Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is launching a $2 billion “Day One Fund” to help homeless families in the US and create a series of innovative preschools.
In a statement posted on Twitter, Bezos said that he asked for suggestions on where to direct his philanthropy efforts last year, and that the Day One Fund was born out of those conversations. “Where’s the good in the world, and how can we spread it? Where are the opportunities to make things better?” he wrote. Bezos currently ranks as the world’s richest person, and has to date been less active in philanthropy than some other top billionaires.
The Amazon CEO announced his new organization would be “creating a network of new, non-profit, tier-one preschools in low-income communities,” inspired by the Montessori School model, a child-centered educational method that relies on scientific observations of children from birth to adulthood. The Montessori method has been shown to be beneficial for children’s cognitive and social skills, and helpful in developing kids’ early literacy and mathematics skills.
The Bezos Family Foundation, established by Bezos’s parents Jackie and Mike, currently runs two early childhood development programs: Mind in the Making (MITM), a national research-sharing and training initiative, and Vroom, a creative platform based on neuroscience, that gives families the tools to build their babies’ brains.
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