Jeff Bezos’s ex-wife MacKenzie Scott donates $15m to provide glasses to farmers

Billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has gifted a stunning $15m to a charitable cause that delivers eyeglasses to farmers in developing countries.

“The gift from Ms. Scott is an incredible acknowledgement of the power of a simple pair of eyeglasses to unlock earning, learning, safety and well-being for people vulnerable to poverty,” said Ella Gudwin, the chief executive of VisionSpring, the nonprofit where Ms Scott has decided to park her latest multi-million-dollar donation.

The ex-wife of the Amazon founder disclosed in the spring that over the past two years, after collecting $38bn in the divorce settlement, she has given more than $12bn of her fortune to charity.

More than 1,275 organisations have been touched by Ms Scott’s wealth. The most recent endeavour that she’s decided to shine her fortunes on aligns with her previously stated goals of gifting to pressing needs that are often overlooked in the world of development.

“As always our aim has been to support the needs of underrepresented people from groups of all kinds,” Ms Scott wrote in a blog post in March 2022 outlining her philanthropic goals.

Ms Scott’s donation to VisionSpring, which was founded in 2001 with the goal of providing glasses to the billions of people worldwide who suffer from uncorrected blurry vision, is believed to be the largest, single private donation toward solving the problem.

“It is a big win for the sector as a whole and all of the organizations working on an issue that has been hiding in plain sight,” said Dr Jordan Kassalow, founder of VisionSpring, according to trade publication Vision Monday.

Ms Scott’s endowment to the nonprofit, which was timed to be announced on World Vision Day, will help catalyse the launch of VisionSpring’s latest initiative to help correct the vision of more than 6m farmers working in India, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda and Bangladesh.

Livelihoods in Focus, the $70m effort has been called, seeks to create more than $1bn in new income by 2030 in tea, coffee, cocoa and artisan workers, the organisation said.

“With this powerful endorsement of our work, we are embarking on a multi-year journey to launch Livelihoods in Focus, addressing the massive vision care gap among agricultural and artisan workers in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa,” added Ms Gudwin in a press release.

These specific sectors have been targeted by VisionSpring in their latest initiative because of the vision intensive skills required to carry out the specific tasks in these industries, particularly at close distances.

Shortly after splitting from Bezos in 2019, Ms Scott signed to Warren Buffet’s Giving Pledge, a commitment that was created by the billionaire investor alongside Microsoft founder Bill Gates to encourage the world’s wealthiest to part with half of their fortunes to charitable organisations.