Community

Housing Equity

Amazon believes that all people should have access to housing they can afford.

Housing Equity Fund Support for Affordable Housing Mary's Place Family Center

In January 2021, Amazon launched the Housing Equity Fund, a commitment of more than $2 billion to preserve and create more than 20,000 affordable homes in three communities where we have a high concentration of employees: Washington’s Puget Sound region; Washington, D.C., and Arlington, Virginia, metropolitan areas; and Nashville, Tennessee. Our first commitment included more than $380 million in below-market loans and grants to the Washington Housing Conservancy to preserve and create up to 1,300 affordable homes in Arlington, Virginia. Amazon has also committed more than $185 million in below-market loans and grants to King County Housing Authority to preserve up to 1,000 affordable homes in the Puget Sound area.

Amazon made additional donations in support of affordable housing in 2020. We donated $3 million to four legal service providers to help support families in need of pro-bono legal housing support in the Washington, D.C., and Arlington, Virginia, metropolitan areas. We also helped preserve home ownership for hundreds of residents in Nashville, Tennessee, with a $2.25 million donation to The Housing Fund. With this donation, The Housing Fund will make financial grants available to help ensure that families can keep their homes and maintain critical, long-term financial stability.

Interior view at the new Mary's Place shelter in The Regrade neighborhood of Seattle.

Amazon has also committed more than $130 million to our nonprofit partners who are working to fight homelessness. In 2020, we opened the doors to a permanent eight-floor shelter inside an Amazon office building at our Puget Sound headquarters in partnership with Mary’s Place, a Seattle-based provider serving families experiencing homelessness. The shelter is the largest family shelter in the state of Washington, with space for 200 guests each night. The facility features an on-site health clinic, an industrial kitchen with the capacity to produce approximately 600,000 meals annually, recreation areas for children of all ages to play, and dedicated space for in-person and virtual pro bono legal support, resume reviews, and online learning.

Housing Equity Fund

The Housing Equity Fund helps create inclusive housing developments and preserve existing housing through below-market loans and grants to non-traditional and traditional housing partners, public agencies, and minority-led organizations.

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"Amazon’s donation will help us keep more families in their homes, which is always our ultimate goal, because home ownership is the key to long-term wealth building. For these families, these grants will be game-changing. We hope it spurs additional local partners to step up and donate because everyone benefits when more people can pay their bills.”

Marshall Crawford

CEO, The Housing Fund

A woman in a safety vest loads packaged foods into a large box.

Food and Basic Needs

Amazon believes that no family should go without a way to address their basic needs. In 2020, Amazon made in-kind and cash donations equivalent to more than 20 million meals and 13 million essential items to nonprofits, food banks, and strategic partners. We also committed a total of $6.2 million through our Right Now Needs Fund, a flexible fund designed to meet the basic needs of schoolchildren and help eliminate barriers to learning. These funds have already provided support to more than 28,000 students with food, shelter, clothing, school supplies, and hygiene items in the states of Washington and Virginia.

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Operations Teams Deliver Basic Needs

In 2020, more than 26,000 Amazon operations employees and delivery partners identified needs in communities where they live and work, and Amazon donated $7.9 million to meet these community needs, benefiting 260 nonprofit organizations and 1.6 million community members globally in Central Eastern Europe, Italy, France, and the UK. Employees of our operations centers and delivery stations also delivered meals and essential supplies; hosted food, clothing, and school-supply drives; and organized more than 1,000 events to support local community needs.

COVID-19 Community Response Efforts

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Amazon has helped customers, provided community relief, and invested in cutting-edge research.

Critical Supplies Expanding Access for Vaccines Neighborhood Small Business Relief Fund AWS Diagnostic Development Initiative COVID-19 “Infodemic” Knowledge Platform Helping Migrants Stay Safe During the Pandemic Meeting Community Needs by Paying Utility Bills During COVID-19

We distributed critical supplies to communities across the world, including 4.5 million masks, 273,000 gallons of hand sanitizer, 140,000 medical gowns, 124,000 face shields, 40,000 hygiene kits, and thousands of contactless thermometers. To support food banks and community organizations, we donated delivery services of groceries and pre-packaged meals using our network of Amazon Flex Delivery and Delivery Service Partners. We delivered more than 12 million meals to seniors, underserved families, and school children in communities across the U.S., the UK, Australia, Singapore, and Spain. Amazon also delivered thousands of laptops and wireless devices on behalf of school districts to low-income students in order to support distance learning.

