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Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos Have Pledged $2 Billion to Fight Homelessness

Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos Have Pledged $2 Billion to Fight Homelessness

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and his wife MacKenzie have announced a new project called the Bezos Day One Fund.

As part of the new project, they have committed to give $2 billion in an effort to fight homelessness. In addition to giving money to existing organizations that currently help homeless families around the country, and the money will be used to create new pre-schools in low-income neighborhoods.

In a lengthy statement, Bezos, who is the richest person in the world, explained the idea behind “Day One.” You can read the whole thing in the tweet below:

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I talk often about the importance of maintaining a Day mentality. It’s always Day 1, and I work hard to apply that mindset to everything I do. It was a Day 1 outlook that made me reach out to ask for suggestions on approaches to philanthropy last year …

MacKenzie and I share a belief in the potential for hard work from anyone to serve others. We all have that capacity …

We’re excited today to announce the Bezos Day One Fund. It will begin with the 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.

The Day 1 Families Fund will issue annual leadership awards to organizations and civic groups doing compassionate, needle-moving work to provide shelter and hunger support to address the immediate needs of young families. The vision statement comes from the inspiring Mary’s Place in Seattle: no child sleeps outside.

The Day 1 Academies Fund will launch and operate a network of high-quality, full-scholarship, Montessori-inspired preschools in underserved communities. We will build an organization to directly operate these preschools. I’m excited about that because 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.” Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” And lighting the fire early is a giant leg up for any child.

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