• Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is launching a new charitable $US2 billion fund to support underserved communities and education programs.
• It’s called the Bezos Day One Fund and will focus on creating resources for the homeless as well as a full-scholarship preschool program.

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Jeff Bezos announced the launch of a new $US2 billion fund called the Bezos Day One Fund on Thursday. In a statement, Bezos wrote that the philanthropic program was created along with his wife MacKenzie Bezos to support homeless families and education programs in underserved communities.

The fund is named for the Amazon CEO’s longstanding “Day 1” philosophy, which Bezos said inspired him to create the charity.

The announcement comes as Amazon has found itself under fire for its treatment of workers, including the fact that Amazon is one of the top employers whose workers receive food stamps. Earlier this month, Senator Bernie Sanders introduced legislation aimed at forcing huge companies like Amazon to pay their employees better wage. The bill is called Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies, or “Stop BEZOS.”

Along with creating a network of support for homeless families, the fund will focus on building early education programs that Bezos described as “full-scholarship, Montessori-inspired preschools.”

“We’ll use the same set of principles that have driven Amazon,” wrote Bezos. “Most important among those will be genuine, intense customer obsession. The child will be the customer.”

Here’s Bezos’ full statement:

I talk often about the importance of maintaining a Day 1 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. By so many important measures the world keeps getting better, and it’s one of the fantastic aspects of human nature that we humans never stop looking for (and finding!) ways to improve things. Our lives are better than our great grandparents’ lives, and their lives were better than their great grandparents’ lives before them. If our own great grandchildren don’t have lives better than ours, something has gone very wrong.Where’s the good in the world, and how can we spread it? Where are the opportunities to make things better?These are exciting questions.

MacKenzie and I share a belief in the potential for hard work from anyone to serve others. We all have that capacity. Business innovators who invent products that empower, authors who write books that inspire, government officials who serve their communities, teachers, doctors, carpenters, entertainers who make us laugh and cry, parents who raise children who go on to live lives of compassion, and many more. In addition to Amazon my areas of focus so far have included investment in the future of our planet and civilisation through the development of foundational space infrastructure, support of American democracy through stewardship of the Washington Post, and financial contributions to the dedicated and innovative champions of a variety of causes, from cancer research, to marriage equality, to college scholarships for immigrant students, to decreasing political polarization through cross-partisan support of principled, next-generation military vets running for Congress.

We’re excited today to announce the Bezos Day One Fund. It will begin with a commitment of $US2 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 organisations 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 organisation 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 that fire early is a giant leg up for any child.

I want to close by thanking everyone who sent me suggestions, and for the inspiring examples of innovation I see every day, large and small. It fills me with gratitude and optimism to be part of a species so bent on self-improvement.

It remains Day 1!

Jeff

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