Honoring Corporate Commitments: Google

Each year Sister Cities International recognizes one company for their commitment to philanthropic investments in the international nonprofit sector. Past honorees include Motorola, AECOM, and CITRIX. This summer we honored Google with Sister Cities International’s Global Corporate Responsibility Award.

Since our conference was abroad, the company was unable to send a representative to attend the event, so I had the chance to visit Google’s headquarters this fall and present the award to Jessica Vaughan, a program manager for Google Grants (pictured above). Below you’ll find our short description of Google's recent philanthropic accomplishments:

Google aspires to use the power of information and technology to address the global challenges of our age. Through Google.org and Google Grants, Google has emerged as a powerful philanthropic force in a number of geographic and programmatic areas where sister cities members are active.

Google contributes funding in areas ranging from renewable energy, to global health, to information access, to small- and medium-sized enterprises. Most recently, Google funded research and programs in wind energy, solar thermal power and geothermal resources. Also, Google has invested in improving early detection, preparedness and response capabilities for global health threats and humanitarian crises in Africa and Asia as well as monitoring, analysis and prediction of the impacts of climate change on ecosystems, food and health in Africa and the Amazon.

In the education arena, Google made grants to improve the quality of education in Tanzania and in India focusing on student learning in primary education and benchmarking students to identify learning gaps. To help advance the private sector in Africa, Google funded business plan competitions and entrepreneurship programs in Ghana and Tanzania as well as provided support to spur job creation and strengthen poverty alleviation programs around the continent.

We hope their giving will inspire other corporations to grow their commitment to international philanthropy.