Community
"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.”
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.
- Amazon Future EngineerAmazon 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 EducateAWS 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 AcademyAWS 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 ExperienceThe 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 DayGirls’ 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 TrainingIn 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.
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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.
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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.
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Newest benefit for Amazon’s Black Business Accelerator will help connect Black entrepreneurs with a dedicated network of peers, mentors, and thought leaders to accelerate their business growth on Amazon and beyond. -
More than $310 million in loans and grants have now been committed to the Puget Sound region from the $2 billion Amazon Housing Equity Fund to create or preserve up to 2,500 affordable units—with more investments to come. -
Amazon made a bet two decades ago to embrace third-party sellers—and the bet is paying off for both customers and small businesses, according to Amazon’s 2021 Small Business Empowerment Report.
