The AskPhilosophers Fund disburses donations to educational charities, especially those that make education available to the underprivileged. [To date, $116,000 have been donated. As of January 2012, the Fund has dispersed all its assets.]
Most recent recipients:
- Shining Hope for Communities combats inter-generational cycles of poverty and gender inequity by linking tuition-free schools for girls to essential social services for all. In SHC's innovative, two-step model, women and girls are placed at the center of community development in places of extreme poverty. First, SHC builds tuition-free schools for girls, which give the neediest and brightest girls the education they need to become the engines of economic prosperity and social change for their communities. The second step of SHC's model provides the community-at-large with tangible benefits through integrated social services operating adjacent to the school. These social services include a community health clinic, clean toilet initiative, youth and community education, and economic development. By investing in health and economic success through a school for girls, SHC demonstrates that benefitting women benefits the whole community, cultivating a community ethos that makes women respected members of society. The future of women in impoverished and patriarchal environments depends on concrete, integrated links between education and community elevation. ($3,000)
- Founded in 1895, The New York Public Library uses its available resources in a balanced program of collecting, cataloging, and conserving books and other materials, and providing ready access directly to individual library users and to users elsewhere through cooperating libraries and library networks. The New York Public Library's responsibility is to serve as a great storehouse of knowledge at the heart of one of the world's information centers, and to function as an integral part of a fabric of information and learning that stretches across the nation and the world. ($3,000)
