In the wake of telecommunications giant WorldCom Inc.'s July 21 bankruptcy filing, officials from the WorldCom Foundation are attempting to raise an estimated $7 million to save a popular, standards-based educational web site and teacher training intiative, called MarcoPolo, that spans all fifty states. Educators and others from coast to coast are rallying to keep the program going.

Should the fund-raising drive fall short, the foundation's president, Caleb M. Schutz, told eSchool News he has a back-up plan whereby teachers still could access MarcoPolo's content, but the training no longer would exist.

MarcoPolo provides teachers with free, high-quality online content in science, arts, economics, humanities, geography, and mathematics. The content is developed by well-known, respected organizations such as the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and the National Geographic Society. The site is visited by as many as 950,000 educators each month, Schutz said.

WorldCom Foundation officials also work with representatives from each state to train teachers how to integrate MarcoPolo's content into their lesson plans. But the foundation notified participants in mid-July that its grant making has been put on hold, and trainers' stipends and travel expenses no longer will be paid after July 31.

WorldCom's bankruptcy has put the future of MarcoPolo in jeopardy, but organizers hope to save the initiative by securing new funding sources and launching a new foundation to run the program.

If the plan proves successful, MarcoPolo would be owned and operated by a newly created public charity called the MarcoPolo Education Foundation instead of the WorldCom Foundation, which has invested $50 million in the program since it began five years ago.

"We are going for a diverse board and a diverse funding source," Schutz said. "We took the WorldCom logo off the site to allow for this increased funding."

The new foundation would welcome funding from federal or state government agencies, private corporations, and individuals of wealth. To date, no funding has been committed, but "there's quite a bit of interest," Schutz said.

The MarcoPolo program and its 46-person staff would be moved to the new foundation by the end of 2002. "We are seeking immediate funding to make sure that transition can take place," Schutz said.

Although the MarcoPolo web site is still up and running, the WorldCom Foundation has no money to pay $2.4 million in state grants it already had promised this year.

"We are trying to find money for the grants that we've committed to pay but can't under the Chapter 11 [filing]," Schutz said.

The foundation had promised to fund 96 grants worth $25,000 each. Fifty of the grants were to pay for an administrator in each state to train teachers how to use MarcoPolo in the classroom. The foundation has trained 180,000 teachers to date but had committed to train all 3 million teachers in the United States by 2005.