MUSIC: Dolly Parton Wins $100 Million Bezos College and Civility Award

Dol­ly Par­ton accept­ed a $100 mil­lion prize on Sat­ur­day as part of the Bezos Courage and Civil­i­ty Award pre­sent­ed by Ama­zon founder Jeff Bezos and his long­time part­ner Lau­ren Sanchez.

The award, which rec­og­nizes “lead­ers who set high goals, find solu­tions, and always act with civil­i­ty,” gave him mon­ey to donate to a char­i­ty of his choice. Sanchez said.

“Bezos said before hand­ing the award to the coun­try music star, ‘The woman you’ll meet embod­ies these ideals to the core, and she puts her heart into her dona­tion.’ increase.

“It’s just amaz­ing what she’s done for her kids, lit­er­a­cy and so much more.”

“Wow, did you say $100 mil­lion?” Par­ton said when called to the stage. “When peo­ple are in a posi­tion to help, you have to.” “I’ve always said I try to put mon­ey where my heart is.”

The coun­try singer is also a phil­an­thropist herself.

In 2020, she donat­ed $1 mil­lion to Van­der­bilt Uni­ver­si­ty Med­ical Cen­ter for Covid-19 research, an act that helped mod­ern vac­cines succeed.

“I was informed by her long­time friend Dr. Nagy Abmu­rad, who has been involved in Van­der­bilt research for many years, that there has been excit­ing progress towards research­ing the coro­n­avirus for a cure,” she said in 2020. Post­ed on Insta­gram in April.

“I will donate $1 mil­lion to Van­der­bilt for her research and encour­age those who can afford it.”

And his phil­an­thropy does­n’t stop there. In 2016, his Dol­ly­wood Foun­da­tion donat­ed $1,000 a month to fam­i­lies affect­ed by the Ten­nessee wild­fires, and the pay­ments con­tin­ued for six months.

In 1995, he found­ed the lit­er­a­cy pro­gram, Dol­ly Par­ton’s Imag­i­na­tion Library, which has donat­ed over 100 mil­lion chil­dren’s books to date.

Par­ton joins TV host Van Jones and Span­ish chef José Andrés, who won the award in 2021, for the Courage and Cour­tesy Award.