After becoming just the second private citizen after Richard
Branson to go to space, former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is donating $100 million
each to CNN commentator Van Jones and chef Jose Andres as part of a new
“courage and civility award.”

He announced the donation in a press conference after
touching down on his Blue Origin spaceflight.

“These are people who have demonstrated courage, by the
way, it is easy to be courageous but also means, try being courageous and civil,
try being courageous and a unifier, that’s harder and way better and makes the world better,” Bezos said in the press conference.

He said that Andres and Jones have full authority to use the
$100 million awards anyway they want.

Also read: Jeff Bezos vs Richard Branson: The big space flex

Jones is the founder of Dream Corps, a non-profit
organisation that focuses on criminal justice reform in the United States. Chef
Andrés founded the Washington DC-based World Central Kitchen, a non-profit that has
responded to countless disasters around the world to provide food.

Jones thanked Bezos for “lifting the ceiling off
peoples’ dreams.”

“If you take people on the frontlines and their wisdom and
their genius and their creativity and you give them a shot, they are not just
going to turn around neighbours, they are going to turn around this nation,
that’s what’s going to happen,” Jones said.

“This award itself can now feed the world on its own,
but this is the start of a new chapter for us. To allow us to think beyond the
next hurricane to the bigger challenges we face,” chef Andres said.