Charity

The writer MacKenzie Scott has married again. Her husband is Dan Jewett, a teacher from Seattle. The couple made the marriage public in a letter to the Giving Pledge organization. MacKenzie Scott was married to Jeff Bezos for 25 years, one of the first employees of his Amazon company, during which time she helped build the mail-order company. In 2019, the couple separated.

With the divorce, Scott received four percent of Amazon shares, then worth about $38 billion. She announced she would donate most of the fortune to charity.

Sen. Bernie Sanders has helped raise $1.8 million for charity by selling sweatshirts and t-shirts with the viral January 20th image of him sitting at President Joe Biden's inauguration. 100% of the proceeds will go toward Meals on Wheels Vermont and all items are currently sold out.

"Jane and I were amazed by all the creativity shown by so many people over the last week, and we’re glad we can use my internet fame to help Vermonters in need, But even this amount of money is no substitute for action by Congress," so Sanders.

The US representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) has hosted a Twitch live stream of the game Among Us to raise awareness and money for charitable causes such as food pantries and eviction defense.

On her fundraising page she wrote that "This week, as some families celebrate Thanksgiving, others face food & housing insecurity at levels not seen since the Great Depression," and managed to raise over $200,000. In total, over 104,000 people watched the stream concurrently and she had been joined by multiple other popular streamers such as HasanAbi, Disguised Toast, Myth, Jacksepticeye, xQc and others.

The state of Hamburg decided that cruise ships may now donate their leftover food to the Hamburger Tafel. For customs and import law reasons, cruise ships were not allowed to donate food until now, as cruise ships are legally considered "third countries".

While surplus food had to be disposed of in the past, it is now possible both to reduce food waste and to support the distribution of food to those in need.

Chuck Feeney, an Irish American who made billions from a duty-free shopping empire, has achieved the goal of giving away his $8 billion fortune through his Atlantic Philanthropies foundation and has signed papers to formally close it.

Feeny who lives in a small rented apartment in San Francisco has stated that "to those wondering about Giving While Living: try it, you’ll like it".

The forward player for the Cleveland Cavaliers has announced that he has committed $500,000 through his foundation to the psychology department of the University of California, Los Angeles. In the past, he has been vocal about his own history and struggles with mental health, namely panic attacks and anxiety. The donation has been committed on Monday, a day after he received the Arthur Ashe Courage Award for his efforts in mental health.

In just 24 hours the fans of the K-Pop band BTS which call themselves "BTS ARMY" have matched the $1 million donation of the band for the Black Lives Matter cause. Under the hashtag #MatchAMillion the fans had tweeted and called for matching donations, reaching over 490,000 tweets. The matching donation of over $1 million will be split between several organizations that support Black Lives Matter and the fight against racism.

In a joined statement Michael Jordan and the Jordan brand announced that they'll commit $100 million over 10 years to support "organizations dedicated to ensuring racial equality, social justice and greater access to education".

A representative for Kanye West has announced that the artist has set up a 529 education plan to fully cover college tuition for Gianna Floy, the daughter of George Floyd who was murdered by the police. His death and the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor have sparked protests against racism and police brutality across the United States and other countries. West has also donated $2 million to support the families of the three killed people.

Together with the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation Guy Fieri has raised $21.5 million for a new Restaurant Employee Relief Fund. The fund has started distributing the money to individual workers in the restaurant business, giving each a grant of $500. Over 40,000 grants have already been awarded. Guy Fieri has stated that he reached out with personal video messages to CEOs involved in the food and restaurant industry to ask for donations to the fund.

In a special reunion episode of "Parks and Recreation" which concluded originally in 2015, one of the main protagonists Leslie Knope, portrayed by Amy Poehler, virtually catches up with her former fictional co-workers. At the end of the episode the viewers were directed to a fundraiser website of Feeding America in order to raise money for the organization's Covid-19 Response Fund. So far over $2.8 million have been raised and further contributions are still possible.

Sixteen professional tennis players and celebrities will battle in an online tournament of the Nintendo game Mario Tennis Aces. The contestants will play in pairs composed each of one celebrity and one professional tennis athlete with Facebook live-streaming the event on Sunday 3 May. The winning team can choose a charity towards which a donation of $1m will be donated to.

The pairs competing include Serena Williams and Gigi Hadid, Naomi Osaka and Hailey Bieber, Maria Sharapova and Karlie Kloss, Kevin Anderson and Ryan Tannehill, Venus Williams and Deandre Hopkins, Kei Nishikori and Steve Aoki, Madison Keys and Seal, Taylor Fritz and Addison Rae.

The Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen announced that the country has increased the daily production of face masks and will provide other countries, which are affected by the coronavirus, with them. The countries current output has increased from 3.2 million surgical masks to 13 million surgical masks per day between February and the beginning of April.

Announcing a "National Emergency Library" the non-profit organization Internat Archive makes 1.4 million books online for free. The organization stated that the measure was taken in order to provide "a global community of displaced learners" with access to learning materials. The collection mainly contains digitalized books that don't have an ebook version available.

The e-commerce company implemented a fund to support "employees and partners" and contributed $25 million in funds themselves. In addition to this, the company opened up the fund for outside donations stating "While we aren’t expecting anyone to do so, you can make a voluntary donation to the fund if you desire to do so" on their website.

Pep Guardiola, manager of the English Premier League soccer team Manchester City, has donated €1 million ($1.08m) of his own money to aid medical efforts in the fight against Covid-19. From his home in Barcelona, Guardiola and his lawyers committed the money to the Medical College of Barcelona and the Angel Soler Daniel Foundation.

The foundation has announced that the money will go to different initiatives and groups in order to "to immediately mobilize a broad response working with on-the-ground partners". The goal is to support food banks, the acceleration of testing, to buy protective equipment and other measurements. The foundation is distributing the money to multiple countries including the United States, Haiti and Malawi.