Amazon is leveraging our scale to get vaccines to people in need. We lent our support to the Biden administration in its effort to vaccinate 100 million people in the first 100 days of Biden’s presidency, vaccinating thousands of people through pop-up clinics at Amazon facilities in Washington, Virginia, and Florida. We also developed a Pop-Up Vaccine Clinic Playbook to help other companies and organizations execute similar vaccination clinics.

In 2020, Amazon launched the Neighborhood Small Business Relief Fund to provide cash grants and free rent to Seattle small businesses that needed assistance. Through this fund, Amazon disbursed $11 million in relief to more than 900 small businesses, supporting local jobs and helping small businesses confront the economic challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2020, we launched the AWS Diagnostic Development Initiative to accelerate COVID-19 research. The initiative supports AWS customers working on diagnostic solutions and improving collaboration across organizations solving similar problems. As part of this, Amazon committed an initial investment of $20 million to accelerate diagnostic research, innovation, and development to speed our collective understanding and detection of COVID-19.

A new project led by Imperial College London and enabled by AWS is responding to the COVID-19 “infodemic” with the creation of a global knowledge platform. The platform, known as Realtime Data Analysis and Synthesis (REDASA), pools global data on COVID-19 from over half a million sources and combines human curation with AWS machine learning services to perform deep data analysis. This helps the healthcare community find important insights in real time, make sense of the vast amounts of information pouring in, and develop plans to accelerate research and development.

AWS is supplying the International Organization for Migration (IOM) with advanced cloud technologies and technical expertise to accelerate its efforts to help migrants around the world stay safe during the COVID-19 crisis. We are developing a machine learning tool to help the IOM collect and analyze high volumes of COVID-19-related content from around the globe and to provide up-to-date information on border and travel restrictions. We are also helping the IOM proactively respond to the increasing volume of requests from migrants for information and help, enhancing a new website by integrating it with a multi-lingual cloud call center and chatbot.

The AWS InCommunities team develops innovative, long-term initiatives to foster lasting impact around the world, specifically in communities where we build and operate our global infrastructure. In 2020, AWS InCommunities leveraged its global reach to better serve local communities tackling the spread of COVID-19, including in Umatilla, Oregon, where we worked to make sure residents had access to basic needs. We collaborated with the Umatilla Electric Cooperative (UEC) and Hermiston Energy Services (HES) to support electricity relief for local residents who had applied to a payment assistance program. We donated over half a million dollars to the communities that UEC and HES serve and helped pay utility bills for more than 1,000 families. “The effectiveness and reach of the payment assistance program will be amplified by our collaboration with AWS,” said Lisa McMeen, UEC’s VP of Administration. “With such uncertainty and hardship caused by the pandemic, it is great to work with trusted partners like AWS to keep our community operating at this time.” We also worked with our partners in the region to provide meals, distance learning kits, laptops, and Wi-Fi connectivity for school children and senior citizens.

Computer Science Education

At Amazon, we believe in the power of computer science to unleash creativity and unlock human potential. We also know that while talent and passion are spread across all young people, opportunity is not. We are dedicated to inspiring future builders, especially those from underrepresented and underserved communities. As part of our community focus, we work to increase access to high-quality computer science education.

Amazon Future Engineer

Amazon Future Engineer is Amazon’s signature computer science education program designed to inspire and educate millions of students from underserved communities across the globe, including hundreds of thousands of students in the U.S. each year. Students explore computer science through school curriculum and project-based learning using code to make music, program robots, and solve problems. Amazon Future Engineer also awards 100 students each year with four-year, $40,000 scholarships and paid internships at Amazon, and celebrates teachers with professional development and $25,000 Teacher of the Year Awards. Amazon Future Engineer is part of Amazon’s $50 million commitment to STEM and computer science education. In 2020, Amazon Future Engineer reached more than 5,000 schools and 600,000 students in the U.S. We also launched Amazon Future Engineer programming in the UK, France, and Canada, reaching an additional 297,000 students with virtual online learning.
AWS Educate

AWS Educate provides students and educators with online, self-paced cloud learning resources at no cost. Learners can complete any of our 12 cloud career pathways, explore hundreds of hours of content, and earn credentials. AWS Educate is used in more than 200 countries and territories, and the program engages more than 3,500 institutions, 10,000 educators, and hundreds of thousands of students globally.
AWS Academy

AWS Academy provides higher education institutions with a free, ready-to-teach cloud computing curriculum that prepares students to pursue industry-recognized certifications and in-demand cloud jobs. With free training and support from AWS, educators earn AWS Certification and teach the learning materials directly to students. To date, 1,500 AWS Academy Accredited Educators have delivered AWS Academy courses to more than 86,000 students worldwide.
Think Big Experience

The AWS Think Big Experience encourages students to innovate and Think Big to solve real-world problems. To bring this to life, we have built physical Think Big Spaces and content for students around the globe. In 2020, the AWS Think Big Experience continued to provide access to science, technology, engineering, arts, and math (STEAM) education around the world when students had to move to virtual learning due to the pandemic.

