Mark Zuckerberg welcomes baby girl and will part with 99% of Facebook shares

Yesterday Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan welcomed their first child, baby girl Max, into the world, accompanying her arrival with a letter about what they want to achieve for her and what they hope the world will grow to become for her.

The letter highlighted how future generations will have to work on advancing human potential and promoting equality. Human potential has to be advanced by developing technologies that improve the quality of life, combatting disease and providing cleaner energy, giving access to people access to opportunities and cultivating entrepreneurship.Promoting equality focuses on giving anyone regardless of background a chance to access these opportunities, providing access to basic healthcare to everyone, empowering less privileged communities, and nurture peaceful relationships between people of various countries.

Zuckerberg outlined 5 ways to make these goals work:

– We must make long-term investments over 25, 50 or even 100 years.
– We must engage directly with the people we serve.
– We must build technology to make a change.
– We must participate in policy and advocacy to shape debates.
– We must back the strongest and most independent leaders in each field.
– We must take risks today to learn lessons for tomorrow.

He stated how they know access to the internet is vital for learning and opening up regions to opportunities but that huge parts of the world still remains uncovered. Technology is also developing, but the end users must also learn the basics of using t so education for all is important.

“We will give 99% of our Facebook shares – currently about $45 billion – during our lives to advance this mission. We know this is a small contribution compared to all the resources and talents of those already working on these issues. But we want to do what we can, working alongside many others,” the letter read.

Mark and Priscilla created the Chan Zuckerburg Initiative in 2009 to advance human potential and promote equality in areas such as health, education, scientific research, and energy. They believe that children who have an unhealthy childhood fail to reach their full potential and are trying to partner with schools, health centers, parent groups and local governments to ensure all children are well fed and cared for starting young so that they can start to treat these inequities as connected. It will take many years to reach this point, but it starts now.

The letter to Max ended with this heartfelt message, “Max, we love you and feel a great responsibility to leave the world a better place for you and all children. We wish you a life filled with the same love, hope and joy you give us. We can’t wait to see what you bring to this world.”

We know Facebook has been one of those companies that’s all about building better societies, with its initiatives like Free Basics and the latest work of providing free internet access via satellites to regions without any internet access at all. We are excited about the future of tech for everyone.

You can read the full letter here.