The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which is comprised of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, just announced that it will support six causes backed by grassroots movements. One includes Rise, a nonprofit organization founded by sexual assault survivor Amanda Nguyen, who worked to pass the Sexual Assault Survivor Bill of Rights federally.
The couple is supporting sexual assault awareness, which is somehow still a controversial topic in 2017 thanks to recent moves by the Department of Education. Many women and LGBTQ people suffer alone. This doesn’t entirely surprise me now that Zuckerberg and Chan are the parents of two girls.
David Plouffe, the President of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, explained on Facebook why this is so important:
“In their 2015 letter to their daughter, Mark and Priscilla wrote “We must participate in policy and advocacy to shape debates. Many institutions are unwilling to do this, but progress must be supported by movements to be sustainable.”
At the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, we believe grassroots movements are key to sustained social change. We’re committed to supporting proven and promising advocacy models grounded in community.
As a new organization, we want to learn from individuals and organizations that are doing groundbreaking advocacy work to make a lasting impact. Learning new and creative advocacy techniques from these and other organizations will make us more effective and help us to have a greater impact on issues around science, education, housing, and criminal justice reform.”
Currently, Nguyen is looking to pass state laws like the one she helped pass in 2016 called the Sexual Assault Survivor Bill of Rights, which offers protections for survivors when they report their case.
The other organizations the initiative is supporting include: JustLeadershipUSA, an organization working to reduce the number of people in prison by half by the year 2030; Alliance for Safety & Justice, an organization that advocates for safety priorities in states across the country; FAMM, a group that works for fair and proportionate sentencing laws; FWD.us, an organization that promotes policies to keep the United States and its citizens competitive in a global economy; TechEquity Collaborative, an organization that aims to foster an inclusive, representative and community-oriented tech ecosystem in Oakland, California.
In addition, the organization also made a $75 million investment to help launch Resolve to Save Lives, “a new global health initiative to save 100 million lives by preventing epidemics and cardiovascular disease,” as Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook last week in a post.
Facebook has been under fire for various reasons recently, including allowing anti-Semitism to fester online.
Check out the entire statement below:
