Beyoncé Knowles-Carter has joined forces with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to donate $6 million in relief for essential workers on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic.
The funding will be sent to organizations providing mental wellness services, spearheaded by the singer’s charity initiative, BeyGOOD, along with Dorsey’s own COVID-19 relief fund, Start Small. In a statement on Beyoncé’s website, BeyGOOD said the funding is targeted for African-Americans working in major cities, citing a “disproportionate number of workers in these indispensable occupations.”
Knowles-Carter spoke about this issue during Saturday’s star-studded One World: Together at Home global broadcast. “Black Americans disproportionately belong to these essential parts of the workforce that do not have the luxury of working from home,” she said. “And African-American communities at large have been severely affected in this crisis.”
While full data on the racial breakdown of coronavirus cases in the United States have yet to be released, early reports show that African-Americans are both contracting and dying from COVID-19 at higher rates.
In partnership with the effort is the University of California at Los Angeles and the National Alliance on Mental Illness, the latter of which will provide local support in Houston—Beyoncé’s hometown—New York, New Orleans, and Detroit. Support categorized as personal wellness will benefit the United Memorial Medical Center, Bread of Life, Matthew 25, and others, the statement said.
The statement from BeyGOOD, which was launched in 2017 to help victims of Hurricane Harvey, added that the funding will also cover coronavirus testing and medical services, food supplies, and food deliveries, “both during and after the crisis.”
Dorsey’s Start Small is a limited liability company founded earlier this month. On Twitter, the chief executive said he would move $1 billion worth of his equity from Square—which Dorsey also cofounded and where he serves as CEO—into the Start Small fund. That sum, Dorsey said, amounted to about 28% of his total net worth.
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