Some of the richest people in the world give away billions of dollars to charity every year. But who are they and where does all the money go? Find out in this episode.

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Vocab
philanthropist / philanthropy / philanthropic
to donate / to make a donation
net worth
assets
fund – fondo
foundation – fundación
to pledge

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
launched in 2000 and is reported to be the largest private foundation in the world.
Current assets $46.8 billion.
The primary goals of The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are to enhance healthcare and reduce extreme poverty around the world. The foundation has been at the center of vaccine research for years and has committed $1.75 billion over two years for pandemic relief.
Speaking of coronavirus, Ex-New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg has given $330 million in Covid-19 related funding. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has given at least $100 million.

Speaking of COVID-19, Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon, is the richest person in the world at the time of recording. His net worth is over $188 billion. But his ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott (divorced in 2019), has given the most during the pandemic. She gave $5.8 billion to 500 different charity groups in only one year (2019). Her donations focus on racial inequality, decreasing poverty, sexual orientation and gender equality and food insecurity. MacKenzie has given the most money in the shortest space of time.
Her ex-husband, Jeff is often criticized for not giving away more. He gave the largest single donation in 2020. $10 billion to help fight climate change.

Michael Bloomberg is worth $54.9 billion and has given $11.1 billion for gun control, education, climate change and public health. He’s donated more than $330 million to COVID-19 research and to pay for meals for frontline healthcare workers.

Warren Buffet is a large contributor to The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and has donated $42.8 billion during his lifetime (source: forbes.com). His net worth at the time of recording is $88.8 billion and he’s pledged to give away 99% of his fortune in his lifetime. When speaking about his family, Buffet said, “Were we to use more than 1% of my claim checks on ourselves, neither our happiness nor our well-being would be enhanced.”

Hungarian-born George Soros, has given $18.8 billion. His charity foundations, called Open Society, mainly focus on democracy, education, anti-discrimination and healthcare and they reach 120 countries worldwide. He gave $220 million to leaders in Black communities after the killing of George Floyd in the US and he gave $37 million for undocumented immigrants excluded from U.S. federal aid after COVID hit.

Mark Zuckerberg & Priscilla Chan have a net worth of %90 billion.
They’ve given $2.7 billion to date. Mostly focused on election integrity and COVID-19 treatment.
Why elections? They say, “to ensure voters could cast their ballots safely and securely,”

Discussion
Are these billionaires real philanthropists, or are they avoiding paying tax?
If you were a billionaire, what donations would you make?

(source: forbes.com). There are more on the list of top 25 philanthropists at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeswealthteam/2021/01/19/americas-top-givers-the-25-most-philanthropic-billionaires/?sh=394cb72c1f59

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We also want to say thank you to our Gold sponsor this month, GABITEL INGENIEROS. What do they do? Well, they’re involved in many areas of engineering, but perhaps of interest to you is that they are currently working on an important project in the UK for laying down, that means installing, fibre optic cable.
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On next week’s episode: Word games and fluency practice activities

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