As of Saturday, she can provide much more. Parton obtained the Braveness and Civility Award, which comes with $100 million, from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his longtime companion, Lauren Sanchez.
She will present the cash to any philanthropic group of her selecting. That would purchase coats of many, MANY colours.
“Wow! Did you say $100 million?!” Parton stated whereas receiving the award.
That is the second yr Bezos has handed out the award. Last year, he gave chef and catastrophe aid specialist José Andrés and CNN commentator and activist Van Jones $100 million every.
(Bezos owns The Washington Publish.)
“When individuals are able to assist, it’s best to assist,” Parton stated in a video Bezos tweeted Saturday. “I attempt to put my cash the place my coronary heart is.”
Parton hasn’t stated what she is going to do with the cash, however she has a number of long-standing philanthropic tasks. She has helped destigmatize HIV/AIDS, the Los Angeles Instances reported. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service gave her a Partnership Award for her bald eagle conservation efforts. She labored with PETA to cease canine house owners from chaining up their pets and leaving them outdoors.
She actually works greater than her echoic tune “9 to five” suggests.
Her best-known program is the Imagination Library, which has gifted almost 200 million books to kids since 1995. This system’s umbrella group is the Dollywood Basis.
The Dollywood Basis in 2019 spent $22.2 million out of its $35 million price range on books for the Creativeness Library, according to its 990 form.
Parton additionally obtained a 2022 Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy for addressing poverty and “strengthening early-childhood training by means of the distribution of free books worldwide.”
Her dedication to training stretches past kids. The mum or dad firm of her Dollywood amusement park introduced this year that Dollywood can pay 100% of prices for tuition, charges and books of workers who pursue greater training.
Regardless of the celebrity and success, Parton is rarely removed from her roots. Not more than two doorways down, you might say.
When wildfires threatened her native Sevier County, Tenn., in 2016 she pledged financial support for many who misplaced their houses. Parton additionally revealed final yr that she invested the royalties from Whitney Houston’s cover of Parton’s “I Will All the time Love You” — recorded for the 1992 movie “The Bodyguard” — right into a traditionally Black neighborhood in Nashville known as Sevier Park.
She additionally donated $1 million to Vanderbilt College for coronavirus analysis, partially funding biotechnology agency Moderna’s vaccine.
And — right here she comes once more — then there’s the tunes.
Parton has recorded music for 50 years and has created about twice as many albums, according to her website. ( you’ve recorded lots when the record in your web site has an Excel-like kind operate.)
Her musical affect is simple. The Library of Congress awarded Parton its Living Legend medal almost 20 years in the past.
She was supplied a spot within the Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame’s 2022 induction class, and, in what’s mockingly one of the crucial rock-and-roll issues somebody can do, she declined the supply. She stated that she wasn’t worthy and that this impressed her to place out a rock album. The Corridor of Fame rejected her rejection, and he or she was inducted this month.
Parton has solely gotten extra widespread through the years — as proven by her 5.5 million followers on Twitter. Though it pays individuals to take its surveys, YouGov discovered that Parton drew probably the most optimistic opinions of any music artist.
She’s effectively appreciated as a result of she’s good, and he or she simply acquired $100 million for charity as a result of she’s been philanthropic her complete skilled profession.
It’s protected to say: From younger individuals whose lives have been improved by the Dollywood Basis to outdated followers, America will at all times love you, Dolly.
