Twitter CEO Dorsey to donate $10 million so every Oakland kid has a computer, internet access
A day after Oakland and its school district officially launched a campaign to ensure every child in the city has a computer and home internet access, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has pledged to donate $10 million to the project.
“Funding immediately,” the tech CEO said in a tweet promising the $10 million and referencing the call for donations by Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf and the school district.
The Oakland Public Education Fund has donated $400,000 to the campaign, San Francisco technology giant Salesforce has thrown in $200,000, Seattle e-commerce behemoth Amazon donated $100,000, and the Golden State Warriors professional basketball team and San Jose tech firm Hewlett Packard Enterprise together added $125,000, with additional donations bringing the total gathered — before Dorsey’s promised millions — to $1.8 million, the school district said in a news release Wednesday before the official launch.
The project, which aims to close the “digital divide” that bars lower-income kids from the computer and internet access considered vital for school success, has a funding target of $12.5 million and a goal of providing a computer and internet access to every student in Oakland who needs them, now and in the future.
Half of Oakland’s 50,000 public school students don’t have their own computer or internet access, or are under-connected, Oakland Unified School District said in the news release.
“The internet should be a public utility like water, power and even the freeway system, for all of us to use,” district superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammell said in the release.
A spokesman for Schaaf said she and groups working on the campaign would “enthusiastically accept” Dorsey’s promised donation.
For children lacking sufficient internet access, the funds will pay for hot-spot devices and other connectivity devices, and the project will link households to low-cost broadband options, said Seth Hubbard, executive director of project partner Tech Exchange, an East Bay group dedicated to providing technology access to residents.
The coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated the digital divide, with many students unable to fully access distance learning, according to the news release.
“We are in a health pandemic that is now causing an economic crisis that is now causing a bigger learning crisis,” Johnson-Trammell said in a press conference Thursday. “We have families that may have been able to afford the internet three months ago, someone loses their job, they now need assistance.”
Hubbard said at the press conference that providing computers and internet access to kids helps whole families by connecting them to online services for health care, employment and banking. Tech Exchange is encouraging businesses and individuals to donate “gently used” computer equipment to the Oakland project.
Dorsey, also CEO of San Francisco mobile-payments firm Square, pledged in April to use $1 billion in his Square equity to fund coronavirus relief. As of Friday, his $10 million pledge for the Oakland campaign was not yet noted on the spreadsheet he has made publicly available to track his donations.