The Daily Tell

A generous alumnus has donated $50 million to Columbia University's medical center.

The donation, a gift from P. Roy Vagelos and his wife, Diana, brings the total amount raised for the Columbia University Medical Center College of Physicians and Surgeons capital campaign to more than $1 billion.

The school has a rich history of educating some of the best doctors in the country. Founded in 1767 as the medical department of King's College – the original name of Columbia University – the College of Physicians and Surgeons was the first medical school in the United States to award the Doctor of Medicine, or M.D., degree to its graduates.

The money donated by the Vageloses will go toward the construction of a new medical and graduate education facility located on the university's Washington Heights campus, which will be named after the couple.

"When I first came to P&S sixty years ago, the facilities were first-rate, as many of them had just been recently built. Naturally, over time some of them have aged, and new technologies and teaching resources are now required to provide the best modern education opportunities," said Vagelos. "The new building will have the best possible design that is attractive, comfortable, and appropriate for the intense kind of education that our students receive … It will incorporate every aspect of medical and graduate education – updated in a modern, environmentally responsible way."

Vagelos has been dedicated to helping his alma mater for years. The alumnus, formerly chairman of the pharmaceutical company Merck, now serves as chair of Columbia University Medical Center's board of visitors and has campaigned to raise money for the college's programs and served as a mentor for faculty, students and staff ever since he graduated from the university.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has announced grants totaling $27.2 million aimed at alleviating poverty in five fast-growing African cities.

The grants, awarded through the foundation's Urban Poverty initiative, will improve living conditions for some half a million African citizens in five major urban centers by offering increased access to jobs, government, municipal services and shelter.

"As the world undergoes the largest wave of urban growth in history, we believe there is an opportunity for city governments and the urban poor to work together to find solutions that will address their common problems," said Melanie Walker, senior program officer of the Gates initiative.

Of the $27.2 million total, $5 million will be awarded to the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit in Cairo, Egypt, to support the development of a solid waste management system. Another $5 million will go to the Development Workshop Angola, located in Lunada, Angola, to help the country promote more inclusive public planning processes that will help improve basic services for 4.5 million of its citizens. An additional $5 million will go toward the Monrovia City Corporation to work with community groups and city officials in Monorvia, Liberia, to create a waste management and recycling program, while $2.6 million will be awarded to the Lilongwe City Assembly in Lilongwe, Malawi. The remaining $5 million is for the City of Harare and Dialogue on Shelter and the Zimbabwe Homeless People’s Federation in Harare, Zimbabwe.

The five cities were chosen for their demonstrated interest in helping the urban poor.

The grants, which will be awarded over five years, are unique in that they bring together city officials and civic organizations to work in tandem. Most efforts to help the urban poor have worked directly with either governments or civil society organizations, rather than taking a collaborative approach.

Target has announced an ambitious new goal to pledge $1 billion to education over the next five years.

The Minneapolis-based Target Corporation will donate more than $500 million in support of education by 2015, doubling its contribution to educational activities and organizations to bring its total donation to a staggering $1 billion.

Education in America is in sore need of the money. Recent statistics show that as many as one in four U.S. children are not graduating from high school, and as many as 40 percent of Hispanic and African-American students never earned their diploma.

"When more than a million students a year fail to graduate with their class, it's more than a problem, it's a catastrophe," said General Colin L. Powell, founding chair of America's Promise Alliance, an organization which works to help more children graduate high school and go on to postsecondary education. "Our economic and national security are at risk when we fail to educate the leaders and the workforce of the future. No single organization or entity can solve this issue on its own. We have a responsibility to unite across sectors to address this crisis because we cannot afford to let our kids fail."

Target's pledge is designed to address this problem. The gift is part of Target Read With Me, a program that aims to help more children become proficient in reading by the end of third grade. Research shows that this is when children make the transition from learning to read to reading to learn, and kids who are proficient in reading at this stage will go on to achieve higher grades and stand a better chance of graduating.

In addition, Target has announced a reading pledge, a donation of as many as 2 million books for low-income children and plans for an innovative virtual and physical reading center, also as part of the initiative.

Fordham University has received a $25 million gift from a grateful alumnus.

The university, based in New York City, had a major impact on the life of Mario J. Gabelli, whose generous $25 million donation marks the opening of the public phase of Fordham's $500 million capital campaign. Gabelli is a second-generation American and was the first member of his family to attend college. Now he is the CEO and chairman of GAMCO Investors, a diversified asset management and financial services company.

