Tag Archives: google.org

$100 million for skills and opportunity in Europe, Middle East, and Africa

In March, we pledged to help 1 million Europeans find a job or grow their business by 2020 through our Grow with Google program. Given the rapid digital transformation taking place in the world today, we want to make sure that everyone has the skills to both make the most of the opportunities and navigate the challenges that this presents.


Since we started Grow with Google in 2015, more than 214,000 people have found a new job or started a business thanks to the training offered. Making sure that our efforts are reaching the most disadvantaged requires working in partnership with organizations like OpenClassrooms and Inco, who are at the frontline of supporting those most at risk of missing out. That’s why we announced today at the Tech for Good summit in Paris that we’re committing $100 million over the next five years through Google.org to nonprofit organizations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa that are focused on skills and economic opportunity.


We particularly want to help organizations that focus on using technology and innovation to train people with new skills, connect job seekers with good jobs, and support workers in low-wage employment. According to the European Commission, 44 percent of working-age European adults don’t have basic digital skills. And in the Middle East and North Africa, only 38 percent of youth believe their education gives them the skills they need to enter the workforce. There is clearly a lot of work to do to make the opportunities of the digital economy are available to all, and the nonprofit sector—along with our partners in government, city councils, universities, and private-sector businesses—will play a vital role.


We’re always inspired by what people do when they have access to technology. And with our nonprofit partners, we’re doing everything we can to make sure technology brings opportunity to everyone.

Thanking teachers by helping them get the resources they need

Editor’s note:Teacher Appreciation Week starts today, and we’re honored to have Charles Best, the Founder of DonorsChoose.org as our guest author. We’re big fans of DonorsChoose.org,  and are proud to be longtime supporters of their model of helping teachers. Today, we’re taking that one step further in honor of Teacher Appreciation Week. Keep an eye on the Education page and follow along on Twitter throughout the week to see how we’re celebrating.


When I taught history in a public school in the Bronx, many of my fellow teachers had great ideas for books their students could read, field trips they would organize for students, or projects they would do in class, if only there was funding to make those ideas happen. I had a sense that people would want to help teachers like us if they could see exactly where their money was going. So with help from my students, I sketched out a site where teachers could request the exact resources they needed for their classroom, and donors of all stripes could give to the projects that inspired them. Since our founding in 2000, 3 million donors have given $680 million to fund over 1 million classroom projects.

I never could have imagined reaching this scale back in my classroom days, and Google.org has been key to our growth. Google.org shares our belief that teachers understand their students—and the resources they need to teach those students—better than anyone else. Their financial support has empowered teachers across the country to bring their ideas to life.

Since 2012, Google.org has supported 17,000 public school teachers who needed funding for their classrooms. This includes teachers like Mr. Narisetty who needed lab equipment for a new AP Physics lab, Ms. Gibson who needed funding for dolls and costumes for her kindergarteners, and Mrs. Price who requested sensory processing materials to help her students with special needs relax.

Google.org’s continued support has enabled us to pilot new ways to serve students. Back in 2012, they pioneered “Classroom Rewards,” through which teachers who launched new AP STEM courses earned $100 in classroom funding for each student who received a passing score on their AP exam. This program launched more than 500 new AP STEM classes at high schools predominantly serving students from low income families. We recently launched an open source data science project that enables developers to use machine learning to help us match donors with more relevant teacher projects.

All told, Google.org has helped bring almost 23,000 projects to life, providing around $20 million in classroom project funding. One in ten public schools in the U.S. has benefitted from this generosity.

This week, Google.org is helping us celebrate Teacher Appreciation Week by honoring what teachers want and need. Google.org is doubling donations to one category of classroom projects every day this week for a total of up to $500,000. These daily categories, like professional development or art, are based on the terms our teachers have searched for most on DonorsChoose.org.

We’re kicking off the week by supporting Professional Development projects, so that teachers can bring even more skills to the classroom.

Please join us by heading to DonorsChoose.org to show teachers your appreciation in a way you know they’ll love.

Source: Education


Making it work: Google and Walmart fund innovators in workforce development

The student with big dreams, some education, and no experience. The accomplished service professional looking to break into a new field. The 30-year career veteran who wants to work for another 20 years. Research has shown that up to one-third of Americans may need to develop new skills to work in different types of jobs by 2030. A fast-changing economy means we need new ways of building new skills and translating existing skills to different types of meaningful work. This goes not only for how we get new jobs, but how we get promoted, change fields, and work into our later years.


