As of Saturday, she may give much more. Parton acquired the Braveness and Civility Award, which comes with $100 million, from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his longtime accomplice, Lauren Sanchez.
She will present the cash to any philanthropic group of her selecting. That might purchase coats of many, MANY colours.
“Wow! Did you say $100 million?!” Parton mentioned whereas receiving the award.
That is the second yr Bezos has handed out the award. Last year, he gave chef and catastrophe reduction specialist José Andrés and CNN commentator and activist Van Jones $100 million every.
(Bezos owns The Washington Publish.)
“When persons are able to assist, it’s best to assist,” Parton mentioned in a video Bezos tweeted Saturday. “I attempt to put my cash the place my coronary heart is.”
Parton hasn’t mentioned what she is going to do with the cash, however she has a number of long-standing philanthropic initiatives. She has helped destigmatize HIV/AIDS, the Los Angeles Occasions 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 definitely works greater than her echoic tune “9 to five” suggests.
Her best-known program is the Imagination Library, which has gifted practically 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 acquired a 2022 Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy for addressing poverty and “strengthening early-childhood schooling by means of the distribution of free books worldwide.”
Her dedication to schooling stretches past kids. The mother or father firm of her Dollywood amusement park introduced this year that Dollywood can pay one hundred pc of prices for tuition, charges and books of staff who pursue increased schooling.
Regardless of the celebrity and success, Parton isn’t removed from her roots. Not more than two doorways down, you could possibly say.
When wildfires threatened her native Sevier County, Tenn., in 2016 she pledged financial support for many who misplaced their properties. 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 referred to 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 already know you’ve recorded rather a lot when the listing in your web site has an Excel-like type operate.)
Her musical affect is plain. The Library of Congress awarded Parton its Living Legend medal practically 20 years in the past.
She was provided a spot within the Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame’s 2022 induction class, and, in what’s satirically one of the crucial rock-and-roll issues somebody can do, she declined the supply. She mentioned that she wasn’t worthy and that this impressed her to place out a rock album. The Corridor of Fame rejected her rejection, and she or he was inducted this month.
Parton has solely gotten extra standard of 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 essentially the most constructive opinions of any music artist.
She’s well-liked as a result of she’s good, and she or he simply bought $100 million for charity as a result of she’s been philanthropic her whole skilled profession.
It’s protected to say: From younger individuals whose lives have been improved by the Dollywood Basis to outdated followers, America will all the time love you, Dolly.
