November 18, 1999 | Read Time: 1 minute
More than a dozen companies, foundations, charities, and government agencies have joined together to start a new non-profit organization, PowerUp, to increase poor children’s access to technology.
The Stephen Case Foundation, established by the co-founder of America Online and his wife, Jean, is providing $10-million to get PowerUp off the ground. Half of the grant will be used for administrative and personnel expenses, and the other half will finance grants to bolster existing technology programs that serve poor children and to start new ones.
The AOL Foundation, in Dulles, Va., will provide 100,000 AOL accounts for programs that need them, and the Waitt Family Foundation, created by Ted Waitt, founder of Gateway, and his wife, Joan, will donate 50,000 computers.
Within a year, the new organization expects to be working with at least 250 sites, a goal made possible, in part, by PowerUp’s partnerships with youth-development programs. The group’s partners include non-profit organizations such as Boys & Girls Clubs of America, Communities In Schools, the National Urban League, Save the Children, and the Y.M.C.A. of the USA, as well as the U.S. Department of Education’s 21st Century Community Learning Centers and Community Technology Centers.
In addition to grants and gifts of equipment, groups that sponsor PowerUp sites will receive assistance in integrating technology into their programs. The Corporation for National Service will train more than 400 AmeriCorps members to work as mentors and technical advisers at PowerUp sites.
Grant guidelines are available on PowerUp’s Web site, and the group will begin accepting proposals as of January 1.
For more information: Go to http://www.powerup.org.