To get this transition right, businesses, nonprofits, governments, and communities will have to work together to build a system that benefits both workers and employers. That’s why Walmart and Google—among the world’s leading retail and technology companies, respectively—are coming together to fuel the research and tools needed to build such a system.


Each of our companies has launched major initiatives to help Americans advance in their careers. Walmart has made a significant investment in its associates and through philanthropy to help transform learning and advancement in the retail sector. And through Grow with Google, Google has made a major commitment to helping people access skills and opportunity in the new economy. Through these initiatives, we are joining forces with leading social innovators to fuel the pursuit of a more equitable and efficient labor market.

Today, as part of our commitment toward jobs and opportunity, Walmart and Google are making a $5 million grant investment to three organizations testing solutions in reskilling the American workforce and matching skills to roles.


The Drucker Institute will be partnering with the Mayor of South Bend, Indiana, to integrate the city’s educational and workforce resources so that every resident has access to skill-building throughout their careers—this “City of Lifelong Learning” will serve as a national model. Opportunity @ Work will help underserved groups connect to jobs and advancement opportunities by building a hiring channel that focuses on skills and competency instead of pedigree. And the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy will be expanding its Inclusive Innovation Challenge, a global future of work prize that promotes entrepreneurs harnessing technology to create more broadly shared economic opportunity and prosperity.


No one organization can do this alone, and that’s why collaboration between companies and expert groups is so important. As companies like ours help enable social innovators to try new things and see what works, we hope to see more philanthropic collaboration, along with effort from policy makers to scale proven programs. And we encourage other companies to join in similar efforts, through investing in training and education for their own workforce or in the broader workforce ecosystem to help build strong businesses and a healthy, thriving society.

This is a time of enormous change for our economy and we need to better prepare American workers—from students to seniors—to find work and advance their careers. Only a system that is both ambitious and resilient can meet the demands of millions of workers eager to expand their skills and advance. We’re excited to see what these grantees, and other innovators across industries, do to help. 

Searching for new solutions to the evolving jobs market

We’ve all seen lots of articles about the future of work in today’s rapidly changing economy. Too often, the loudest voices propose just one of two visions for the future. Either globalization and technology will eliminate quality jobs, or we'll adapt to change just like we always have.


Google may be built on code, but we don't believe the future is binary. What lies ahead is hard to predict, and the most likely scenario for the future of work is a new sort of hybrid—with technology both transforming and creating jobs and new models of employment. But we’re confident that, working together, we can shape a labor market where everyone has access to opportunity.


Last year, we launched Grow with Google, an initiative that aims to help everyone across America access the best of Google’s training and tools to grow their skills, careers, and businesses. Google Hire helps employers find great employees. And Google for Jobs helps job seekers find new opportunities.


But making a difference requires more than just one company. Today, as part of our commitment to jobs and opportunity, Walmart and Google are making a $5 million grant investment to three organizations testing solutions in reskilling the American workforce and matching skills to roles.


  • Learning throughout life: The Drucker Institute is partnering with the Mayor of South Bend, Indiana, to bring together the city’s educational and workforce resources so that everyone has access to skill-building throughout their careers. This “City of Lifelong Learning” will serve as a national model for communities looking to make learning available throughout life.
  • Improving matching between skills and roles: Opportunity@Work is launching the techhire.careers platform, a new tool that helps underserved groups validate their skills for employers and connect to opportunities. This inclusive hiring marketplace helps job seekers and entry-level workers connect to trainings and jobs that make best use of their skills, and helps companies consider and hire nontraditional talent.
  • Backing social innovators with new skilling and job matching ideas:MIT’s Initiative on the Digital Economy is holding the Inclusive Innovation Challenge, a challenge for social innovators to use technology to reinvent the future of work. Through this tournament, the IDE will be seeking out and funding social innovators experimenting with new ways of helping people develop the skills they need for the digital economy and connect to job opportunities in a new way.

