Youth Incorporated Magazine

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has donated $2 Billion to the homeless, and towards building pre-schools in low-income areas, in a charity that would be called the Day One Fund. The charity supports non-profits that help homeless families and build pre-schools in low-income areas.

“MacKenzie (his wife) and I share a belief in the potential for hard work from anyone to serve others. We all have that capacity,” Bezos wrote in a tweet. “We’re excited today to announce the Bezos Day One Fund. It will begin with a commitment of $2 billion and focus on two areas: funding existing non-profits that help homeless families, and creating a network of new, non-profit, tier-one preschools in low-income communities,” he added.

The Day 1 Families Fund will support families in need of shelter and food, and will also issue annual leadership awards to organizations and civic groups carrying out this work. “The vision statement comes from the inspiring Mary’s Place in Seattle: no child sleeps outside,” Bezos said.

The Day 1 Academies Fund will build a network of high-quality, fully funded, Montessori-inspired preschools in underprivileged, low-income communities, and will have an entire organization dedicated to the operations and functioning of these preschool. Said Bezos, “It will give us the opportunity to learn, invent, and improve. We’ll use the same set of principles that have driven Amazon. Most important among those will be genuine, intense customer obsession. The child will be the customer.”

The $164 billion-worth founder has been involved in a number of worthwhile causes, like marriage equality, cancer research, and scholarship for immigrant students among others, he has primarily invested his personal fortunes in Blue Origin, which he calls an ‘investment in the future of our planet’.

Jeff has now joined a bandwagon of other global bigwigs, like Warren Buffet and Mark Zuckerberg who have donated part of their fortunes to charity.