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Mark Zuckerberg Gives $5M to Immigrant Scholarship Fund

Continuing his push to bring the plight on immigrants to the forefront of public discussion, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made another investment in a pro-immigrant cause. Zuckerberg and his wife,...
Mark Zuckerberg Gives $5M to Immigrant Scholarship Fund
Written by Josh Wolford
  • Continuing his push to bring the plight on immigrants to the forefront of public discussion, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made another investment in a pro-immigrant cause.

    Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, have donated $5 million to TheDream.us, a scholarship fund that helps undocumented immigrants go to college.

    “Hundreds of thousands of young immigrants are part of our communities and attend school legally in the United States. Many of them moved to America early in their lives and can’t remember living anywhere else. They want to remain in the country they love and be a part of America’s future. But without documentation, it’s often a struggle to get a college education, and they don’t have access to any kind of federal aid,” said Zuckerberg in a Facebook post.

    “The investment Priscilla and I are making will go towards creating college scholarship programs for more than 400 young immigrants in the San Francisco Bay Area over the next five years. TheDream.US is a national scholarship program that has done amazing work under the leadership of Don Graham and others, and we’ve previously invested in their work. But we also wanted to help extend their efforts in the Bay Area as part of our ongoing efforts to support social and economic programs in our local community. Over the coming years, our hope is to prepare hundreds of students to graduate with associate or bachelor’s degrees so they can build meaningful new careers.”

    Today Priscilla and I made a $5 million donation to thedream.us, a scholarship fund that helps undocumented young…

    Posted by Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday, June 17, 2015

    TheDream.us describes itself as the “Pell Grant for DREAMers”. Its goal is to help more than 2,000 DREAMers graduate from college over the next 10 years.

    It’s a fairly new initiative, only active since June 2013.

    “America was founded as a nation of immigrants. We ought to welcome smart and hardworking young people from every nation, and to help everyone in our society achieve their full potential. If we help more young immigrants climb the ladder to new opportunities, then our country will make greater progress,” said Zuckerberg.

    Of course, this isn’t Zuckerberg’s first action in this arena. Zuckerberg founded FWD.us, an organization that supports comprehensive immigration reform.

    Image via Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook

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