These grants are part of Google.org’s Work Initiative, a search for new solutions to prepare people for the changing nature of work. Last year, we committed $50 million to nonprofits experimenting with new ideas in skill-building, job matching, job quality, and social protections. In response to an open call for proposals, we received hundreds of ideas from across the U.S. In addition to our joint funding with Walmart, today we’re announcing four more grantees:


  • Assessing and credentialing soft skills:Southern New Hampshire University is developing the Authentic Assessment Platform (AAP), an assessment of in-demand soft skills. Results from this assessment will feed into a job placement process for young jobseekers. SNHU will provide those who complete this assessment with an SNHU official badge.
  • Training workers for the gig economy:Samaschool is developing a new training, with both in-person and online components, that helps independent workers learn the basics of finding freelance work, building their careers, managing contracts and taxes, and more.
  • Helping communities adjust to workforce transitions: Just Transition Fund is working with communities in coal country to develop a blueprint for coal-affected communities undergoing workforce transitions, helping them to effectively prepare for jobs in emerging sectors.
  • Aiding employers in clearly signaling their needs:The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation is developing new and open resources to help those who hire to better convey their needs. These tools will include new standards on job descriptions, a digital library of open-sourced competency and credential resources, and a repository of job descriptions for benchmarking.

Through these new grants, we aim to back leading social innovators’ thinking about how work can help more people access not just income, but also purpose and meaning. Over the next several months, we’ll be announcing more grantees, and, most importantly, sharing what Google and all our grantees are learning through these efforts.

Visualizing the #MeToo movement using Google Trends

The #MeToo movement has inspired growing, worldwide awareness of sexual violence and sexual assault. This is not only a significant moment in history; it’s a significant moment in internet history: #MeToo marks a time when sexual assault survivors everywhere turned the internet into a platform for their voices and perspectives to be heard and respected.

In recognition of Sexual Assault Awareness Month, we created Me Too Rising, a visualization of the global #MeToo movement through Google Trends data. On the site, you can look at global interest starting last fall and watch as consciousness spreads over time. In the past year, #MeToo has been searched in 195 countries—that's every country on earth. You can see the cities where it was trending on different dates and see what’s happening now at local levels with city-specific Google Search results for “Me Too.” And the sexual assault resources page has information for anyone who needs help or wants to learn more about sexual assault.

To make it easier for survivors to find support, Google.org is providing $500,000 in grants to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) and Girls for Gender Equity. The two grants will provide increased support to RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline and help Girls for Gender Equity launch a digital community where survivors can access tools to craft their own healing journeys.

I recently had the honor of hearing from Tarana Burke, whose decade-long effort as the founder of the #MeToo Movement has given voice to the survivors of sexual assault. With Google Trends, we now have data to reflect the power of those collective voices—we can see how far-reaching this movement has become. 

Here’s a snippet of my conversation with Tarana Burke

Here’s a snippet of my conversation with Tarana Burke, founder of the #MeToo Movement and senior director at Girls for Gender Equity

Me Too Rising shows what it looks like when we all become a little more aware of sexual assault and violence. When enough survivors speak up, the world not only listens; it searches for answers.

Digital skills for Arabic speakers everywhere

In the Middle East and North Africa, only 38 percent of youth believe their education gives them the skills they need to enter the workforce. By 2020, one in five jobs in the Arab world will require digital skills that aren’t widely available today. Many women are contributing to the innovation coming out of the Arab world, yet this region has among the lowest female economic involvement globally.

To address the growing skills gap in the region’s workforce, and to help ensure that opportunities created by technology are available to everyone, we’ve launched Maharat min Google (the English translation is “Building Capabilities with Google”). It’s an initiative to help Arabic speakers, specifically women and young people, get ready for future job opportunities, advance their careers, or grow their businesses. Maharat min Google will provide free courses, tools and in-person digital skills training to students, educators, job seekers and businesses. The online platform includes over 100 lessons and explanatory videos covering a range of digital marketing skills including search engine marketing, social media, video, e-commerce and more.

Maharat min Google: Digital skills for Arabic speakers everywhere

All over the Arab world, people use digital skills to realize their goals. We’ve created a series of short films that follow the journeys of six Arab women who have become entrepreneurs, women’s rights advocates and ground-breaking YouTube creators. They show how technology has helped them overcome obstacles, enabled them to forge their own paths and inspire other women to do the same by learning digital skills. 

We’re proud to support nonprofits that are teaching Arab youth the skills they need to succeed in an increasingly digital economy. INJAZ Al-Arab, a nonprofit that connects Arab youth to trainings and job opportunities, will use a $1 million grant from Google.org to help 100,000 high school and university students—particularly women and underprivileged students in rural areas—expand their digital skills through hands-on training across the region.