"Education is the great leveler, the engine of America's meritocracy, and it must remain so for the country to compete in the global economy," Gabelli said, expressing his gratitude to the university. "My grandfather died in a coal mining accident in western Pennsylvania one hundred years ago, and my family always stressed the importance of education as a stepping stone to creating a better life. I am proud and blessed to be able to contribute to that effort."

The $25 million gift is the largest in the school's history. It will be used to fund student scholarships and faculty chairs, as well as to establish the Center of Global Investment Analysis, which will work to enhance the study and understanding of global capital markets. In recognition of Gabelli's incredible generosity, Fordham will also rename its undergraduate business program the Gabelli School of Business.

Including Gabelli's donation, Fordham has raised $364.8 million toward its campaign goal.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg – moved by the plight of the school system in Newark, New Jersey, which has one of the worst records in the country and was declared a failure fifteen years ago – donated $100 million to help Newark mayor Cory Booker take the school district in a new and exciting direction. Now, Booker has announced that the city has raised an additional $40 million as part of an effort to match Zuckerberg's gift.

Zuckerberg's gift was announced earlier this week on the Oprah Winfrey Show. The money donated by Zuckerberg, who is the world's youngest self-made billionaire, will go toward funding for Startup: Education, a foundation dedicated, at least in the near future, to supporting Booker's efforts to turn around Newark's failing schools. Eventually, the foundation will support reform efforts in other communities, according to the Newark Star-Ledger.

Funds received to match Zuckerberg's gift include $25 million from the Pershing Square Foundation, in addition to $15 million combined from the NewSchools Venture Fund, Bill Gates and Beth and Ravenel Curry, the founders of investment firm Eagle Capital Management.

Even without the additional $200 million gift, Newark's school system is one of the highest spending in the nation. Its annual budget of $940 million equates to approximately $22,000 per student, yet about half the city's 40,000 students do not graduate, more than 85 percent of those who do graduate and attend local community colleges need remedial help in math and English and only a fifth of those who graduate enroll in four-year colleges or universities.

Startup: Education and the remainder of the gift are intended to help the school system turn things around for its students.

"Let's let Newarkers see what the possibilities are," Booker told the Wall Street Journal, adding that he felt encouraged "by the level of support we've seen this early."

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, along with the National League of Cities, has announced $12 million in grants to help boost college completion rates in four cities across the United States.

The four separate three-year, $3 million grants were given to the Research Foundation of the City University of New York, the city and county of San Francisco, the city of Mesa, Arizona, and Riverside City College in California. The graduation rate at Riverside City College is only 14 percent; in Mesa, that figure is only 5.4 percent for low-income students.

The money, awarded through the Communities Learning in Partnership initiative, is designed to promote programs and activities that align academic standards between high school and college, strengthen data systems, work on college prep strategies, and create support systems designed to dramatically increase the number of students who earn a postsecondary degree or credential.

"We know that in today's economic climate and labor market, a high school diploma is no longer enough," said Allan Golston, president of the Gates Foundation's United States Program. "We must not only ensure that young people have access to college; we must ensure that they go on to complete college and earn a degree or certificate with value in the workplace."

Although community college enrollment rates are at an all-time high, fewer students than ever – less than a quarter – are graduating in three years or less. Many students are burdened by financial problems, their studies are delayed by the need to work full-time while earning a degree, they were not prepared for college-level academia or they are struggling to balance their education with family responsibilities.

Thanks to the generous grants from the Gates Foundation and the NLC, these community colleges can work to help students overcome these challenges and earn a degree that will put them on the fast track to a financially rewarding and intellectually challenging career. 

Facebook has been in the news quite a bit lately. A new movie about the website, called The Social Network, will be released later this fall and is already generating significant Oscar buzz. Now, the film's inspiration, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, is keeping his site in the news by donating $100 million to charity.

Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook as an undergraduate at Harvard, is the world's youngest self-made billionaire thanks to his 24 percent stake in the site. At 26, he is worth an estimated $6.9 billion. Now, the programmer and developer has donated $100 million of his personal fortune to the much-maligned Newark, New Jersey, public school system.

Zuckerberg wanted to keep the donation anonymous, but was convinced to publicly announce his contribution on the Oprah Winfrey Show earlier this month.

