Former presidential candidate and CNN commentator Andrew Yang has pledged to spend $1 million to help working families in New York and across the country amid the coronavirus outbreak.
On Friday, Yang’s new non-profit organization, Humanity Forward, announced it will be sending 5000 poor working households in the Bronx $1,000 a month before March ends. Later on Friday, Yang said he would double the number of households after he receives more funding. In total, the organization plans to spend at least $500,000 on the project and will be working with two organizations, Collective Education Fund and Neighborhood Trust Financial Partners, to reach struggling families and help send hourly workers, who are still working, home.
In addition, the group is also raising money for its Human Forward Coronavirus Relief Fund, which is a money fund that will go towards providing one-time basic income payments to individuals and families in financial need. Another $500,000 will be spent on the fund, as the organization raises more to help. Thanks to Yang’s presidential campaign, he already has a mailing list of over 900,000 people. Humanity Forward was initially created to test Yang’s proposal for universal income, the idea that all Americans receive $1,000 a month from the federal government.
“It seemed much more important to put money into people’s hands because people are struggling and wondering how they are going to be able to pay their bills. So rather than doing basic income trial, we deiced to get money into people’s hands immediately, and it seemed like the most effective way to do it,” said Yang in an interview with CNN.
Yang also sat down for an interview The Breakfast Club to go over his new plan.” I’m here to announce that we’re giving $1 million to the working poor in New York City and beyond. Because we know that people are suffering right now. We know that there’s a lot of fear, there’s a lot of uncertainty, a lot of need,” said Yang, mentioning that the fund will first service the Bronx community.
“We’re working with an organization called Neighborhood Trust that is community-based financial planning non-profit that actually helps people figure out how to get money and save it. And so it’s perfect because we’re going to work with them to get money into the bank accounts of the working poor in the Bronx. We’re also going to donating money to tipped workers, wait staff who’ve lost their jobs. And then we’re just going to be giving money away to the general public on our website MoveHumanityForward.com, that if you just come we’re going to give $250 to $500 micro-grants to people who just come and tell us why they need the money. We can’t do everyone, obviously, but we’re going to do all we can. And if we get enough money, we can do more. The goal is to take action and help ourselves, help our people. And show that one: You know we can do this. Two: Act now, and we can’t even wait on the government to get its shit together.”
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