America
Adarsh Alphons and Reshma Saujani among biggest givers of 2015
Washington, April 12
Two Indian Americans have
been listed among the 50 biggest philanthropists of 2015 by the Town
and Country Magazine with the likes of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates
and Apple CEO Tim Cook.
"These are the men and women whose
serious dollars, bold ideas, and old-fashioned hard work have made them
the year's most noteworthy and inspiring givers," the American lifestyle
magazine says of the top givers including Adarsh Alphons and Reshma
Saujani.
The 'Grand Plan' of New York based Alphons, 30, Founder
& Executive Director of ProjectArt, which provides free art classes
at public libraries in all five boroughs of New York City, is to help
troubled students in the metropolis. Alphons, son of former Indian
bureaucrat K J Alphons, was a troubled student himself - he was once
expelled for drawing at the expense of his studies - until one art
teacher began encouraging his talent.
He founded ProjectArt in
2011 and by 2014 had 11 thriving neighbourhood programmes, funded
heavily by art enthusiasts from David Maupin to Kyle DeWoody.
Saujani,
38, an Indian-American lawyer and politician, founded the tech
organization Girls Who Code to close technology's gender gap. She did so
noting that demand for programmers has skyrocketed, the percentage of
computer science graduates who are female has gone down, from 37 percent
to 12 percent over the past 30 years.
In December, her non
profit announced a major expansion of its seven-week summer programme
around the US, which will provide top-notch training to girls.
Her partners include AT&T and Twitter. Saujani hopes to have taught one million by 2020.
Besides
Bill & Melinda Gates, co-chairs of the Gates Foundation and Apple
CEO Tim cook others on the list include Facebook Chairman & CEO Mark
Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, former New York mayor Michael
Bloomberg and actor Leonardo DiCaprio.
(Arun Kumar can be contacted at [email protected])