Kohl's Donates $1.5 Million to TED

Related: Kohl's, TED

Kohl's Department Stores announced the continuation of its partnership with TED, the nonprofit organization that provides a platform for innovative thinkers to present Ideas Worth Spreading, with a donation of $1.5 million to continue its education-based opportunities for youth. The additional funding will allow TED to further advance the TED-Ed platform, a platform created in 2012 to provide free educational content for educators and students. The donation comes from the Kohl's Carescause merchandise program, which sells special merchandise, including plush toys and books, and donates 100 percent of the net profit to benefit children's health and education initiatives nationwide.

"Kohl's is committed to children's education, and we are pleased to continue our partnership with TED to help further advance the TED-Ed platform," said Kevin Mansell, Kohl's chairman, president and chief executive officer. "TED and TED-Ed offer a new, creative way to learn, and Kohl's is honored to help provide a free educational resource for teachers and parents that is also compelling for kids."

TED-Ed seeks to inspire curiosity by harnessing the talent of the world's best teachers and visualizers, and by providing educators with new tools that spark and facilitate learning. The platform's groundbreaking website [http://ed.ted.com], housed on TED.com, gives teachers, parents, and anyone who wants to spread a lesson the ability to create unique customized lesson plans around TED-Ed video content. This platform also allows users to take any useful educational video, not just TED's, and easily create a customized lesson around the video. Users can distribute the lessons, publicly or privately, and track their impact on the world, a class, or an individual student. TED-Ed launched in March of 2012 with a $1.25 million commitment from Kohl's Cares, optimizing TED content for use in educational settings.

The continued partnership between Kohl's and TED will support the following youth-focused educational initiatives in 2013:

TED2013 / TEDActive: Kohl's will host an education-themed interactive exhibit at TED2013 which will feature some of the lessons created as part of the Lessons Worth Sharing program, which awarded 18 educators across the country with the opportunity to have their most impactful and influential lesson featured as an animated video on TED's global TED-Ed website. TED2013 will take place in Long Beach from February 25 - March 1, 2013.
TED-Ed Community Forum: An online platform, expected to launch later this year, will be developed to serve as a resource hub for educators, allowing them to connect using web-based collaboration tools and share best practices for TED-Ed.

The partnership also supported the following youth-focused educational initiative in 2012:

TEDYouth: During TEDYouth in New York City on November 17, Kohl's hosted an activation space offering a series of hands-on how-to's for students attending the event. Participating students received toolkits featuring a project they could complete at home with the everyday materials included in the kit.

Kohl's has a long-standing commitment to supporting kids programs. Since 2000, Kohl's has raised more than $208 million for kids' health and education initiatives nationwide. For more information on Kohl's philanthropic efforts, visit www.Kohls.com/Cares.

About the TED-Ed Website

The site builds on TED-Ed content - available on the TED-Ed channel on YouTube - by allowing educators to create custom lessons around each video. By publishing and sharing the lesson, the lesson-creator can measure its effect on an individual student, a class or the world. Specifically, they can measure participation and the accuracy of any individual student's answers on the assignment.

About TED

TED is a nonprofit organization devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. Started as a four-day conference in California almost 30 years ago, TED has grown to support those world-changing ideas with multiple initiatives. The two annual TED Conferences invite the world's leading thinkers and doers to speak for 18 minutes. Many of these talks are then made available, free, at TED.com. The annual TED Conference takes place each spring, along with the TEDActive simulcast. The annual TEDGlobal conference is held each summer in Edinburgh, Scotland.

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