We’re also collaborating with MiSK Foundation to provide in-person digital skills training to over 100,000 people in Saudi Arabia with a target of 50 percent female participation. Our new collaboration will open up a wider range of career opportunities for women and young people to use key digital skills that they’ve learned from the courses.

Technology is a toolkit filled with opportunities—and Maharat min Google aims to help Arabic speakers around the world put those tools to work. We’re partnering with governments, universities, private-sector businesses and nonprofits to help more people take advantage of what the web has to offer.

Zendaya and Google.org help a community school bloom

In 2015, Roses in Concrete Community School opened in East Oakland, California. With a name inspired by a book of poetry written by Tupac Shakur, the school aims to create a model for urban education that prioritizes the needs of youth and families in the community it serves. It’s founder, Dr. Jeff Duncan-Andrade, believes education is the way to help young people understand that they can transform not only their community, but the world. By creating the conditions for our youngest change-makers to flourish, this education model can be a pathway to building healthy and sustainable communities across the U.S.

In the school’s first year, Google.org provided $750,000 to help launch its unique vision. And last Friday at Google’s San Francisco community space, teachers, students, artists, education advocates, Googlers and Oakland-native actress Zendaya celebrated the announcement of our additional $650,000 grant to help the school build a first-of-its-kind computer science (CS) curriculum, which will serve as a model for other schools across the U.S. The curriculum will be culturally and community relevant, building on Duncan-Andrade’s philosophy that education shouldn’t push students out of communities, but should instead help students transform them.

Research shows that Black and Latino students are interested in learning CS, but are underrepresented in the field due to limited access to learning opportunities, coupled with the lack of relatable role models. Through this new program, Roses in Concrete helps students see the connection between CS and their communities, and hopes to equip them with the skills they need to solve real problems, starting in their own neighborhood.

The purpose of education is not to escape poverty, but to end it. Dr. Jeff Duncan-Andrade
Founder of Roses in Concrete Community School

During the evening’s events, Roses students shared dance, art, and poetry performances for the crowd, which included Zendaya, an avid supporter of the school. Growing up in Oakland as the daughter of two teachers, she has fond memories of spending time in the same classrooms that now make up the Roses in Concrete campus, and credits pretending to grade papers as some of her earliest acting experience. During a student-led interview, Zendaya shared her appreciation for organizations like this progressive community school that are thoughtfully closing equity divides in her hometown. She encouraged the students to “Always lead with your heart and chase the happiness that fuels you,” and reminded them that technology is one possible medium for them to express themselves and make a positive difference.

  • Jeff Duncan Andrade
    Roses founder Dr. Jeff Duncan-Andrade shares his philosophy that education shouldn’t push students out of communities, but should instead help students transform them
  • Zendaya interview

    Actress and Oakland-native Zendaya was interviewed by a Roses student and his mother


  • Zendaya audience
    Zendaya joined teachers, students, artists and education advocates to celebrate the announcement of a $650,000 Google.org grant to help Roses build a first-of-its-kind computer science curriculum
  • Zendaya artwork
    Student artwork adorned the walls of Google’s San Francisco community space, where last week’s event was held
  • Revelations

    The night concluded with a moving performance set to Alvin Ailey’s ‘Revelations’


As a lab school, Roses in Concrete will share this new curriculum with national school leaders, policy makers and researchers. And alongside Roses, we can identify more ways to provide meaningful CS experiences to students of color, and by doing so, provide pathways for them to grow, thrive, and create change—in their own communities, and around the world.

Source: Education


Making an Impact in Pittsburgh

When we announced the Grow with Google initiative last October at our Pittsburgh office, we gave the city’s nonprofit organizations a challenge: come up with a bold idea to create lasting economic impact in your community, and Google.org will provide a grant to make that idea a reality.

Since then, more than 90 nonprofit organizations submitted proposals to spur economic opportunity right here in the Pittsburgh area. Ideas ranged from community-driven technology repair to mobile clothing deliveries for families in need, and we were impressed by the dedication to making a real difference  in the Pittsburgh area.

This week, our panel of advisors selected four nonprofits whose ideas were exceptionally impactful, innovative, scalable and feasible. Here are the winners of the Google.org Impact Challenge—Pittsburgh:

  • Idea Foundry: A nonprofit economic development organization and accelerator that aims to diversify entrepreneurship by offering hands-on, individualized business development support for young entrepreneurs and small business. With their grant, Idea Foundry will help establish up to 10 businesses led by underrepresented communities in Pittsburgh, each with the goal of creating five new jobs within five years.