For example, in Mumbai, India, more than 1,600 students participated in the Think Big program to continue STEAM learning with smartphones and traditional telephones we provided. Students completed 59 STEAM projects, competing in and winning online science competitions. We helped participating students learn virtually, providing data packages for more than 300 students’ phones and donating 430 tablets to students who had no access to devices. The region’s mobile Think Big Space on wheels regularly visits communities in order for small groups of students to continue their experiments safely.

In the U.S., AWS Think Big Spaces in Ohio and Virginia provided online sessions with interactive distance-learning projects in technology, coding, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to provide opportunities and resources for students interested in technology. Think Big Spaces also supported local teachers and staff participating with their classes, girls’ tech groups, and clubs.
Girls’ Tech Day

Girls’ Tech Day is a workshop emphasizing STEAM for school-age girls and young women—designed to inspire future builders, showcase tech careers and women in the technology workforce, and introduce girls in underserved areas to STEAM. In 2020, AWS Girls’ Tech Day went virtual, and 10,000 girls and young women interested in technology registered for programs in machine learning, artificial intelligence, coding, virtual reality, and robotics.
Cloud Computing Training

In December 2020, Amazon announced a pledge to help 29 million people around the world grow their tech skills with free cloud computing skills training by 2025. To get to 29 million, we are expanding existing AWS-designed programs and piloting new ones to meet emerging training needs. These programs emphasize cloud computing training as the need for people with the right skills to take on cloud computing and other technical roles continues to grow. That need has become more apparent over the last year as schools, businesses, and governments have relied on the cloud to keep their organizations running.

Disaster Relief

Amazon’s disaster relief and response teams leverage our vast operational excellence, cloud computing technologies, and worldwide logistics network to provide fast and effective support to worldwide operations addressing large-scale natural disasters. In 2020, we supported the response to 16 natural disasters in 12 countries and partnered with 53 nonprofit service providers to enable critical support for front-line responders and survivors. Together with Amazon customers, we donated more than $22 million in products and cash to support people impacted by natural disasters around the world and first responders fighting those disasters. Donations included more than 12 million relief items, such as masks, bottled water, hygiene products, baby supplies, food, and other essential items.

Whole Foods Market

Whole Foods Market was founded with a purpose: to nourish people and the planet. Whole Foods Market community giving programs provide a wide range of resources to help address existing and emerging needs in our neighborhoods and industry. We work with individuals and organizations that share our values, and proudly support hundreds of partnerships and initiatives each year.

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Sourced for Good

Whole Foods Market is committed to strengthening the communities where products are sourced. Our Sourced for Good program supports workers, communities, and the environment by enabling tangible improvements in farmworkers’ lives through improved wages, access to healthcare, student scholarships, and more. Through the Sourced for Good program, Whole Foods Market has generated $40 million in development funds for farmworkers and their communities from the sale of fair-trade-certified produce and floral products, benefiting more than 67,000 workers and small producers in 12 countries around the world.
Local Producer Loan Program

Whole Foods Market provides loans to small, local, independent producers to help them expand their businesses through the Local Producer Loan Program. Loan recipients have included organic vegetable farmers, a heritage turkey grower, a nutritional protein bar maker, a maker of body care products, and many others. The Local Producer Loan Program has provided more than 350 loans, representing $25 million in capital, to our suppliers in support of the development of specific products that we want to carry in our Whole Foods Market stores.

Whole Foods Market Foundations

Whole Foods Market has established three foundations to support strategic programs that make an impact across the globe. Through these three foundations, Whole Foods Market has committed more than $50 million to local and global communities since 2005.

Whole Planet Foundation

Whole Planet Foundation is committed to alleviating global poverty for people living in communities in the U.S. and around the world that supply our stores with products.

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Whole Kids Foundation

Whole Kids Foundation supports schools and inspires families to improve children’s nutrition and wellness.

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Whole Cities Foundation

Whole Cities Foundation expands healthy food access and nutrition education by partnering with community-led organizations to build thriving local food systems.

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