Billionaire Jeff Bezos donates R1.4 billion to help homeless families

- Jeff Bezos' Day One Fund for families announced the donations for 2019 on Thursday

- The recipients are groups that work to provide shelter for homeless families

- Last year, Bezos gave $97.5 million to organisations fighting homelessness

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Jeff Bezos, the second richest person in the world announced on Thursday, that he has donated $98.5 million - an estimated R1.4 billion - to 32 organisations in 23 states to help homeless families.

The billionaire's charity foundation, the Bezos Day One Fund, launched in September 2018, gifted each organisation within a range of $1.25 million (R18.3 million )to $5 million (R73.5 million)

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According to a report by CNBC, this is the second round of the Bezos Day One Families Fund annual leadership awards since the billionaire launched the organisation.

In 2018, Bezos gave $97.5 million (R1.43 million) to organisations fighting homelessness in 16 states.

The foundation has two stated aims that include to combat homelessness and provide quality education in low-income communities.

This year’s grantees include long-standing non-profit organisations such as the Homeless Services Network of Central Florida, which received the largest grant of $5.25 million.

While Bezos has posted on Instagram several times in 2018 about visiting Montessori-inspired schools, no official announcement has been made regarding creating a network of pre-schools.

With a nett worth of roughly $109 billion, Bezos is the second wealthiest man in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, behind Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.

Bill Gates is the first and the two have gone back and forth in first place in recent days, as the price of Amazon and Microsoft stock fluctuated.

The rivalry has only grown more heated after the Pentagon made the controversial move to award a $10 billion - about R147 billion - cloud computing contract to Microsoft.

Bezos' Amazon has challenged the awarding of the JEDI contract to Microsoft, claiming politics spoiled a fair contracting process.

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Source: Briefly News