Community

As part of our community focus, we work to increase access to high-quality computer science education. One of our primary programs is Amazon Future Engineer, a childhood-to-career initiative aimed at increasing access to computer science education for hundreds of thousands of children and young adults from underserved and underrepresented communities each year. Amazon Future Engineer is part of Amazon’s $50 million investment in STEM education. Amazon Future Engineer has also invested an additional $20 million in organizations that promote computer science and STEM education across the U.S. Each year, Amazon Future Engineer:

• Inspires hundreds of thousands of elementary school students to try computer science.
• Funds Intro and AP computer science courses for thousands of high schools.
• Awards 100 students each year with $40,000 college scholarships to study computer science and guaranteed, paid internship offers at Amazon.

Learn more about Amazon Future Engineer.

Amazon is committed to what we call “Right Now Needs,” which includes increasing access to food, shelter, and basic goods for children and their families, specifically when it comes to fighting hunger and homelessness.

• Over $100 million commitment in partnership with community nonprofit Mary’s Place to open a first-of-its-kind homeless shelter at our Seattle headquarters campus. The Mary’s Place Family Center in The Regrade has the capacity to shelter more than 200 people each night, and more than 1000 family members each year.
• $13 million to create more housing options for people experiencing homelessness in Seattle and Arlington, VA. Amazon donated $8 million—$5 million to Plymouth Housing in Seattle and $3 million to the Arlington Community Foundation in Arlington—as well as a $5 million total match on employee donations made to 20 select nonprofits addressing housing and homelessness in our headquarter regions.
• More than $15 million in in-kind and cash donations to one of our longtime neighbors in Seattle, FareStart, a nonprofit focused on helping individuals in poverty overcome barriers to getting and keeping a job through training on the work and life skills necessary to succeed in the foodservice industry. Since 2017, Amazon has provided in-kind and cash donations, contributed more than $2 million in revenue to FareStart’s catering business, and provided consultancy services and space to help FareStart optimize its growing catering business. Additionally, Amazon employees volunteer more than a thousand hours with FareStart each year. With Amazon’s support, and the support of its donor community, FareStart helps more than 1,200 people locally each year.
• $2 million initial grant and creation of the Right Now Needs Fund, stewarded by the Alliance for Education to help meet the urgent and basic needs (food, clothing, and supplies) of students in Seattle Public Schools and eliminate barriers to learning. Amazon has also provided additional grants to provide extra support for summer programming and COVID-19 relief.
• A collaboration with Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign, provided access to more than 9 million school breakfasts for over 50,000 students in 450 schools across the U.S. by the end of 2019

Our disaster relief and response efforts leverage Amazon’s vast operational excellence, innovative technologies, and worldwide logistics network to provide fast and effective support to worldwide operations fighting large-scale natural disasters. Amazon has filled cargo jets and shipped truckloads of Amazon-donated items for communities ravaged by hurricanes, sent solar powered lights to people living without power after tsunamis, enabled customers to easily donate products and cash on Amazon.com, and helped governments and non-profits expedite response efforts at scale through our AWS cloud services.

• Between 2017 and 2019, Amazon and its customers donated an equivalent of more than 7.3 million relief items, including more than 1 million bottles of water, 10,000 N95 respirator masks, and 5,000 solar lanterns.
• Amazon and its customers donated more than $17 million in cash and products to support people impacted by 37 natural disasters.
• More than 1,400 Amazon employees supported disaster relief and response efforts and hundreds participated on the ground.
• Amazon’s disaster relief and response teams have helped more than 40 nonprofit partners deliver services to victims of disasters from around the world.
• Amazon Air cargo jets were packed with more than 500,000 donated relief items to support people affected by Hurricane Maria and Hurricane Dorian.
• We’ve supported victims of more than 37 natural disasters in over 10 countries.

AWS Disaster Response Action Team: AWS enables disaster response organizations to access cloud services at the edge, even in the harshest conditions. The AWS Disaster Response Action Team (DRT) allows customers to focus on mission-critical functions, while AWS provisions critical data and applications, transports hardware to the base of operations, and implements deployable infrastructure based on customer need. For example, in 2019, in the wake of Hurricane Dorian (a Category 5 storm that struck the Bahamas), the DRT helped set up connectivity and communications networks at more than 40 medical facilities and shelters in the country. In 2019, AWS also launched AWS Project Resilience, offering up to $2,000 in AWS credits to state and local governments, community organizations, and educational institutions to better prepare for natural and man-made disasters.