"I've had a lot of opportunities in my life, and a lot of that comes from … having gone to really good schools," Zuckerberg, a graduate of the elite Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, said. "And I just want to do what I can to make sure that everyone has those same opportunities."

Though he has no personal ties to Newark, Zuckerberg was touched by the school system's troubles after a meeting with mayor Cory Booker at a summer conference. The Newark school district has one of the worst records in the state, with only 40 percent of students able to read and write by the third grade. It was declared a failure and taken over by the state in 1995.

Booker has high hopes for the school district following Zuckerberg's generous contribution.

"I think that Newark is going to change the paradigm for urban education," he told Oprah.

Oprah Winfrey has long been famous for her charitable acts. The television personality and wellness guru – who has been called the most influential woman on Earth and was once the world's only black billionaire – has given away goodies, vacations and even cars to her studio audience, established the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in Johannesburg, South Africa, and has been honored by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals for her refusal to wear fur or feature it in her magazine.

Now, Oprah's Angel Network has donated $6 million to six successful charter schools around the nation.

Grants of $1 million each were awarded to Aspire Public Schools in California, the Denver School of Science & Technology, the LEARN Charter School Network in Chicago, Mastery Charter Schools in Philadelphia, Sci Academy/New Orleans Charter Science and Math Academy and YES Prep Public Schools in Houston.

"I value nothing more in the world than education," Winfrey said as she presented the awards to representatives of each grantee on her talk show. "It is the reason why I can stand here today. It is an open door to freedom. And we wanted to be able to, on behalf of the viewers, give you something to go back to your schools and make life better for the children in your schools."

This will be one of the Angel Network's final grants, as it has announced that it will be dissolving as soon as its remaining funds are allocated. Since 1997, the organization has awarded more than two hundred grants in some thirty countries to help improve access to education, protect basic human rights, create communities of support and develop leaders.

Actress Kate Winslet has been a lot of things – a passenger on the Titantic, a Nazi commander, a disillusioned housewife – and now she can add philanthropist to her long line of career achievements. And this time, it isn't just for a role.

Winslet, a mother herself, recently narrated a documentary called "A Mother's Courage: Talking Back to Autism." The movie follows an Icelandic woman's battle to communicate with her severely autistic son, who has never spoken.

Winslet says that while she was watching the film with her daughter Mia, the nine-year-old turned to her and asked, "What would it be like if I weren't able to talk to you?"

The question moved Winslet deeply. "As I thought about what that meant, for a mother not to be able to talk with her own child, I realized that I had to lend my voice to raise awareness of this rapidly increasing disorder," she explains.

That's why she founded the Golden Hat Foundation, which will offer speech training to children affected by the little-understood disease. Autism is a spectrum disorder that affects a person's ability to understand and communicate with others. Some children, such as those with Asberger's, suffer only mild symptoms and can lead normal lives, while others are so severely affected that they can go their entire lives without uttering a word. Autism affects one in every 110 children and is almost four times more common in boys than girls. It has no known cause or cure, but its prevalence is rising around the world.

"It makes me incredibly proud to work on this effort to bring awareness to the plight of people with autism," Winslet added. "I believe that all people with autism should be given the opportunity to learn to communicate, receive a suitable academic education and experience social relationships."

If you like bagels, make sure to stop by any of the 48 Panera Bread locations managed by Breads of the World in Columbus, Cincinnati, Dayton and northern Kentucky to pick up a few on October 1 – you'll enjoy a delicious snack and you'll be helping to cure breast cancer.

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and Panera wants to start things off right by donating 100 percent of Pink Ribbon bagel sales made on the start of the month to the American Cancer Society of Central and Southwest Ohio. In addition, the restaurant and bakery will continue to donate $0.10 from every bagel sold from October 2 until October 31 to the nonprofit cancer research, treatment and support group.

"This year, more than ever before, we are pleased and honored to lead the charge against breast cancer in Ohio," says Jeff Rains, president of Panera parent company Breads of the World, which operates franchises in Ohio, Kentucky and Colorado. "On October 1 Panera Bread will donate 100 percent of all Pink Ribbon bagel sales. It's important to us to kick Breast Cancer Awareness month off on the right foot, by bringing together our employees, owners and customers as a united front – supporting the cause in the Ohio communities we serve."

The American Cancer Society estimates that as many as one in eight women will develop breast cancer in her lifetime. It is the second most common cancer, after skin cancer, in women, and the second most deadly, after lung cancer. Nearly 40,000 women will die from breast cancer every year in the United States.