. “We’ve been providing grants to nonprofits supporting SMBs, local communities and hard-hit individuals,” the company said.
The company announced that it has already invested about $15 million in “cash grants to nonprofits benefiting underrepresented business-owners”. Now, it is offering up another $5 million to SMBs that are run by women and minority small business entrepreneurs in the U.S. “Today we’re giving a $5 million grant to Common Future to provide capital and technical assistance to 2,000 women and minority small business entrepreneurs.”
“We’re also making a $5 million grant to Youth Business International to launch a Rapid Response and Recovery Program that will provide critical support services including crisis helplines to more than 200,000 underserved SMBs in 32 countries across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific,” Google added.
Moreover, Google also plans to donate another $10 million to “immediate crisis relief grants to nonprofits in communities where we have offices around the globe.” Lastly, the company plans to give about $10 million directly to people.
The next biggest chunk of this relief fund will go towards Health and Science related initiatives as the company added that it will continue to provide funding, Google.org Fellows, and volunteers to projects that use data analytics and AI to improve understanding of COVID-19 and its impact.
Out of this $15 million, $10.5 million will be provided to “organizations, including the World Health Organization to support preparedness, containment, response and recovery for those affected and for frontline workers around the world.”
The company also plans to allocate its resources to research institutes and provide grants to fuel further research. “With Google.org Fellowships and grants to Boston Children’s Hospital’s HealthMap consortium and Médecins Sans Frontières in France, we’re supporting the application of AI to develop new tools and models that monitor the spread of COVID-19 and provide real-time information to policy makers and healthcare systems. ”
Lastly, the company has vowed $10 million towards distance learning. Google announced a $10 million distance learning fund, as a part of which, $1 million was provided to Khan Academy, a famous online learning platform. Another $2.7 million went to INCO, so that ” nonprofits in Europe and Asia can digitize learning materials and adapt to the new distance learning environment.” The last part of this $10 million fund, a $2 million donation, was announced on Monday, to DonarsChoose and their “Keep Kids Learning” platform.