  • Pittsburgh Conservation Corps: With their grant, PCC will scale Project Landforce to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to earn livable wages by training people for jobs in environmental restoration. Their project will help 150+ people previously on public assistance to earn over $10 million in income, and to facilitate almost 110,000 hours of restoration work.

  • Pittsburgh Community Kitchen: The Pittsburgh Community Kitchen works with neighborhoods that have average an unemployment rate of 18 percent, where residents do not have easy access to employment and training support. Through their grant, the Pittsburgh Community Kitchen will provide culinary training and sustainable employment opportunities for 100 people transitioning into the workforce from incarceration, homelessness, addiction or mental illness. 

  • Prototype PGH: Prototype PGH is a makerspace focused on women that seeks to build careers in technology and beyond by improving confidence and expertise. It equips its members with   access to a fully-stocked makerspace to experiment, an engaged community, and a growing series of workshops on a wide variety of skills.  With their grant, the organization aims to engage 1,000 women in 100 workshops with the goals of increasing each of the members’ salaries by at least $1,000, and incubate at least five women-owned start-ups. 

Each of the winners will receive $50,000 from Google.org and training from Google to make their proposal a reality.

Starting on February 28 and running through March 14, the the public is encouraged to vote for the idea they think holds the most promise, and the winner will get an extra $50,000 in grant funding.

In total, Pittsburgh nonprofits will receive $250,000 from Google.org, as part of Grow with Google’s continued commitment to create economic opportunity for individuals across the United States.

Google.org and StoryWeaver feed a hunger for reading

Today is International Mother Language Day which celebrates languages from around the world. More than 40% of the world’s children don’t have access to education materials in a language they understand. So to help close those gaps, we’re continuing our support of nonprofit organizations like Pratham Books.

Since 2013, Google.org has given more than $4 million to Pratham Books to build and grow their StoryWeaver platform which today includes thousands of stories in over 100 languages. We’ve also supported their offline tools—making it easier for students without access in remote communities to read and learn—and hundreds of Googlers have volunteered their time to help add new stories and languages.

We’re proud to support organizations like Pratham Books who use technology to create more opportunities for students to learn in their own languages and contexts. We believe that no matter what language a child speaks, they should be able to learn, grow, and give back to their communities.

If you have 15 minutes to spare, commemorate this International Mother Language Day by translating or creating your own story.

Bringing rare artifacts to life in 3D at the NMAAHC

Editor’s note: Google’s 2018 Black History Month celebration began this morning with a Doodle for Carter Woodson. We’re also unveiling a new 3D installation at the National Museum of African-American History and Culture. Stay tuned throughout the month for more on a variety of Black cultural content across many of our products and services.

Most of us have probably wondered once or twice how our lives fit into the scope of human history. Museums have taken on this question for centuries, using artifacts to offer windows into other people’s experience of the world. But there’s always been a limit to what galleries can display—because of the sheer volume of objects, and because some of those items are too fragile to sit in the open or be handled by streams of patrons.

When the National Museum of African-American History and Culture (NMAAHC) opened in 2016, their mission was to redefine how people experience art and artifacts in the modern age. And starting today, visitors to the museum can interact with rare items from Black history in a new 3D installation.

The items in this installation have historical and personal significance. For example, I’ve always loved 70s fashion and style. Seeing scans of actual boots from “The Wiz” takes me back to my childhood delight in seeing the movie and play. I’m also a jazz musician, like my father before me, and seeing a cast of composer and pianist Eubie Blake’s hand reminds me why I still can’t (and probably will never) do his solos justice. My hope is visitors will experience these artifacts and establish deeper connections with their personal stories as well.

Following a $1 million Google.org grant to the museum in 2016, I worked with a mulitracial volunteer team of engineers from the Black Googler Network and other internal organizations to build the exhibit. We were excited to apply the technical skill we’ve honed in our day jobs to create a hands-on exploration of our nation’s history.

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    A sample interaction with a tin of Madame CJ Walker’s Wonderful Hair Grower, next to boots from the original Broadway production of “The Wiz.”
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  • NMAAHC_3.png
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When I first met the NMAAHC’s founding director, Dr. Lonnie Bunch, and heard his vision for the museum, I felt a keen responsibility to help bring it to fruition. The stories contained within its walls aren’t only Black stories. They’re American stories. It’s humbling to be one of the people entrusted with the telling. I hope patrons can feel some of the same joy.