Mark Zuckerberg's philanthropy is reason enough to applaud him

 Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerbrg has been accused of ulterior motives for his donation of $100m to Newark's schools. Photograph: Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP

   These days, Mark Zuckerberg, the 26-year-old face of Facebook, is everywhere. He's the subject of a glowing CBS 60 Minutes profile. He's Time magazine's 2010 person of the year. And his celluloid doppelganger sits at the centre of The Social Network, Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher's Facebook-creation-story-turned-awards-magnet.

   Whenever the talk turns to Zuckerberg, numbers keeps popping up: 550m (the number of Facebook users worldwide); 26 (his age); 35 (his position on the Forbes list of wealthiest Americans); 6.9bn (dollars; his estimated net worth).

   But the number that captured my attention – and admiration – is 100m (again dollars; the amount he decided to donate to the public school system in Newark, New Jersey, a place he's never lived).
No sooner was the donation announced than the long knives of the American media were unsheathed. According to the naysayers, the Facebook CEO was making the donation to counteract the negative depiction of him in The Social Network as, in the words of the New York Post, "a conniving backstabber who may have stolen the idea for his social networking site".

   Or he was making it "as a way to ward off any negative stigma" arising from his standing on the Forbes 400. New York magazine called it "the PR move of the month". Even the Wall Street Journal, which called the donation "generous, courageous, and inspiring", said: "Mr Zuckerberg may be young. But he already has learned a lot about the offsetting PR value of philanthropy."

   So the $100m donation to Newark's crumbling public schools was not, in and of itself, the story? The story is figuring out the motivation behind it? Is this what we have come to?

   I really don't care why Mark Zuckerberg is donating $100m of his own money that will make a profound difference to the lives of Newark's children. I care very much that it's being done – that one of America's worst school systems will be getting a massive infusion of funds.

   The problems the world is facing are enormous. But so is the amount of available money, energy, creativity, caring and dedication to making things better. Zuckerberg's donation is an example of the kind of big, bold steps that are needed in these troubled times.

   Mark Zuckerberg's example demonstrates that we all need to bring a sense of urgency to the problems we are facing – and make ourselves part of the solution.