Female philanthropists MacKenzie Scott and Melinda Gates have partnered together to empower four organizations that promote gender equality in tech, higher education, caregiving and minority communities with $40 million for their projects.
The list of awardees to enjoy the grant was selected from a pool of more than 550 applicants who participated in ‘The Equality Can’t Wait Challenge’, a competition launched in June 2020 by investment company Pivotal Ventures, owned by the Gates’.
The plan is to award each winning project $10 million, with an additional $8 million split between two finalists working on issues of domestic violence, training young women and leading them ‘to flex their political power’.
In a joint statement, Gates mentioned that the patterns of history can be broken to advance gender equality, there must be a commitment to lifting organizations like the recipients of the awards that are ready to lift women and girls. On her part, Scott noted that the awardees are ‘strong teams working on the front lines and from within communities to help women build power in their lives and careers’.
Gates and Scott are former wives of billionaires and tech founders Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos respectively. However, in recent times, they have built a powerful profile as philanthropists as they are among the richest people in the world.
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