GLASTONBURY, ENGLAND - JUNE 29: Dolly Parton performs on the Pyramid stage during day three of the Glastonbury Festival at Worthy Farm in Pilton on June 29, 2014 in Glastonbury, England. Tickets to the event, which is now in its 44th year, sold out in minutes even before any of the headline acts had been confirmed. The festival, which started in 1970 when several hundred hippies paid £1, now attracts more than 175,000 people. (Photo by Jim Dyson/Getty Images)
Country singer and general do-gooder Dolly Parton has been given even more money to distribute to charity, this time from Jeff Bezos as part of the Bezos Courage and Civility Award, which he has previously awarded to political commentator Van Jones and chef Jose Andres after launching it in 2021.
While she’s obviously a superstar in the music business, Parton is known as one of those celebrities who is really involved in using her power and influence for good causes. She has supported child literacy programs in her hometown of Tennessee since the mid-80s through the Dollywood Foundation and also pledged money to many great causes since.
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Most notably in recent years, Parton provided a key $1 million donation to pharmaceutical company Moderna to help create their Covid-19 vaccine. “I’m a very proud girl today to know that I had anything at all to do with something that’s going to help us through this crazy pandemic,” she said in November 2020.
Parton took the stage in her typical energetic fashion, yelling into the mic, “Wow! Did you say $100 million?”
The star added, “I know that I’ve always said, I try to put my money where my heart is … I will do my best to do good things with this money.”
Bezos recently made headlines when he announced that he planned to give away the majority of his fortune, which is currently around $124 billion, to philanthropic causes. Even though this is exciting, there was little substance behind that because Bezos didn’t provide a timeline or plan to do so, only noting that they are “building capacity” to be able to give money away and “the hard part to figure out is how to do it in a levered way – it’s not easy.”
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