Google Giving Targets Education, Tech and Anti-Slaveryvar NREUMQ=NREUMQ||[];NREUMQ.push(["mark","firstbyte",new Date().getTime()]); (Mashable)

Google's charitable branch, Google.org, released a list Wednesday of its 2011 non-profit grant recipients, who received a combined $40 million. The list highlights the search giant's work promoting STEM and girls' education, empowering through technology, and fighting slavery and human trafficking.

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The above video highlights the company's work in those four key areas.

Through the work of 16 non-profits, the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education grants will affect 3 million students in the U.S. Google says 2.4 million jobs will be created in these areas in the next six years, making them a key area for education.

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The seven girls' education non-profit grant recipients work in the developing world, impacting 10,000 students in Africa, Central Asia and Southeast Asia, among other places.

The 15 technology empowerment grant recipients use social media, mobile networks and open source programming to improve access to information. The grants will be used to bring technology access to unconnected communities in the developing world.

Google's final group of grants were given to nine non-profits, helping to free 12,000 of the 27 million slaves in the world. The non-profits partner with governments to document and eliminate slave traders, and educate and give therapy to former slaves.

Including these grants, the company's philanthropic projects give $115 million to non-profits annually. Its giving totals more than $1 billion each year when in-house programs like Google Grants and Google Apps for Education are considered.

Do you think Google should be limiting its areas of focus to these for areas or should it open its grant-giving to other areas?

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/education/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/mashable/20111214/tc_mashable/google_giving_targets_education_tech_and_antislavery

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