Rihanna, Jack Dorsey Donate $4.2 Million to Quarantined Domestic Abuse Survivors
Rihanna (pictured)
Popstar Rihanna and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey have teamed up to donate $4.2 million to domestic abuse victims stuck in quarantine due to COVID-19 shelter-in-place orders. Shelters for domestic abuse survivors in Los Angeles have become increasingly overcrowded due to the pandemic. The combined donation, to be funneled into the LA Mayor’s Fund, will provide shelter, food and counseling for up to 90 survivors for a 20 week period.
The donation comes just weeks after Rihanna previously donated $5 million in funds for coronavirus relief efforts through her own Clara Lionel Foundation. The money was reported to go to support food banks and provide testing in impoverished nations such as Haiti and Malawi. $700,000 of the donation was earmarked for the purchase of ventilators for the singer’s home country of Barbados.
#BREAKING – Barbados PM Mia Mottley announces that Barbadian songstress @rihanna has offered to purchase ventilators worth a total BB$1.4 million (US$700,000) for Barbados as it tackles the coronavirus pandemic pic.twitter.com/0gjOdsPEYF
— Kevz Politics (@KevzPolitics) March 21, 2020
Jack Dorsey’s most recent donation came after his own personal pledge of approximately $1 billion in coronavirus relief funds. That money would be organized into an LLC called Start Small with the express purpose of battling the COVID-19 crisis. Dorsey’s pledge represents slightly less than a third of the Twitter and Square founder’s net worth.
Other high-profile donations have been pledged in the preceding weeks since the COVID-19 outbreak. Jeff Bezos recently pledged $100 million to the nonprofit Feeding America. Microsoft founder and billionaire Bill Gates has emerged as a prominent advocate for pandemic awareness and preparation, recently penning an op-ed in the Washington Post calling for stricter guidelines for countering the spread of COVID-19.